Installation Guide: Snow Melt for Asphalt Driveways

Alright. Well, thank you guys so much for joining with us and being patient as we got today started off. My name is Lynn. I am a customer service here at warmly yours. And today, I am joined by the illustrious Scott from warmly yours. Thank you for joining us.

Absolutely, guys. Today, we're talking about, snow melting for asphalt driveways.

So if you have any questions on the webinar today, feel free to ask You can do so in the chat feature. Just, if we don't see it right away, we'll definitely get to it by the end of the presentation. So feel free to ask away, and we'd be happy to help out.

So today, like I said, we're talking about our snow melting system, specifically for under asphalt.

We're gonna be talking about the different system options available to you. And then we're gonna go over some project examples. We're gonna show when example of a full coverage driveway, as well as all the installation steps and controls that are used there. And then we're also going to show an example of a tire track coverage as well.

So, first off, electric snow melting systems are, designed to be embedded in concrete asphalt, mortar sand, anything like that. So you don't want them to be, you know, they're not gonna lay on top of the driveway or anything like that. They need to be fully embedded. And what they do is as they heat up, they evenly heat that surface so that the snow and ice melts away. And we have lots of different available for controls and sensors and things like that so that you can actually really automate it to your needs and how you plan to use the system.

So, Scott, were you at this job site, or were you doing this one? I did this one. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought so. So can you kinda tell us, you know, what is what what are some things to think about when doing snow melting with asphalt? Well, you're going to have to have, two layers of fault. The number one question we get is I my asphalt installer only wants to do one layer and they wanna do a three inch layer on top of of gravel or on top of something.

One thing to keep in mind that, we get we another question we get a lot is, is there a weight limit for your product. Like, can we drive anything over this that we want to? Once it's installed, It doesn't really support any weight. It's the asphalt or the concrete around it that supports the weight.

So your car is not pushing down on the cables. Pushing down on the concrete that surrounds or the asphalt that surrounds it. Now if you make that layer of concrete too thin, if you do one layer of asphalt that's too thin and you drive over it and all of a sudden you have great big ruts in that asphalt and all of a sudden that asphalt fails, but when the asphalt fails, the failing asphalt can damage the cable that's inside of it that's put in there. So it's not the weight limit of the heating product.

It's the weight limit of the surface. So you want to make sure you have a very good surface installed above, or surrounding the heating cable, and a single layer of thin asphalt isn't going to do that. Nor is a, insufficient thickness of concrete with an insufficient, subsoil going to support the weight because the concrete will break. The asphalt will break.

It'll fail. And when it fails, it'll take the cable along with it. So that's what you really have to worry about is the integrity of the asphalt or the integrity of the concrete. A lot of people want wanna say, hey, can I just put, a new can I put some new cables on top of my old asphalt driveway and then just cover it with a new a new layer of asphalt?

Well, you can, in theory, if that lower level is in good shape But usually people aren't replacing an asphalt driveway that's in good shape. They're replacing an asphalt driveway that's that's failing, you know, that's getting bad. And you don't wanna be putting a good, layer of asphalt on top of a bad layer of asphalt because it'll fail too just like the layer below it. So there's the most important thing is you have to make sure you have a good installation.

You have to make sure that the layers are correct. And the differences between electric heating versus water heating is that the national code and local codes have specific rules about where that cable is, what it's surrounded by. And that sort of thing, to make it code compliant. So, that's the same reason why you can't use gravel. We get the question all the time. Can I put this in a gravel driveway?

No. You can't because it, it's not gonna pass the national electric code. It has to be a hard surface, and it has to be cementitious, which is usually cement. Or asphalt or something that's non combustible.

That's why this product can't go on roofs is because it needs to be two inches, above a combustible surface and there has to be an inch and a half cover on top of it. So you're looking at and a half to four inches of non combustible surface combined. So there's a lot of different things to think about. But the good thing is our installation instructions and our cross sections all have that figured out for you.

How to give you the best results and how to give you compliant results that your electrical inspector is gonna come in and go, oh, yeah. I see that. That. That.

That's all good. That's all good. So, okay, checks it off, and you're ready to go.

So those are the things that when we send out a cross section or send the installation manual, the code compliance with the National Electric Code is already already figured out and the thicknesses and the layers are already figured out to industry standards to make sure that you have a good system that doesn't fail and a good and you don't have any failures resulting from a failed asphalt job or a failed concrete job. So Yeah. There's there's a lot of different things you wanna do with asphalt and with concrete. We we're gonna talk about them both today.

Yes. Absolutely. And we have systems that have gone in driveways, you know, years and years ago, and it I always kind of say as long as the driveway is installed correctly and it's a good product, the system is gonna pretty much keep working. It's we run into more issues with, you know, trying to put new asphalt on top of cracking asphalt or something like that.

Right. Exactly. I worked in an old play, one of the old places I worked had a hot water system in a concrete, in a concrete drive or in a concrete, parking lot, also where the trucks came in and out. Well, what happened is, eventually, the trucks going over the concrete the concrete started to crack up.

