Clear snow the laziest way | Hacker News Reader

Clear snow the laziest way

instructables.com

73 pointsindigodaddy149 comments

Putting down a tarp to catch the snow and then pulling it away would only work with a very small amount of snow. Snow is HEAVY. If it was that small it would be almost just as easy to use a wide snow-pusher-style shovel to move it.

The other problem is that you have to place the tarp before the snow falls, which requires a lot of forethought with work and sleep making it unable to be done for large portions of the day.

And if there's SOME snow down before you tarp, it can freeze to things.

That and dragging this tarp of heavy snow… onto a yard / dumping area full of snow sounds impossible.

Some anchors and a winch and this could be pretty effective. And you could probably automate it, too.

at that point it seems simpler to install heating

A winch would be many orders of magnitude more efficient than a heater. Now maybe a heated tarp to help unstick it, if it happens to freeze in place.

Take a look at how much energy you need to put in to melt water.

0J ?

You just have to empty the tarp often enough.

I guess it depends on where you live, but here in Finland it certainly snows often enough in the winter that you don't have to think about it, you just keep it in place all winter.

Might work great if it stays cold enough but if there's any danger of snow/ice melting and refreezing don't try it... I did once and ended up with a tarp frozen to my car's windshield and doors, couldn't even get in to turn it on and get the heater going.

Nothing too innovative. But a hair dryer on hot setting will be very helpful in such a case. :)

That sounds like an easy way to crack the windscreen

You just hold them a foot or two away from the window and move it a lot. It's still not a great idea because it's going to take like 30 minutes to defrost your windshield, but in a situation where there's a frozen tarp locking you out of the car, it'll do just don't use water. or do, but post the video.

I'm the dummy (I live in Houston) who would try hot water. Why doesn't that work? Does it freeze?

yeah, at least in colder climates, it freezes way faster than you'd expect. Basically instantly, with a bad habit of pooling around the wipers

edit: turns out some people have also tried boiling hot water... I'd never have thought to try this, but, yeah, it'll crack your windshield.

some people will recommend rubbing alcohol blends, which work a little better, but they can dry out the rubber seals around the window. It's honestly better to just start the car 5 mins earlier than you need to use it, with the defrost on full blast, then come out and scrape it.

The laziest way I can imagine for pavement is to turn on the hydronic snowmelt system embedded in the slab.

That’s how hospital entrances, EMS helipads, and critical sidewalks/staircases are kept snow and ice free in a lot of places.

Considering that this idea has been around forever and that it isn’t nearly as expensive[1] as you might initially assume, I wonder why it isn’t a standard feature of most homes in cold climates.

[1] “A snow melting system that heats the tire tracks only for a 10’x20’ driveway, is $2,346.” Paraphrased from https://www.floorheatingsystemsinc.com/snow-melting-system-c...

Such systems are illegal in my state (Wisconsin) except for special circumstances (e.g., hospitals).

Because of energy waste or some other reason?

Looks like the law was passed in 1980 due to the 1970s energy crisis, but it was repealed back in 2008: https://www.twincities.com/2008/01/15/bill-would-allow-for-h...

Reminds me of the misguided pepper spray law that was relaxed a decade ago, but Amazon still won't ship completely legal pepper spray to Wisconsin and a bunch of sites still claim it has draconian regulations.

How much does the energy cost? Having this as a standard feature would be a terrible, terrible idea. The disruption to the environment would be immense.

Overcoming the latent heat of fusion (melting frozen water) takes a LOT of energy.

Melting 11kg of ice to 11kg of water at 0°C takes about 1 kWh of energy. That’s 3 or 4 good shovel-fulls of heavy snow. That’s only to get it to 0°C water. Getting it to 10°C to keep it from insta-freezing right next to the snowmelt takes another 1/8 kWh.

Before the melting starts, you’re going to heat an entire sidewalk from negative a few degrees to 10-15°C and all that energy will go un-recovered after the storm.

Thank you for revealing how stupid electrically heated driveways are. If I ever have a driveway in a snowy climate, it's going to be geothermal and channel the water to drain into inclined conduit with turbines to put the melted snow to work offsetting electric bills on cloudy days when the panels aren't producing.

