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Jeffersonville, OH | I'm not that far north, but I do have ice melt loops in the apron of our newer shop we built in 2012. With the hydroswing door, and the doors on the North side of the buildings we always had a little trouble with the seal freezing down, and it just wanted to tear the seal up when opening. The door would open, but it was hard on the seals. So when we built the newer shop with 2 doors to the North, we put a 6' ice melt loop across the front of the building, and around to both man doors.
It takes a LOT of heat, even at 30* when I turn it on you can feel the rest of the building cool down a couple degrees throughout the day as it warms the outside slab...so I usually turn it on at night if we are expecting ice, and by noon the next day I can turn it off. It used to be automatic based on outside slab temperature, but I never liked that, so I just swapped in a switch to turn it on or off.
Yes, it does melt out to that 6' and then refreeze, but 99% of the equipment we bring in our shop doesn't care if there is a foot or 2 of snow to drive through, so that little mound of frozen junk is never a problem. Aprons are 30', only 6' is heated.
We don't get snow like the more northern climates every single year, but we typically get 3-4 ice storms or freezing rain that makes the concrete a mess for a few days, so the man doors being clear, and at least having that 6' to walk across the apron makes things much nicer
Would I do it again, maybe, maybe not....I would upsize the boiler another step if I really wanted it to be great, just so it didn't hit the system as hard. Our 2 shops are heated by a 250K BTU waste oil boiler, and a 375K BTU Natural Gas boiler, about 20K sq ft of shop area. The Oil boiler was supposed to be a 500K BTU unit, but we found out later (after 3 years of trying to make it run right) it was a repurposed fuel oil boiler, and the fire box isn't near big enough for a 500K BTU flame, so we kept playing with burner sizes and types until we got it to run right. Based on fuel usage per hour, it's roughly a 250-280K BTU unit now LOL
Chris | |
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Heated outside slabs ?