And then eventually after the concrete cracked up. Yeah. You could go out there and you could lift the concrete, the pieces up, and you'd see the remnants of old hot water tubes under there. So you can see how as the as the as the the aggregate starts to break up, it exposes the wire or the tubes or whatever it is, and that's why the system's only as strong as what's above it.

Yes. Absolutely.

Change. There we go. So looking at some different coverage options, like I said, we're gonna show two different projects, one with full coverage, and then the other with tire tracks. And full coverage is pretty self explanatory. Basically, the entire area or the majority of the area of the driveway, walkway, whatever you're doing is going to be fully covered. Now for driveways, a lot of times, especially if they're especially large or especially long, It's nice to not have to heat the entire thing. You can just do tire tracks to kinda get in and out.

Right. It also has to do with power. You invariably people that have never even thought about heating their driveway. You say, Hey, you know what?

I'm gonna get a new driveway. Let's see what it would cost to heat the entire thing. Well, once they see, it's not necessarily the cost to heat the entire thing. It's the amount of power it takes to heat the entire thing.

So it does take we we average around fifty watts per square foot. So you start multiplying that by the number of square feet. It gets up there. It gets there and what happens is these people when will will sometimes say, you know, that's too many amps.

I don't have that much space in my breaker box. That's one thing you have to do is you have to look in your breaker box and see if there's any available space there to begin with because if your breaker box is full and you don't have any open spaces, you're not going to be able to heat your driveway unless you get a new service. So that's one thing. The first thing you wanna do when you're looking to get one of these done is go look in your breaker panel, get an idea of the number of amps you have.

And then what you can say is I have this size of driveway I have this many amps to use. What do I do? And nine times out of ten, it's gonna end up being tire tracks to get you in and out. That way you can get in and out And then you don't have to worry about all that extra power that you're going to need.

Yes. Definitely. Yeah. That's always something to consider as well.

So looking at a I love these cross sections. This is a really good one showing asphalt, and this, I think, shows that double pour that you were talking about very well, Scott. Can you kinda walk us through it? You have to have the base coat done because you're not going to be driving, a paver machine, a paving machine over the top of the cable.

You can use the paving machine on the base coat. So that's where you're going to put your base coat down. You're going to roll over it with a roller and you're going to compact that over the gravel. And that is where you're going to lay the snow melting mats or the cables nine times out at ninety nine times out of a hundred.

It'll be mats.

Just because of the timing and the ballet that you have to do around the the day of the, of the paving.

So You need to make sure you have a good gravel, and you're you're not doing one pour of asphalt here. It's two. The base coat, then you're putting down the snow melting mats, and then you're going to be applying, asphalt over the top of it to a thickness of two inches because the National Electric Coast says you have to have at least an inch and a half on top to comply with code. So you're gonna be doing a two inch, layer on top, but you're not driving a paving machine over the snow melting mats, you're going to be doing that in a different method.

So that's one thing to keep in mind. So first thing is when somebody when you're talking to a a a pavement company, this is this is the way you want it to be done. You're going to say, here's here's what it looks like. This is how we need to do it.

And they'll go, okay.

Yeah.

They'll just say, okay. They won't have a single problem with doing a double pour.

So looking at the, full coverage example oops. I can go the right way. So this one, obviously, like you said, uses Matt's. Can you give us a real brief overview of why we'd be using Matt's with asphalt versus cable?

Because when you're doing an asphalt driveway, usually it's being done on one day, with one or two trucks. So a truck comes in, it pours the asphalt into the asphalt paving machine, and it drives over your driveway and it puts down that two inch layer of asphalt and then it gets rolled over. At that point, they're going to sit around and wait trying to keep the asphalt warm enough that it can be installed, and they're going to wait for you to put the cables on top. Well, the cables, if you have to manually string them back and forth, they are not going to have enough time.

They're not gonna be able to wait for you. To string those cables back and forth. They're going to say you need to you need to speed that up a little bit. And that's what's so great about the snow melting rolls or the mats is that the wires already pre attached to them.

You just roll them out, and then you can dump asphalt on them. Roll them out. Dump asphalt on top of them. Roll them out.

So you're moving quickly. You're getting that asphalt down on the on the surface while it's still hot. So that's why as I said before ninety nine times out of a hundred, you're going to be using the snow melt mats or the rolls.

Absolutely. And we have pictures of that kind of showing how they roll them out and everything like that. So the power requirements, as we said, can be pretty great. So you want to make sure are looking at, you know, what your available power is.

Obviously, this one, the total amperage was about eighty eight amps. About twenty one thousand watts. So we'll actually tell you too in your, smart plan. And as we're helping you begin planning out the project, specifically what breakers you need for these projects, they're for this specific project.

So you can actually see that we have the dedicated heating circuits as well as a non dedicated or a non GFI rather, circuit for the control.

Yeah. And we're all if if you notice the heated area is always going to be smaller than the total area because you can never ever cut the heating cable. So you can't order too much and then cut it to size. You have to get the correct amount.

And that's why it's so important for you to get us the dimensions of your area. And, the electrical that you have. That way, we can get you the correct size and also supply you with the smart installation plan, which we're gonna take a look at in a little bit. Yes.

