Posted on 02/07/2022 2:10:22 AM PST by Jonty30
Or....maybe don’t use a clear coat.
And then in the summer?
But who wants to have a dreary, black entrance to their house just to avoid a few winter calisthenics?
I saw those on Amazon when looking for black mats that I could cover the sidewalk with.
I wanted something that used the sun and absorption of heat without using electricity.
Cover it with a tarp. When snow is done, pull up on one side of the tarp and empty snow into the adjacent yard.
You’re right on that, so probably a black tarp would be the overall best solution. Cover your sidewalks during the snowy periods and use the heat of the black tarp to melt any ice and snow that is underneath them when it is near 0C or above.
Yes. Especially the one that isn’t clearing his sidewalk anyway.
It would heat up faster but not necessarily fast enough to exceed the rate of accumulation.
Sounds viable on the sunny days.
Asphalt is black and can bury a road.
The key is surface temp plus core temp. When it’s zero, it is cold enough for snow or ice to stick.
I did live down the street from a cat lady once, she actually would go outside with buckets of used cat litter and spread the used cat litter on the sidewalk, even on the public sidewalk in front of her house and the sidewalk leading up to the stairs, the stairs and the landing.
It was totally weird and disgusting.
The mat would reduce heat transfer to the underlying concrete. Concrete plus the underlying soil is a very high heat sink. The fact that aluminum is on one or more surfaces of the mat as no bearing on absorbing heat energy from the sun since the outward face is painted black. The insulating power of the mat is probably trivial in the thermodynamics involved.
No need to go paint anything black to see if it helps to reduce snow and ice any. Just drive around and look at some asphalt driveways and compare it to the concrete driveways. In the lightest of snow and ice, black asphalt will self clear somewhat faster but only if there is some black showing.
Really though, you have to help the sun energy by using the snow shovel. Lol… Sodium chloride salt sucks. First, NaCl is only functional to about the mid-20s F plus it is easy for it to damage concrete via freeze thaw cycling of the water. Much better is to look for a product such as Heet that uses magnesium chloride salt. Mag chloride is functional towards 0F. I’ve used it for light overnight dry snow of a couple of inches and the concrete will actually be dry and clear (sublimation) when the sun comes up. It doesn't work as well on heavier or wet snow because it gets diluted too much by melt water and washes away.
Google “solar freakin roadways”.
Pour your sidewalks with a 30 degree downhill slope and the snow will slide right off of them.
We already have black sidewalk paint. It’s called tar.
You must live in the South, bless your heart, to think of this.
Some of us here way Up North where it really snows have driveways that are made from asphalt, not concrete, and are already very black.
Guess what? It doesn’t matter, they get snow all over them, too.
You see, the problem is twofold: When it snows the sky is very overcast, and not much solar heating can occur, and it also often snows overnight.
Once you do shovel the asphalt driveway and the Sun does come out, then yes, the asphalt driveway will melt the remaining snow and ice faster than a concrete driveway, but not that much faster.
One problem with aluminum is that, although it heats up fast, even a perforated version would give little or no traction. You could turn that snow into a sheet of ice depending on your outdoor temperatures.
Kanazawa , Japan...they use geothermally heated water to clear the streets of snow, Works like a charm.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/anaguma/50036256007/
I live in Edmonton, Alberta.
It’s been a snowy year. Haha
All I’ve been doing is keeping my sidewalks clear as much as I can. We are in a warm period, for the next week or so, so I’ve been just shoveling the water out as fast as I can so I can have dry sidewalks.
LOL, then the yolk’s on me!
I live in Michigan, and we’ve had a fairly snow-free winter right up until last ween with we got 18” in a 24 hour period.
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