Retrofit radiant heated driveway?

[ElscottHavoc]

Anyone have experience with radiant heated driveways and those that are retrofitted. Costs, pros/coins, issues? Partly interested for my own house, also for this other property I'm looking into. The one I looked into was heatizon, which just gets cut the surface along your tires path down the drive.

Recently looked at a potential investment property with a shared driveway and no on street parking - not exactly ideal; however, it is an absolute bargain and I can guarantee it'll rent out simply because there's huge demand here and I can price rent slightly below FMV and still cash flow very well. There is a garage and larger pad at the end of the driveway, but my concern is that the driveway is so steep it might tough in the winter (my car couldn't) and also cause trouble on who should be out shoveling. It appears the neighboring tenant is lazy with his 4wd and just climbs over it packing it down.

I figured retrofitting the drive with radiant heating, roughly 40', might be a long term investment that not only makes it more ideal to rent, cut down on tenant issues on driveway responsibilities being shared, and also be cheaper in long run than professional plowing. The system I saw had lines cut surface deep with a sealant over top.

The other option I had is just cutting out a second pad adjacent the first one for additional parking and much more flat coming off the road. That'd probably be about $2k to do that.

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[Mr. Mach-ete]

The issue with radiant heated driveways is the amount of heat energy required to keep them above freezing. Incredible amounts of fuel are consumed keeping the driveway even to 40 degrees (f).

I engineered a radiant garage and partial driveway for a very wealthy man. I laid over 3,000 feet of oxygen barrier 1/2" pex tubing of which each run could not be greater than 250 ft due to friction loss. The supply and return header system was elaborate as Hell. The were very expensive bronze cast thermostatic sensors that were poured into the concrete which monitored the pad tempurature. You need to be extremely careful not to circulate to hot of water as it will crack and damage the concrete. Therefor the water must be tempurature regulated coming from the heat source. Which is most likely going to be an on demand system couple with a storage buffer tank.

Need some pics and more info regarding the dimensions of the area you are looking to heat.

 

[Weather Man]

Expensive this winter. This one is electric, no idea on price,

Heated Driveways And Driveway Heating Systems By Warmup®

 

[DHG1078]

Expensive this winter. This one is electric, no idea on price,

Heated Driveways And Driveway Heating Systems By Warmup®

looks like their partial coverage system which only covers "tire tracks" costs 2700 to install and about 200 to operate a winter according to their site.

 

[pho_phizzat]

We put one in my folks house when we built it. It is just another zone off the in floor heating. It would be very tough to retrofit but if you do it new it is not hard or expensive at all.

 

[CobraBob]

looks like their partial coverage system which only covers "tire tracks" costs 2700 to install and about 200 to operate a winter according to their site.

If that is the case it doesn't seem to be worth doing. You'll still have areas of snow that will need to be removed. Imagine 8-10" of snow with a path for the tires melted. Where does the water go, and you'd be forced to ride in the tire paths. I guess it's usefulness would depend on the amount of snowfall. Maybe that is why up here in CT I've yet to see a heated driveway. I wish it were cheap, easy and effective because I'd love to have my driveway and walkways snow free.

 

[SID297]

Sounds like 1st world technology to me.

 

[ElscottHavoc]

Thanks. I could not seem to find the install price. The $200 monthly estimate for addituonal utilities is pretty reasonable for a complete winter. My thought was that for a very steep driveway which would require plowing just to get into the drive, this could be cost effective.

Paying to have a property professional plowed is easily $30-50 per snow event. Most likely I'll just tell them to grab a shovel, but I was just trying to see about valuation of a system like this being extraordinarily helpful for elderly tenants. Would also*save me a lot of headaches from complaints of neighbors not helping scoop the drive, and I figured it'd increase likely hood tenants go to work if they can't say their driveway is impassable.

The reason that its still helpful even by covering tire tracks is because you can at least get into the garage. From there, you can get out and scoop the rest of the drive. If there's no on street parking, you really have no where to put the car if you can't get up the drive. The driveway in question would melt into street into nearby drain.

Expensive this winter. This one is electric, no idea on price,

Heated Driveways And Driveway Heating Systems By Warmup®

looks like their partial coverage system which only covers "tire tracks" costs 2700 to install and about 200 to operate a winter according to their site.

Posted via Topify on Android

 

[JBird_Cobra]

I've never looked into it but as far as I know geothermal heating is the way to go on driveways... unfortunately I do not think you could retrofit it without pouring a new driveway.

 

[ArmedSuspect]

i'm all about radiant EVERYTHING.... except the driveway only / retrofit. it's not really worth the investment to just re-fit and then heat the driveway.

did i see $200 per month to run the retro fit thing? snow shovel, teenage kid and a bag of salt...

for folks running out door furnaces or condensing gas (oil) furnaces it's a solid idea to go radiant and put pipe under everything. outside of that the cost benefit may not be there.






in your case just put in the other parking area and be done with it.





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