Absolutely. And one more thing I wanna touch on is the operating cost, mainly because I did the operating cost, daily training today. So I been thinking about it all day. And you can kinda see.

I think that there's a a common misconception that there is a, it is very expensive to run these. And generally, again, obviously, depending on the power requirements, it's not going to be insanely expensive, and especially if you're comparing it to, you know, shoveling for yourself or getting a plow to come out or something like that. So for this, you're looking at about two dollars and thirteen cents per hour for the upcoming project. And this is the smart plan.

And the thing is it's usually cost a a little bit less than having somebody come out and plow. Yes. Each each snowfall that comes out. Now, obviously, there are snowfalls that are going to be an eighth of an inch, and there are going to be snow falls that are thirty six inches or forty eight inches.

Those are those are off the, you know, they're they're they're off the they're off the, I'm looking for the bell curve. They're they're gonna be at the far end. I was gonna say the spectrum. Yeah.

Something like that. Yeah. I I I'm a bell curve guy. So You've got these two things.

Most stuff happens here, but you will have a lot of snow or a little tiny bit of snow, and those are just going to be aberration. So But this smart plan here shows exactly how the product is to be laid out. And if you look here, these are a lot of full mats, like there's twenty foot, twenty foot, twenty foot.

There are also some longer ones that are just have one cut in turn. That means that this is a very quick installation as you go because you can lay this out. Cover it. Place some more out.

Cover it. You're not trying to string cables. Back and forth over this twenty four foot by, whatever that is, twenty four foot by twenty foot, driveway. So that's going to speed your installation up and make it so the asphalt is actually hot when it goes down.

Absolutely. And, actually, I wanna go back real quick. I'm pointed out one of these slides here. This guy actually has the smart plan printed out right there.

And I like that you can actually see, like, this is exactly where he knows where these cables are, where the mats are. It's gonna make it a much safer and easier installation for every month. Yep.

So, Scott, this is a little bit more your domain. Can you kind of tell us about testing that snow melting stem? Well, testing is done by the electrician. So let's talk about what an electrician's job is during this installation.

An electrician's job not to show up after it's been installed and start hooking it up. The electrician is actually there first. The electrician is there and he's following the plan and seeing where the locations of the junction boxes have to be. Then he plans out where that junction box is going to be, then he's going to need to get conduit from how or from wherever the building is to that junction box and there could be two or three different junction boxes because the cold leads are only twenty feet long.

They're only long enough to get from the heating mat into a junction box. So you need to keep that in mind. The electrician needs to that. That's why you give them the installation plan because the plan will show where the junction box is and where it's assumed that those wires are all going to go together into the spaghetti bowl that we call it.

Then he needs to get the proper pipe to get from the house to the junction box and the proper pipe to get from the junction box into the asphalt because the non heating leads are not, rated for direct burial, which means it can't go in the dirt. And the national electric code states that they must be protected as they leave from the surface, which means the conduit actually has to be stubbed into the the location of the driveway then covered. So the electrician has to have that all done before the asphalt people even show up. So not only are they going to be there a day or two ahead of time, getting all their conduit bent, cut, lengthened, in junction boxes installed, all that stuff has has to be done in in advance. Then during installation, before the installation, he's testing the cables with the mega ohmmeter, which is not an ohmmeter, but it's a mega ohmmeter, which actually what it does is it sends five hundred volts.

Down the line to make sure that the there's three wires inside that heating product, that green cable. There's three wires. Two of them heat up, two of them make a circuit, and one of them's a ground. So what it does is it tests across the ground and one of those heaters to make sure that the insulation is good, that the power doesn't jump from ground to that wire.

Then they do the exact same thing going from the ground to this second wire. To make sure that the ground and that second wire don't have any connection between them. So that's what omega ohmmeter does, and that's why they need to do it before it's installed while they're laying the product out on the, in installation, test it then, and then after they're done, it needs to be tested. So that that electrician also needs to have a mega ohm meter with them.

They're fairly common. A lot of electricians have them. It's not some mysterious thing that costs a zillion dollars.

They're fairly inexpensive, but it's going to be needed.

Absolutely. Yes. That kind of thing. They don't have it. They know somebody who does for sure. Right. Yep.

So, this another, I like these cross sections as well actually showing the the two layers. Again, you can see the crushed aggregate or that, like, kind of gravel, base layer, then there's that base asphalt layer, the snow melting system. And then, obviously, again, like you said, the finished asphalt doing it in two pores.

And then again, kind of just touching on the gravel layer. Making sure that it's, you know, definitely gonna hold up four to eight inches is usually what we recommend. But you can go up to twelve inches for, you know, really high traffic areas, maybe somewhere like that parking lot you were talking about. Mhmm.

And then you can actually see it in action. So can you kind of walk us through this? Yeah. So the base layer there was actually this this job, the base layer was done a few days ahead of time.

That's quite that's why it looks kinda dirty. Well, it's because everybody's been walking over the top of it, but that is the base layer. That's a new pore of base layer. And then You can see, what happens is the paving machine was used to do the base layer.