So it sounds like maybe 5kWh would be needed to melt snow/ice on a short run of stairs, but what continuous power level is needed? Maybe 300W of solar power applied over two days or 600W over one day would be enough to clear the stairs? Especially if you painted the stairs black. Maybe the stair heaters could be run sequentially from solar power to clear a stair at a time. A $1000 investment in 600W of solar panels and some black heating pads for the stairs seems like a reasonable cost (for some people or for a business worried about liability) for an often used small stairway to keep it clear for a few decades.

In climates where you get heavy snowfall (e.g. the northeast) most such systems can’t keep up, and you end up with a foot of snow sitting on a crust of ice, which is harder to clean up. The system will catch up eventually, melting from the bottom up, but it’s inefficient and very slow (and you get ice dams if there are any cold spots).

Sufficiently powerful systems work well, but are $$$$ and relatively energy-intensive, from my understanding. Paying the neighborhood plow guy is easy.

Plus at -40C, how do you keep up? You are battling everything being cold, including the ground under you.

People in this thread are saying "just heat always..." wha?! Heating an insulated home is crazy expensive at -40C, and you want to heat a driveway from -40C to 10C, and melt all the snow?!

(Heating to 0C is not sufficient to melt and let stuff run off, it will freeze again too fast.)

And beyond that, now the end of your driveway is solid ice. Or it will be, as the drain freezes.

A gas snow blower is better for the environment, 100x better, than that.

The good news is that at –40 it barely snows and the stuff that does fall is super light so you can just let the wind blow it away and clear the drifts, but yeah, exactly this.

I have heating in my driveway, it’s OK if it’s just a little bit of snow, but other than that it’s worse than useless. Most of the winter I keep it off and clear the snow with a good old fashioned flatbed shovel thing. Like this: https://www.obs.no/bygg-og-hage/hage-og-uterom/vinterredskap...

It is fairly standard for homes in Hokkaido and some businesses heat the sidewalks of their storefronts. Manual clearing is also still very prevalent.

Some resident owners will opt to clear snow manually just to save money. I notice in the site you linked they did not mention cost of running it per hour. When snow starts in November and can occur as late as April, cost of daily running does add up.

My understanding is that the primary cost is in the operating electricity costs, which is expensive.

I had a friend with one of these on his driveway.

I wonder how efficient it is?

I guess it is probably cheaper in natural gas than having someone come to shovel. (maybe?)

Also, can't help but remember lots of older folks die from heart attacks shoveling snow.

Why have something that needs to be turned on and off? simply bury a miniature radiothermal source under your driveway and keep it toasty warm 24/7.

It might be a profoundly awful idea, but in terms of laziness it's completely passive, no needing to toggle a switch or similar to activate it. Not my area of expertise but I'd imagine if you design the system just right you could have a solid-state heat distribution system so no worries about water pumps breaking down.

I would love to have some plutonium under my driveway.

Easiest foolproof method is to move the driveway to a tropical island.

Or a chicken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock#Chicken-powered_n...

I have no doubt these engineers were smarter than myself, but I am struggling to understand how that was the best solution at hand. For something that weighs 7300 kgs, how was there not sufficient space to include a heater and battery? Now your military base needs to maintain both the nukes + a chicken coop.

For a crappy back of the envelope calculation: a human outputs 100 watts and is 70kg. A chicken is 2kg, so by rough ratios, you would expect a chicken to to be a 3 watt equivalent. A quick search is indicating a (modern) car battery is 600 watt hours, meaning we could fuel our chicken-equivalent-heater for eight days.

It was 1950's era tech... perhaps they were concerned about the acid leaking and damaging the mines, or hydrogen sulfide gas building up inside the casing.

why bury it? Add it to the mix before you pour your driveway, then remember to not play, lie down, or park your vehicle on it.

Just make sure to put up a little sign that says "This driveway is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed vehicle is commemorated here..." and so on.

I’ve never lived anywhere with snow like this. Why can’t you hose it off? Your water supply is “cold” but it is still warm compared to the snow.

Because even a snowcovered driveway is preferable to an ice-rink.

Assuming the valve to your outdoor water supply is still on (we have a valve that controls all outside water) applying water risks refreezing. The water will go somewhere and there it will refreeze. Now you have a different, harder-to-solve problem.

