Ah - well thanks for the rest of the story... I hope they at least got to take home the trophy... and the mooseburgers :~)
Evenin, folkses...
That bidness of the under-driveway heating was done, sorta, in Pullman, on the WSU campus. Maybe lots of places do it but I'd never heard of it before.
Pullman gets a few feet of snow in the winter and it stays for the duration. Seems that all the buildings are heated with steam from a central steam plant and all the pipes are routed through town in tunnels that run under all of the sidewalks and such.
It works really well. Snow and ice arrives in November or so and stays through February but all of the sidewalks and walkways stay melted and warm and ice-free.
Maybe lots of places do this sort of thing. But I've never seen it before.