That's what you lay the basic layer down with as a paver. Then what happens is you have, the mats go on top and then a high boy or a a lift truck or whatever, will come over and dump asphalt, hot asphalt on top of the mats as they're laid out on the base coat, and then the guys will come there and work by hand over the top of it. And then they'll lay another piece of that cable down. They'll dump more asphalt on the top of it working their way from the garage back to the road.

That way, you never ever have a machine drive over the heating wire ever. So that's what they're doing here that started. You can see if you look back there in that back corner on the top picture, you can see the roller back there in the garage. And that's because they've worked their way from the garage and they're working their way out to the to the driveway, allowing them to pour put the mat down, pour, put the mat down pour, and then once they get it all poured and covered, then they will come through with that.

You can see that, that high boy there in the back.

There we go. Sorry. I clicked something.

So one of the things with this, if you can go to the next page, we can take a look at what what's happened here is you can see in the lower right hand corner, you can see where the mats have already been precut and they're laying on the ground. Next to it. So we're not even doing our cuts and turns.

The asphalt guys are not waiting it for us to do our cuts and turns. We're at we've already got them done. On all we do is once the cuts and turns are done, we just take them and we move them onto the asphalt binder coat, and then we cover it. And then the next row is ready to go there.

It's cut. You can see out by the street. There's the next one ready to go there on the ground. And you can see the electrician's already been there because at the bottom center, you can see the junction box there and conduit.

And that's all been put there ahead of time. Because we're pulling the cables, we're pulling the non heating leads into that box to make our connections with the power coming from the house. But that's exactly how you do it. You lay the product out. That lift comes and drops the asphalt on top. The the people work it with their hands. And then the roller comes out.

Perfect. Scott, when I, like, gesture with my mouse, can you see that on your wrist? I sure can. Yeah. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing that for no reason.

Alright. So this is actually gonna show that, that High Boy and everything like you were talking about. Scott, So I like this video.

I always think it looks like, Did you ever play with floam or see floam? Yeah. Mhmm. It but except that it's, you know, really hot and will burn you. But it's, like, the forbidden slone.

Yeah. All you have to do is just remember you touch that stuff once when they're pouring it out like that. You'll see how hot it is. Yes. Really hot.

So moving on, and as you can see, that it tends to go relatively quickly. If everything is, you know, laid out ahead of time ready to go, you can make your asphalt guy's job. Very easy if you need to. Yeah.

I'd like you to go back to that page real quick that that page again. And I just as soon as you start talking about them not being able to use the paver over the top surface -- Yep. -- people start to think, oh, oh, no. We're gonna have to carry out fault by hand.

We're gonna have to get wheelbarrows. We're gonna have to do all this. You don't have to. It's very, very easy.

That's why you start at the furthest point away from the road and you work your way out. And that way, you can get it done and you'd you're not using any wheelbarrows or no wheelbarrows were injured during the filming of this video. Good to know.

So, this is the spaghetti bowl we were talking about, and this where the cold leads are going to be coming from the mats over to the junction box and then the splices or extensions will be made, and you need to make them all in this box according to National Electric Code. Correct? Correct. And that's where your connections are made by the electrician.

They're going to figure out what size wire to to provide out to that box. Because of Amtrak and the amount of distance from where the power is coming. So that's called a voltage drop. So they're going to do that figure.

The more voltage drop you have, the thicker the wire has to get. So they're going to be figuring all of that out. They're going to be, doing that and they're also going to be testing it again at this point. While these are all exposed, you're gonna be testing it with that mega ohmmeter.

Yeah. Make sure that nothing got damaged during that second pour. Mhmm.

So kind of getting into the, controls and sensors, that we have available. We have, a lot of different options to really customize the systems to how you want to use them and how what's going to really work best for you day to day. So this actually utilized our premium control and it had that aerial sensor. So you can actually see this as the control and the aerial sensor with a little snowflake on it.

And then, of course, we have our, plaque. That is also, according to National Electric Code, just to make sure that anyone, if anyone works on the driveway in the future, they're aware that there's an electric system. So, Scott, can you kinda tell us about the, you know, hold on feature some of the features of the controls? Well, the reason why this is chosen Why this was chosen is because it has a sensor that gets buried in the asphalt, so it doesn't exceed a certain temperature.

Asphalt is much more, prone to break down if it gets too hot than concrete. You can get concrete as hot as you want They put concrete under, rockets, because it really doesn't it's not damaged by heat, really. But asphalt, you'd never put asphalt underneath a rocket. SpaceX would never say, hey, go pay that area with with asphalt.

We're gonna shoot a rocket off of it. Because the whole thing would just disintegrate. Yeah. It would turn to soup.

Exactly. And that's why you have this control because the sensor that goes in and if it gets above eighty or ninety or whatever you wanna set it to, it'll turn off because it's hot enough that the snow is going to melt anyway. It doesn't need to be on any longer.

Some states like New York and Rhode Island and others in the in our United States, they have specific rules relating to whether it's concrete or asphalt or anything. If the slab gets to a certain temperature, the unit should turn off. Because after a certain temperature, it's not going to snow is not going to stick to it anyway. It's going to melt.

So that's what that is. And the hold on time, there there's two phases of of a snow event Right? Well, there's actually three phases. One is when it starts, that's going to be hitting the sensor.