[source: life in Ontario, Canada, previously Minnesota]

I have a hilly dirt driveway that doesn't get much sun. Snowblower generally doesn't get all of the snow, just most of it. I generally prefer winter gets cold, stays cold and then gets warm over changing temperature because the snow will melt partially and then refreeze into ice. Most cars with snow tires do OK on packed snow but ice is tough.

Once it gets frozen like this it pretty stays that way until spring or at least an extended warm spell. The amount of salt I would need is pretty cost prohibitive. I even tried breaking it up with a pry bar a few times and quickly realized that was an insane task. As you said I'd never spray the hill down with warmish water for fear of making the problem worse.

Yep, in northern climates it is essential in the winter to disconnect hoses and turn off the supply to outdoor-facing valves from inside if possible. Underground sprinkler systems need to be purged with air pressure to blow out as much water as possible prior to freezing. RV plumbing tanks need to be purged of water and replaced with RV tank anti-freeze. Life in the Great White North.

> in northern climates it is essential in the winter to disconnect hoses and turn off the supply to outdoor-facing valves from inside if possible

If your house was built in the last ~25 years it will have frost-proof outdoor faucets (example [1]), and there is no need to turn off the supply in the winter. Many newer homes don't even have a valve for turning off the water supply (except one single valve somewhere near the house water source). As long as they are installed correctly you are fine, but you definitely cannot keep a hose connected or you risk defeating the protection.

I live on a small hill and have a snow making machine so the kids can ski/snowboard in the winter, and we use the outdoor faucets for hours at a time. But when finished, we disconnect the hose and use a special nozzle to connect the hose to an air compressor and blow out all the water remaining in the hose. Once the water stops flowing it freezes very quickly and the hose is useless unless you bring it inside the garage for a day - and then it makes a big mess in the garage!

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051966QW?tag=wnla-org-20&linkCod...

Many legacy hose and plumbing fittings made of brass and other metals can split in very cold temperatures if they've been left connected outdoors all winter. They'd be ruined in the spring thaw. I've seen plastics crack under similar conditions.

Right, the reason frost-proof faucets work is because there's no water in them when not in use. The valve is at the far end, 12+ inches into the house (the water on the other side of the valve is never cold enough to freeze). And the pipe is angled ever so slightly downward, so gravity ensures that any water left after closing the valve flows out. That's why you can't leave a hose connected - it leaves open the possibility of preventing water from draining out before it freezes.

You can do it with salt water, at times when temperature stays above -7 (C).

Salt is corrosive however so if you keep you car or bike there you will get increased rust problems if you skimp on cleaning them.

Snow + water = slush. Frozen slush is appallingly difficult to remove and tends to freeze into irregular shapes, making it dangerous to pedestrians because it can be quite sharp should they fall on it.

Or they run their sidewalks directly over the steam tunnels. I've seen that on university campuses, and when scouting for new places to explore.

I have found the lowest energy way to shovel snow is to stand with a bit of a bow stance and push the shovel front to back as if you were paddling a boat, pushing down on the end of the handle at the end to launch the snow. Very easy on the back.

If heavier snow, sink into it a bit to transfer more energy.

Works well up to depth of the shovel head, so for deep snow, skim first, and repeat.

For wet snow, launch earlier, but sorry, it’s still hard work.

Not directly about snow buildup, per se, but related:

''Never scrape your windshield again with this sandwich bag hack''

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/never-scra...

So a sandwich bag of hot water? I wonder how thick the ice can be for this to be effective?

Also, I remember decades ago there was a sold-on-tv device to clear your windshield that was basically a long hose from the car exhaust pipe to the windshield. Seemed like a dirty method even if it worked.

Can’t you just turn on the windshield heater or is the problem that it takes too long?

The heater has to wait for the engine to heat up, in a gas car. This takes 10 minutes if just idling in the driveway.

That said, that frost he removed with a baggie, would just wipe away with windshield wiper fluid and wipers.

(Winter wiper fluid is good to -40C or more, and will melt ice on its own).

Frozen snow or ice is different.

