Big Bear Heated Driveway: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:29, 27 April 2015

Big Bear Heated Driveway is located in the in the mountain community of Fawnskin in the San Bernardino National Forest. A custom home was built on the North Shore of Big Bear Lake, and the drive way was in the house’s shadow during the winter months. Due to snow fall and vehicles driving over the snow, the driveway became extremely dangerous with ice. The home owners decided to install a heated driveway to remove the snow and ice during the winter months.

Some introduction text and background can go here.

Design

The heated drive way has 2 closed loops. One loop has water the other loop has glycol (antifreeze type stuff that has a very very low freezing point). The water loop goes through a water heater or boiler and a small pump of1/2 HP pushes the hot water through a heat exchanger. Another small pump pushes the glycol through the heat exchanger but the water and glycol do not mix because they are separated by tubes or plates creating chambers. As the hot water passes through the exchanger it warms the glycol and the water gets cooled. The water and glycol continue the heating and cooling exchange until they reach the desired temperature. The warm glycol exchanges its heat with the icy concrete driveway which warms and melts the snow.

Sample gallery
This photo shows the 8 separate loops that flow directly to the heat exchanger. Then it goes to the ½ HP pump to go back to the driveway. It also shows the pipes coming from the water heater that flows to the heat exchanger and back through the ½ HP pump..
More sample caption text. This would look better with different images. :)
Even more sample caption text.

Issues

The major issue with this project was the installation of 800 ft. tube under the driveway concrete which the glycol would travel through. The issue with too much tube in one continuous loop is that it causes friction. There are two way to fix the issue, one is to install a larger pump and the other is to break the tubes into smaller 8 loops about 100 ft. long each. The project went with 8 smaller 100 ft. long loops because the home owner didn’t want a larger and louder pump. Think about using your mouth as a small pump blowing water thru a garden hose. Easy to blow water out of a 25 ft hose, harder to blow water thru a 100 ft hose, impossible to blow water through 800 ft of hose! So we intercepted the tubes along one side of the driveway and broke the one loop into 8 loops of approximately 100 ft each. The 8 loops come together into a manifold just before they go into the heat exchanger.

Costs

You may describe your costs here.

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Discussion

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Next steps

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Conclusions

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References

Contact details

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+File:Heatexchange.JPG|This photo shows the 8 separate loops that flow directly to the heat exchanger.  Then it goes to the ½ HP pump to go back to the driveway.  It also shows the pipes coming from the water heater that flows to the heat exchanger and back through the ½ HP pump..
 File:Imageneeded.png|More sample caption text. This would look better with different images. :)
 File:Imageneeded.png|Even more sample caption text.