The sensor is going to say, hey, I'm going to It's below thirty eight degrees which is the threshold temperature and now I feel snow. So we need to turn the system on. So that's going to be the start. And then the the sensor will continue to send that signal to the control until it either stops snowing So the sensor on top is not getting any snow on it anymore or the temperature of the air has gone above thirty eight degrees because if it's above thirty eight degrees, the snow is not going to sick anyway.

So that's what the sensor is telling this control.

So that's the first two. Start and then stop. Then the thing is the system will continue to run afterwards to melt what was deposited on the surface. So that could either be one hour, two hour, three hour, ten hours, whatever it is. And no two snows are exactly the same. And when a person gets a system the first year, we don't know where to tell them to set it because we don't know what their snow is like. We don't know, you know, no year is the same.

That's why there's a a bunch of different ranges on snow reports because they're never this area always gets twelve inches of snow per year. Every single, it doesn't happen that way. So sometimes they may have to turn the app to run on longer to make that period of when the when the when the sensor says, Hey, it stops snowing.

Now it's the time to melt the snow and then turn it to water and then also make that water evaporate into the air to make you get a nice clean, dry, completely clean surface with no, black eyes no embedded snow that's down inside the the asphalt. So that's what that's designed to do. Sometimes ten hours is too long. Sometimes ten hours is is not enough.

Especially if you got forty eight inches of snow. So you may have to turn that of the hold on time to continue to melt and evaporate. You just don't want it to melt and turn to slush. You want it to yeah.

Yeah. So you want it to turn it off. You want it to to to melt the snow and then evaporate it. And that's why if you drive somebody's by somebody's house in the wintertime and you see that their driveway is completely void of snow Meanwhile, the neighbor has ten inches of snow on their driveway, you know they have a heated drive.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can always tell. Exactly.

So, this is actually kinda showing, like, you talked about the, the full job of the electrician.

So essentially going taking power from that breaker panel all the way out to those mats. Can you kinda walk us through step by step what you're looking at here? Yeah. There's inside and there's outside.

The outside portions belong outside and the indoor portions belong inside that there's no mix or match here with this particular control. The sensor, the aerial mounted sensor actually is outdoors. So snow can hit it. That's a novel concept I know, but it does have to go outside for it to work. And then the high temperature limit sensor needs to be embedded in the asphalt.

Those are the things that are outside the junction box. We've already seen the junction box where it's put, it's put outside. And obviously, the heater cables need to be outside because that product should never be used indoors. That product is for outdoors, the heater cable or the mat. That is never to go inside. It goes outdoors. So let's take a look at what's to the left.

And that is, the relay panel. The relay panels have to go inside because the box is not rated to go outside. And if you stick a relay panel outside, It will rust, it'll let water in, and it'll cause the the relays to fail. It's a nema one enclosure, which means indoors and any electrician worth their salt should see that on the door where it says NEema one. They should go, oh, this needs to go indoors. Surprisingly, that doesn't happen every time, but we that's why we're here today is to say that those relay panels go inside.

The controller The controller, if you look at the label says it's a NEema three x or a Nema four, which means outdoors. However, why would you put this box outdoors to make your customer have to if they wanna manually turn it on or manually turn it off, I've got an idea. We don't like this customer. We're gonna get even with them.

We're gonna put the control outdoors so they have to go outside to turn it on or they have to go outside to turn it off. That actually would be kind of evil. Like just that petty amount evil. That's really funny.

Exactly. That's, what do they call that? Very passive aggressive. Yes.

We're going to stick that. The control should be inside. Yeah. We're gonna make them pay for that every time it snows. So you put the control inside so you can get at it and you can control it There's also a remote a remote control unit that you can put in a box upstairs if you want to. And the breaker panel obviously is going to be indoors also. So those are the parts that have to be inside, and the high temperature limit sensor should be in its own conduit.

As it comes back from the payment, the aerial mounted sensor should be in its own conduit as it works from the sensor indoors. If you put these sensors and their wires in the same conduit as your heater cables or your mats, your system will not work.

And it'll be against code. You can't put low voltage cable in a low voltage in the same conduit as high voltage and also when those units switch off, it will, kill the signal from the low voltage, items they won't work anymore.

By induction. It'll ruin that signal. So they have to be in separate conduit. I have talked to multiple people over my fifteen years here who call up and say, my system doesn't work.

It's never worked, and it was installed correctly. And then after we go through about a dozen phone calls, you know how that goes, We finally we finally talked to the electrician and say, can you show me where the wire from the sensor goes and where it goes into? And invariably that sensor will go into the same wire that the non heating leads are in. And that is why the system has never worked.

So it's things like that. It's good to know that your electrician needs to make sure separate conduit for the low voltage separate conduit for the high voltage and the two never go in the same conduit.

Absolutely.

And so this is the finished project, and I think it looks very beautiful. I love the drain in the middle, so you're not ever gonna have to worry about pooling water or anything like that. It's a great project. And you can actually see this project and a lot more, anytime someone does a really great looking project we ask them to send it in. We want to see pictures. So we have some project showcase, a project showcase page on our website, and this one has a video of the entire installation start to end.