My previous car had electric heating in the windshield. Took a minute or two to clear the ice. Still had to remove the snow though. Usually I started the car and then cleared snow starting at the roof and working down. When I came to the windshield I could basically just push the snow off. I do the same with cars without heating in the windshield, it just takes a bit longer.

Well, try that in a diesel, you'll be waiting 20 minutes before any hot air starts coming out and blowing on the window. I've had several and they were all a nightmare in winter, literally no warm air for ages unless you started driving, but how can you start driving with 3 inches of snow on the window.

(but yes, now I have a car with an electric heated front window and it's the best thing ever)

I have a diesel car with electric heating (via wires) in the windshield and rear window. I get warm air within seconds and the electric heating wires obviously also heat up immediately. It's part of the "winter" package.

I think you're comparing new vs old cars, not diesel vs electric.

Well depends how "old" is old for you - my last diesel was a 2016 1.6dCi Nissan Qashqai and that car was hopeless in winter - it would honestly take the better part of 30 minutes for hot air to come out if you were just sitting there idling.

That sounds like whatever car you have has an additional electric coolant heater, if the warm air comes out "in seconds". I think some Mercedes cars have that? It's definitely not a standard everywhere.

It's a 2016 Ford S-Max (2015 edition). The electric windshield heating was, I think, part of the "winter" package and not standard issue but it's an option available in many models from many different car companies. I'm not sure how the electric hot air works but I'm guessing it's part of the A/C (likely literally just a heating coil that is turned on if the supplied intake air is colder than the A/C setting).

The only issue with electric windshield heating is that the wiring in the windshield makes them more expensive and thus more expensive to replace. It's definitely more common in temperate to colder places (for context: I'm in North Germany).

Switzerland here: you can get fined for letting your car idle in the driveway. Before you ask, yes, there will be some friendly neighbors or passersby to rat on you (although usually first step they will warn you).

We have these laws too(Canada), but they are suspended when below a certain temp.

One of my memories of Saskatchewan in winter is all the cars left idling outside the movie theater because people were afraid to shut the engine off.

Another comment to the OP mentioned a hose from the exhaust being used to apply heat to the windshield. Prior to the adoption of pressurized recirculating engine cooling circa 1930s, which allowed for internal heaters, some automobile manufacturers offered instant heating of a deadly variety: direct metal ports off the exhaust manifold. Often it was a matter of just sliding open a door to get the hot air circulating. What could possibly go wrong? A bit of corrosion, a cracked weld, and suddenly the folks inside got very, very sleepy...

EDIT: I just remembered my dad's old VW Beetle had manifold-heat ducts down by the shifter. We had another Type 3 VW that had a gasoline-powered heater mounted in the front compartment just ahead of the passenger front seat. Consumer safety was not their high priority back then, it would seem.

That is a terrible hack. WTF, Weather Network? The guy is just clearing frost, not ice.

It would never work for snow, or snow and ice, or a mm of ice.

As I said when I put up that link, ''Not directly about snow buildup, per se'' so your mileage may vary depending on how badly the windshield is impacted with ice, frost, snow. It is a good hack to try, not a ''terrible'' one. If it doesn't work on the heavy stuff, go on to the next good hack.

It is a terrible hack, because one wipe of your wipers + fluid does the same. Alternatively, one move of the scraper does it faster than that bag.

Maybe if the bag was on a stick... it would be faster. But regardless, the bag just leaves the now melted water there to refreeze!

There are no hacks. We already know how to deal with these things, and the methods are effective, easy (for the problems presented).

As a Minnesotan, let me say - dragging that tarp would be more work than just shoveling it.

Beyond that, having someone slip on that tarp is asking for a lawsuit.

I'm getting older and my back is not great. I generally look for ways to break big lifts like this into to multiple smaller lifts, not the other way around!

Not to mention the tarp will likely freeze to the ground after the first warm spell.

I live in the sub-arctics, I have some experience clearing snow. :)

One common way to clear snow here is a snow blower, typically gas powered and on wheels. That won't help with ice build-up (making the ground uneven and slippery). On public roads graders are regulary used to even out the ice-buildup, otherwise car traffic would create really deep tire tracks, requiring everyone to drive pickup trucks.

