DIYbanter - View Single Post - Question: "This Old House" The Current Project

Keith Williams wrote:
In article iuaAf.16$Jn1.5@trndny01, says...

Mikey wrote:

Sir Topham Hatt wrote:

That home owner (George Marby) is very unlikeable and a bit of a whiner. A TV
guide listing of the show describes him as a Bio-Tech Bachelor. I wonder if
there are any hamsters crawling around that house ....

Also he must be a very rich guy. They installed radiant heating under an outdoor
walkway so that he wouldn't have to shovel it in the winter. How much is THAT
going to increase his heating cost in the winter?

Probably no more than paying someone to shovel it. If you get a lot of
snow, I 'll be the radiant driveway ends up cheap.

Let's see... breaking out the web search engine

Assume:
a 20' x 50' driveway = 1000sq.ft.
6" snow = ~1" water (frozen) = 170cu.ft. ice
63 lbs/cu ft. = 1E4 lb
450 gm / lb. = 4.7E6 g
Latent heat of freezing 80cal/g = 3.7E8 cal
1 cal = .004 BTU = 1.5E6 BTU
140k btu/gallon = 10.8 gallons of oil

Unless I've screwed something up (likely) about eleven gallons of
oil or about $30, assuming no heat is lost to the atmosphere (big
assumption given 1000sq.ft. surface) and 100% efficient heat
transfer.

Now where are you going to put 700ish gallons of water that's just
ready to freeze again? ;-)

By contrast a snow blower uses about a pint of gasoline and piles
the still frozen water neatly out of the way until spring. ;-))

Of course your time is not worth anything, if it is someone elses time,
it will cost more than 30 bucks, at least around here. I think the plow
companies get twice that