Yeah. I think you can click on that. We could actually see it. Can we? I think we could. I think that's why we did it.

And I just forgot.

Can I make this full screen? There we go. Can you see that? Able to. Yep.

Mhmm. Okay. Good. Still getting used to Zoom.

But we won't hear any we won't hear any of that groovy music. No. We won't. I could do something like fun, elevator music if you want.

But here we can see the base coats down. That's why the that's why the the drain is sticking up. Here we can see the conduit. That conduit right there is for the sensor.

That is the junction box.

And you can see how those are together. You can see that sensor probe sticking out into, an area between two of the heating mats. You can see how the mats are already cut pre cut. They're just put into place.

They're being tested with a with a, the meter.

Make sure that you have the correct slope getting the cold leads run into the conduit.

And then here comes the paving truck.

The conduit there for the sensor, notice located between two of the heating areas.

It's located between two, but it doesn't need to be dead center. I think that's important to mention as well.

Closer to yeah. The closer to center, you can get though, the more the the more centered it is, the more accurate it is. So that's just something you wanna aim for, but you're right.

So you can see here where they're dumping dumping, dumping, this is how you don't have to use wheelbarrows. This is the secret. And a lot of people don't realize that until I actually make them watch this video, I said, please, please watch the video because this is how a sun, oh, I never pictured that. Well, you wouldn't unless somebody shows you, you know. So you can see that the second layer is going on top. They're spreading it by hand, and here comes the next sets of cables, rolls.

And you can see they're wearing gloves there because all you need to do is get one of those pieces of hot asphalt on your hand, and you're gonna regret it. And you're gonna lose your shoes too, the first day you go out to work. There you might as well consider them going straight in the garbage.

Here you can see them finishing it by hand and now here comes the roller. The roller was back in the garage, and now they're just gonna roll over the top. You can see the electrician over there doing their work.

I think that's the thing. I think a lot of asphalt pavers don't picture this. Like, they just can't picture it's so different than what they normally do. So I think I've seen that with homeowners get very worried because their asphalt guys worried, and this is a great video to show them. Because it really is simple once you see the secret. Right. You know?

And it always is funny to me. I don't know anything about asphalt. This is all I know. So to me, this is how an asphalt drive business.

Mhmm. Yeah. So, yeah, that's that's what's so great. Thank you for putting that video in there.

Awesome. So looking at the so this is the actual cost of this project. So this one came out to just over eight thousand dollars. It's those snow melting maps.

There's four, five, six, seven of those.

Is that math right? Yes. But there's the troll the aerial sensor, the plaque, as well as that relay panel as well. So again, that total just over eight thousand for the full coverage So if you, we had a question from Hamad, beforehand about what how much does an asphalt driveway cost?

What is the installation cost per square foot?

You can see the cost of ours, of our product there is included the national average is about eight dollars and seventy five cents per square foot for an asphalt driveway. So you can put those numbers together. Some places will be a lot less. Some places will be a lot more, but that's kind of a general ballpark as to what you're looking at of cost.

So, that's that's very good. Very good question. Thank you, Ahmad, and he's got a couple more of it. We'll continue on here.

Yeah. Absolutely. We'll get we love to talk.

So, this is gonna actually show that tire track coverage, like I said, again, under the asphalt driveway. So for this system, again, snow melting mat to forty volt, but you can see the eight forty square foot area is not getting fully covered. You're only going to end up with three hundred and thirty square feet of heated coverage.

And this is gonna be enough to get, you know, again, in and out, it still makes the driveway usable. It still gives you that heating, but it's not going to be insanely expensive or insanely, you know, powerful to run.

So, this is gonna be just about sixty two amps, fifteen thousand watts. The breakers are gonna be shown. And then for this system, you were looking at about a dollar seventy five per hour or nineteen dollars for an average, roughly an average snowfall. And if you look at this quote here, you can see two, two, three, four two forty volt breakers, which means actually eight breaker spaces for those three, and then another single breaker space for the control.

So you're looking at four, four six eight eight spaces for the heater and a ninth space for the control. So you this is where I said at the very beginning. This is kind of where it all comes back together is look and see how many breaker spaces you have. Because if you have one breaker space and you need nine, you're going to have a hard time getting this system to work.

Little bit.

So this is actually the layout plan showing the entire track. So this is the area that we will be, you know, covering, this this new addition to the driveway. And then the actual tire tracks, you can see again the mats, the sizes, everything fully laid out.

Yeah. And if you see there, we if you can go back real quick, right there. If you look there, one, two, three, four are the number for the roles.

Because of their all they're all starting there for a reason. And the reason is the power is located an injunction box, right next to one and four. So if you can kind of point out where that area is with your cursor, right over there is one, two, three, four to the left of one and four is where the junction box was, right in there. So that's why they're designed this way.

If the junction box was down at the other end, then we would obviously do a different design here. But we got the junction box fairly close of the house, as you can see there in the upper left hand corner. You can see the drawing of where this actually is. It's fairly close to the house.

So we did have to tunnel under the existing driveway, with a boring machine, down I did this one too. So down under that driveway, that's preexisting. We board under it and then back over.