I just use a broad, two-handed snow shovel, pushing it over the snow rather that carrying it. Since we typically have snow coverage November-April (sometimes longer, into June and the midnight sun) we have to arrange with someone to pickup the snow regulary. The muncipality takes care of a lot of this.

One good thing with long winters are the all the free exercise you get from dealing with snow. :)

Surely an even lazier way would be to wait for warmer weather?

Sometimes that can take quite awhile depending on where you are, but yeah that definitely seems the laziest way :). I guess the intent might be laziest non-passive way imaginable..

Why wait for warmer weather when you could simply move closer to the equator where you have more warm weather to begin with?

That's not clearing snow lazily, it's avoiding snow with a lot of effort, but you're probably right that your suggestion could be less total effort than the method in the article, after a certain number of years.

road salt...

That was the Governor's recommendation in Massachusetts, when they overran their snowplowing budget.

It's since been known, at least in my family, as the Dukakis method.

I'm using it ATM with a couple of inches of slush.

I called it solar-powered snow removal when the Washington, DC, government practiced it. Now the district has trucks out dumping salt whenever there is the hint of a rumor of possible snow, and will plow once snow falls.

As someone who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in the PNW, I find it absolutely beautiful that when it snows here, I can do jack shit for a day or so and the snow is gone. As my wife and I are now very fond of saying: You don't have to shovel the rain.

The Calgary method, why plow the streets when it’ll melt in a few days?

Or the two hours south of Calgary method: just wait a few hours and it will blow away.

Better yet, get out the leaf blowers at 6AM and wake up everyone.

I will say, as someone not from Southern Alberta the way they handle winter out there was almost surreal coming from the east.

Cue Moxie's quiet leafblower. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33324195

There's a guy on YouTube with a hand held jet engine snow blower. I have an interest with these ideas for kids ski racing. Often the races get cancelled when there's too much new snow.

The Vancouver method: copious "brining" of the hilly streets prior to snowfall, including such ingredients as beet juice. Salt is not a good alternative because of the abundance of fish-bearing streams.

Laziest way possible? Nope. The laziest way is to pay someone else to do it. :D

Laziest way possible? Flamethrower.

This might cause some... collateral issues.

How does a molotov cocktail fare?

Only people who have no experiences with snow could think this is a good idea:) The most likely result is tht the tarp would freeze onto the ground and you'd never get it to budge.

yeah, I feel like this would only work with powder, which happens where I live happens twice a year if we're lucky?

You can use a leaf blower on powder too.

Please god no. We have to endure leaf blowers in the autumn for people too lazy to rake - don’t also use these infernal machines in the winter.

Works faster than a shovel. Less noise.

Are you saying a leaf blower makes less noise than a snow shovel? In what reality?

In mine?

Maybe your thinking of a gas powered leaf blower?

I am not.

I tried that once, it didn't actually work. You had to put the nozzle directly into the snow to make it move, snow is just too heavy and sticky.

It definitely wouldn't work at all with remotely wet snow, but a guy at work claims it works great with dry powder. Based on how easy that blows around in the wind I didn't doubt it.

I suppose I should not have said “too” but I was specifically talking about powder.

+1 - I don’t think this would work on the wet, angry snow we get in Minnesota in the winter.

If you throw your back out by trying to jerk the frozen tarp off the ground, you'll have the perfect excuse for not clearing snow. Genius!

If you receive a fine from your municipality for not clearing the snow off the sidewalk that you dumped off your tarp you get even more grief from the back spasms! The ''snow police'' (zealous bylaw enforcers) are a real thing in some places.

Solve that by living somewhere that sidewalks are rare. I’d swear they’re practically illegal here in Indianapolis.

I was surprised once to see frozen, dangerous sidewalks in front of a law firm, but I suppose no one is going to be foolish enough to sue them.

This is the secret advantage to culdesacs and dead end streets that people don’t often talk about. No sidewalk to be responsible for!

Having a public thoroughfare that you’re legally responsible for on your property is a PITA liability.

A thick layer of grease under the tarp would solve that problem...

Now you have a worse problem

Just add gravel and sand to the grease? Or just wear spiked shoes.

Just put the tarp over a platform with some wheels, and a track. Problem solved

just have a second tarp. Or even two tarps with a slippery tarp between them? A tarp sandwich?