And we got the power to a spot right there. So you can see there it's called out. This is how it's in installed, and this is where the electrician would go. That's where that needs to go. I need to get my conduit there, and, it's a great install. Easy to get in and out now.

Absolutely.

So you'll want to space the mats about tire width apart, obviously, that can vary depending on cars. But is there a, like, an average?

Well, we just did this today out in the parking lot here because somebody said, what do I need to make my my spacing.

Usually, people will measure the center of their wheel to the center of their wheel. Mhmm. And that will be the midpoint. And usually that's around five feet.

So if you get a two foot mat, you're gonna have a foot over here and a foot over here because you want that in the center. So now you are, five feet minus one minus one. Now you have about three feet in between these two runs. And that's what it is.

It could be if you're if you're driving a semi over here, you're going to wanna make it wider. You know, if you're driving as well, they're gonna be subcompact cars that are going to be narrower, you wanna make sure that you measure that. So you get your distances correct.

Absolutely. And then again, once it's laid out, the final, pour of asphalt goes over, And then when the system turns on, it's just gonna be those areas that will be, clear. As you can see, just completely open where the meds are. Yeah.

And that way makes it easy to get in and out, and that that people always ask, does that eventually melt? Yes. It'll eventually melt. The the heat from that area and the sun will get it.

And then it will, but but look how clear that is. You know, that that area is clear.

Makes it, like, much much easier to get in and out. It absolutely does.

So looking at this, oh, look who it is. Oh, this this is the great big long one. I don't think we wanna sit through all of this. This one one is the long one.

Yes. Yeah. So, essentially, we can scroll through real quick and just kind of see essentially laying out that. Yeah.

That spot right there that's where the electrician has been there ahead of time. So you can see that they've graded this. And now the electrician is there. He's already bent his conduit.

There are twenty eight seconds, or twenty nine. And you can see where he's bent at, and those conduits are going actually into the surface. So what they did is they put the binder coat down, then he had already bent his tubes and laid them on top of the binder coat, then they came and paved over the top.

Awesome. Yeah. That's a really creative way to do that. I think that was really cool.

And you can see that one lonely tube going in there. What do you think that one lonely tube is? Could it be the sensor? Yeah.

That one lonely tube is the sensor tube for the because this is asphalt once again. Right? We have to have that sensor in there.

So looking through, we can kinda see doing the pouring, laying out the mats, same concept as I think we go over full coverage as well at some point in here. Mhmm. The electrician is there putting the them. So the electrician is there before and during and usually after.

Yes. And I think that that's often miscommunicated, so you wanna make sure that the electrician is aware they need to be on-site during the installation.

Now this is a big yeah. And then then we moved to indoors. So, I mean, that that we really don't need to see that. But you can see there where the junction box is.

And that makes a nice connection spot there. And this is what we wanna see here. This is There we go. This is better video.

It's so cool. You can actually just see it melting away. It's very awesome.

And see, you can see that extra wide section there in the foreground. We had a little extra of that roll. The thing is you can never ever shorten the roll. You can never ever cut the heating wire.

All we did is we just doubled it up, and that's why there's that doubled up area there. You can see right there. So that's what that is. We had a little bit extra.

So we just use that extra to clear that extra space.

Absolutely. Yeah. Might as well use it up. Mhmm. So this cost came out to about five thousand four hundred eighty two dollars. Again, it has those formats control the aerial sensor, the plaque, and that relay panel.

Yep.

So do you have any kind of closing out tip for us when doing, snow melting under asphalt?

Watch these videos and get them to your contractors because just like you said, Lynn, until they actually see it and and the light bulb goes off above their head, you can talk and talk and talk and talk and they're gonna I don't believe it. I don't believe it. No. You can't.

All you have to do is see the video. The most important thing is to watch the video, get them to your contractor, also get to your electrician because the electrician is going to say, oh yeah, I'll be there in the morning. No, you're gonna be there in the morning two days in advance to get all this ready to go. Because the asphalt contractors are not going to sit around and wait for you to bend conduit.

They're not going to wait for you to manually string the cable back and forth because some some asphalt trucks are heated. They are actually if you went up and touched the side, they are electrified. They're heated. Some of them are not and the guys that don't have the, the heated, trailers, they're going to say you need to we need to either we're going to leave and go somewhere else or you're going to need to do something to move this along.

And sometimes that's why you'll see guys with the the flame throwers, out there warming it up so it can be worked. So you know you're getting towards the end of the working period. When you see the the asphalt guys are using the flame throwers to smooth that out.

So, be prepared And once the asphalt guys are there, it moves pretty quickly. You're not you're not waiting around. You're not killing time. You're simply once they start, it's going.

And you wanna have all the preparation done ahead of time because if it is, then you just go, okay, I'm done with this. Move that. I'm done with this. Move that.

And you're just moving like like I said a ballet because one one group's gonna be going here and another group's gonna be going there. One group's going here and another one another one's going like that. So very coordinated, but, it's it's once you do a couple, it's it's fairly it's it's just no matter the size, it's still the same theory. So if if it's a two by two area is the same theory as an area that's sixty feet by sixty feet.