Just have a pile of tarps. Peel them off like post-it notes. Replace in fair weather.

Going to napkin math this.

Each gallon of water weighs 8lbs.

1 cubic foot is about 7 gallons.

That's 56lbs. That's going to get real heavy real quick. Especially for an area where shovelling would take a while. Which is when you'd want something like this.

snow is mostly air, though.

Yup. A common back-of-the-napkin way to roughly estimate water content is to divide by 10.

And sometimes it's heavier! Especially late in the season when the snow is wetter/denser!

Ice and snow are both less dense than liquid water. Depending what type of snow and whether or not it's had a chance to thaw and refreeze, snow might even weigh less than 5lbs/ft^3 -- an order of magnitude less than your napkin math. I'd venture a guestimate that most snow people are shoveling sits somewhere around 15-20lb/ft^3, which is for snow that's settled for about a day, with wind, in below freezing temps.[0]

That having been said, you are not wrong. When we're talking about tarp-sized areas, any significant snowfall (i.e. anything not more quickly/easily cleared with a quick broom sweep) will get really heavy really quickly.

[0] There's a chart near the bottom of this page that describes types of snow/conditions, and lists imperial and metric measurements: https://roofonline.com/weights-measures/weight-of-snow/

The rule of thumb I used when I lived in the frozen wastes was that 10cm of snow is about 1cm of rain in terms of water. Qualitatively I know it is much lighter than 56lb/ft^3, because you can easily pick up that much snow even if it is compacted. Otherwise snowmen would be very hard to create.

Over-all I agree that snow is heavy though.

Good to know. I have very little experience with snow itself.

I figured it would be lighter due to all the things people said, but had no rule of thumb to go on. And I try to go by the principle of being wrong in the best way possible. And since I wasn't aware of the density difference, I figured it would be safest to ignore it. Because people kind of forget how fast water gets heavy.

The weight of the snow depends entirely on the temperature gradients in the air, from cloud to ground. People in the mountains seem to have consistently light, powdery snow, while people in the plains seem to have consistently heavy, wet snow. But sometimes it is the opposite!

Seems like a lot of work. Snow is heavy. Shoveling seems a bit easier than moving an unmovable tarp full of snow, while slipping and sliding.

yup, and that snow is still on the tarp and the tarp needs to be clean of snow on the underside or the snow might melt and the whole tarp might get frozen to the ground it protects.

This can work very well for things like a car window.

Or even a hard to shovel area, but anything larger and it won't work for numerous reasons.

The comments here is mostly people saying this would never work for more than a couple of inches of snow, how whoever wrote it must have no experience of real snow. But there's a video in the linked article of it working for a reasonable amount of powder for some guy in Canada.

In Southern England, I have no idea, only need to clear snow off the drive maybe once a year here, if that. In turn thus leads me to wonder how on earth the Canadian guy decided the most fitting song to his video would be Lily Allen. In particular, lily Allen singing about being annoyed by guys chatting her up on a night out in London.

Yes, people commenting here about the guy in the video may not know that he is from Halifax, Nova Scotia, which sees more than enough heavy snow each winter. The hack he used is obviously for situations of frost and light icing like he showed.

This article feels like a honeypot for HN

The tarp can get buried and frozen and hard to move. One tarp I needed to whack for a long time with a shovel and eventually dig out. Definitely works for small amounts of snow, and works great on a car, though probably leaves scratches. Maybe spray the tarp with cooking spray first? (works for snow shovels)

Though in a pinch there's nothing faster. If you have to leave exactly at 8am the next day for a big interview, check the weather and lay down the tarp the night before.

You can buy special car tarps that folds nicely over your car.

Snow is pretty heavy. This wouldn't work for long or a big snowfall.

However - you know where tarps are very useful? Leaves... Instead of raking them and picking them up and putting them into bags and bags and bags, we just blow/rake them into piles on tarps, lift and bundle the tarp, take it to our local "envirodepot" to be mulched. As someone rapidly approaching 50, this was soooo much easier on my back this year.

Did you ever consider mulching them directly into the ground beneath them? Good for the soil and helps the grass as well. And it's nearly free.