You know, it's still the same idea. So just be prepared.

Absolutely. Some other things to think about, talking to the asphalt contractor about using duct tape on the edge of shovels make sure that there's not sharp edges that are going to damage the mat, making sure that everyone's aware of where the mats will be and that they need to be kind of gentle with the factory splices and things like that. I think the biggest tip is make sure everyone's on the same page. Right.

There's a factory splice at the beginning where it goes from the non heating wire to the heating wire. That area there in between is a splice. And that splice is where two pieces of of of electrical wire are spliced together. If you take that splice and you do this, you'll ruin it because you'll break the mechanical bond.

So that's why you never take a splice the splice and the heating wire never goes in the conduit. And if you try to force the splice into the conduit, you're going to ruin the splice and you're not gonna be code compliant. Because national electric code says that heating splice since it does heat cannot go in the conduit. So also there's a splice at the end And that is a junction of the wire and it's a termination there at the end.

That if you do this, you will ruin it also. So watch out. Don't step on the splice at the beginning and don't, step on the splice at the end.

Absolutely.

So, I know we got a couple questions ahead of time. Can you pull those up, Scott? I don't know if I have them right here. Yeah. What is the relation between the and and Hamad asked a bunch of these great questions. However, I'm not sure this pertains to asphalt, but I'm gonna answer them anyway.

What's the relationship? Because this may be an indoor flooring question. But that's fine. That's why we're here. What's the relation between the type of flooring you'll be putting down than the type of cable used? Some applications indoors are floating? And some of them are tile that are put down with thin set, and they use two different types of product.

Also, if the product you use to melt snow in a driveway is not the same product you use to heat your floors in your bathroom. The floors in your bathroom are fifteen watts per square foot and in most cases the outdoor storm melting is fifty watts per square foot. So it's completely different.

Is a certain type of concrete recommended? I'm I'm guessing this is for a concrete outdoor job. And if you're using concrete with with mesh, with the product that we've just been seeing, the the, the roles with mesh, you have to use a a concrete that has sub three quarter inch aggregate, which means the rocks in that have to be three quarters of an inch or smaller to fit through those, holes in the mesh for that product If you're indoors, what floor is the best to get a good heat transfer, tile is the best because it has no temperature limits.

Vinyl and a wood and that sort of thing or carpet that has, a low maximum temperature requirement. You can only go up to a certain temperature. Those are the poorer or of the choices. You want a choice that doesn't have a min a maximum temperature. Kyle can get much warmer. It can conduct much more heat.

So those are the questions that Hamad had and also the the installation question, which we already answered.

And then Rob is interested in replacing a current driveway with some type of low impact driveway material.

What types of low impact the driveway options have you worked with?

I'm keeping in mind that the national electric code says you have to have a hard surface over the product. You can't use any of that lattice work. Like, if you look at some pictures of, low impact driveways, there's sometimes a lattice, concrete lattice where it lets the dirt and the grass grow into it. You can't do that because you have to have concrete asphalt or paper, solid pavers above it.

The, you can't use gravel.

And, so you that that rules gravel out. What we've seen, is getting popular is is a paver installation called permeable pavers where you, instead of using sand, and that sort of stuff to set the pavers you actually use stone that drains better. So we do have, instructions that in show you how to do an installation with a low impact driveway system comprising of permeable pavers. That's the kind that we've seen. That's the kind that we know works, and it does pass all the rules about having a solid surface at a certain depth. So we do know that works. That's permeable pavers.

Wonderful.

And I don't see any other questions. So we'll do a little bit of housekeeping here.

Next month, we are doing a, a webinar on some installation tips for heated floor or heated tile floors rather. So feel free to join us for that. Again, It's a Thursday, one PM, right here on Zoom. And we also offer daily trainings, at least once a day, often twice a day, often hosted by me, hosted by Scott, And usually they're between ten, fifteen minute long training sessions, pop on in, learn a little bit more and ask any questions you might have.

And we do offer several services here. So, feel free to reach out if you're interested in utilizing any of our services. We have measuring. Troubleshooting installation and things like that.

And through the end of the month, we are offering fifteen percent off of our snow melting systems. So now it's definitely the time to do it. Last chance before the cold moves in, so feel free to take advantage of that. Yeah.

Keep in mind that asphalt plans close. It gets to a certain temperature, they close, and then there's nothing happening after that. So please make sure if you're thinking about it, it's now or never. Or at least now or next year, I should say.

Absolutely.

And, after this is over, we're gonna send you a email asking about were experienced during today's webinar, we'd love to hear comments suggestions, especially if you have any, ideas for topics for future webinars, be sure to let us know. We want to make talking about what you wanna hear.

And if you have any questions, want a quote, if you need assistance, however we can help out, reach out whatever easiest, call us, email us, visit our website. We have lots of information available on that website. So you can just probably browse that for days if you'd like. And again, reach out if we can be of any assistance in the meantime. Yeah. That's where our videos are. So go to warmlyers dot com, and you can just see all of our videos.

Absolutely. So thank you so much for joining us until next time as always, stay warm. And be radiant.