My neighbors spent the last week chasing leaves with bags and paying for pickup. I sent the kid out with a mower for an hour and my yard looks nearly the same.

So to summarize:

- It's a slipping hazard until you remove it.

- It gets heavy very quickly, making it hard to remove.

- Placing it on snow (i.e. too late) can cause it to freeze stuck.

In other words you need to anticipate the snow before it starts, you need to repeatedly empty and quickly replace it and it makes the ground dangerous to walk on for anyone during the entire time.

Yeah, this is definitely a clever hack and not a useful technique.

Seems like this plan requires foresight and/or planning. The same people who are often lazy also often lack foresight.

That's a small area, the setup time for putting a tarp down is probably longer than it would take to pop the snow off with a shovel, not to mention the perfect timing required (steps aren't exactly usable while covered in tarp).

Here in Buffalo, NY they're predicting 2-6 feet of snow over the next 3 days or so. This technique might work for a few inches, but it's not going to work for multiple feet of snow.

* Buy Driveway sized tarp from Harbor Freight for like $20 or whatever

* Buy largest Harbor Freight off roading winch for probably $100

* Attach the winch to the ground somewhere in the yard

* bye bye snow until end of driveway

Here in Canada, the downramp into many underground garages is heated so that snow melts on contact, and the ramp doesn't get covered in snow/ice.

That sounds like a very energy consuming method to solve the problem.

Presumably it's not on 24/7 and only activated when there's snow in the forecast. Also, keep in mind that the low energy alternative (ie. getting a guy to shovel it) is pretty energy consuming as well. Shoveling itself might not be burn much energy (in terms of joules/calories), but keeping the person alive is. Per-capita energy consumption in the US is 77.5 MWh (77.5 thousand kWh), or 37.3 kWh per working hour (260 working days per year, 8 hours per day).

> Also, keep in mind that the low energy alternative (ie. getting a guy to shovel it) is pretty energy consuming as well. Shoveling itself might not be burn much energy (in terms of joules/calories), but keeping the person alive is.

Marginal changes in the number of people employed shoveling snow does not result in additional people being created (for positive changes) or destroyed (for negative changes), so the energy cost of keeping the person alive is not a cost associated with the alternative of having them shovel the snow.

You're correct that it doesn't cause new people to be created, but there's still the opportunity cost because the person is shoveling snow rather than doing something else productive.

They could shovel and be paid instead of going to the gym and pay /grin

I don't get it what the 37.3 kWh are supposed to mean in this context. This is for sure not the energy required to keep a person 'alive', but all energy (manufacturing, transportation, ...) assigned to per person.

The energy consumption for a physical working person is approx 4000 cal per day (4.6 kWh). According to [1] it takes about 150 BTU (0.043 kWh) per hour / ft^2 to melt snow. To clear/melt an area of 5*15 meter this requires about 35 kWh.

(I have rough calculation of the energy required to melt 20 cm of -5°C cold snow and get a four times higher energy requirement, probably i have missed something.)

[1] https://www.pmengineer.com/articles/87603-radiant-snowmelt-s...

better than cars crashing into a closed gate. this happen so much that during the winter they simply removed the underground gate at my complex

How about a big mirror + magnifying glass on the roof that can remotely focus the winter sun. It might be slow but fun except when overcast.

Not sure if this was meant as a joke, but it sounded like a fire hazard.

Sounds like you're thinking of a heliostat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliostat

There's a Dutch company selling such things to get more sunlight in your house:

https://www.heliostaat.nl/

I'm not as foolish as I was trying to sound.

> Practical Solar’s[0] web site states that residential customers also use their heliostats for direct space heating, drying mold, melting ice dams on roofs, and melting snow.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_Solar

In Scandinavia the sun is a rare and brief sighting during the winter. The appearance of the sun during winter is a national event and for a very few brief minutes there is hope that the darkness will one day end.

Even thinking about the possibility that one day the sun might be seen makes me emotional.

Build your walkway out of Starlink transceivers.

propane weed burner torch is by far the best way to clear snow manually

integrated in slab heating systems are the best though

This is like spending 40 hours automating a 5 minute manual process thats’s done once a week

Big snow dome over the entire property I reckon.

The laziest way to clear snow is wait

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