We had a heated driveway in Trail B.C. Canada worked great.

What's a typical cost for an average driveway to be heated?

The city of Holland, Michigan has heated the whole downtown shopping area...roads and sidewalk.

My son installed a heated driveway for a doctor in an area where snow removal was slow at best. Worked great and said doctor was never late for surgery!

I would love a heated driveway - but it would probably cost way more than I could afford

I would love a heated path up to the house. My lower back does not like shoveling snow.

I put it in my sidewalk in Lemoyne, PA prior to pouring concrete!

The most economical I have heard is: piping in the sidewalk that comes from ground water which would be 55 degrees. I do not know where the water went after it went through the sidewalk. It should never be turned off in the winter because it would freeze. It was used in a city center commercial building.

The water recycles through again...heating up again.

The system described above is called "Geothermal" and is also used to heat and cool houses. It is a closed system so it will never freeze. However the pipes need to be buried quite far into the earth and you need a large area of landscape to install them.

You are very right about the geothermal: the system I am studying does not manipulate the temperature mechanically in any way. the ground water runs through the sidewalk fresh from the ground at 55 degrees and then is either used for domestic use or .......? cistern maybe? I do not like the idea of dumping. The issue to work with is that once it runs through the sidewalk what is the temp of the water and is it warm enough to make a second round without freezing which is dependant on the length of the loop and the temp of the concrete. All this co-ordinated wtih speed/time in the loop any idea where ths equation is?

Just to clarify about the geothermal heating and cooling system that I described two comments ago; most of these systems are "closed loop" systems. The liquid is never dumped out. It continues to recirculate in the closed loop pipe system. When it recirculates underground it returns to the temperature underground which is around 55 degrees F.

In addition to melting snow on driveways, this system can heat and cool buildings very efficiently.

When I attended college in Michigan, the campus had run the steam tunnels under the sidewalks - in a rather primitive attempt to reduce the amount of walks that had to be cleared. However, the temperatures there frequently dropped far below zero, and what happened was the snow would melt on contact with the walks, but the water thus created would freeze into slick ice. So instead of shoveling the grounds crew had to walk around with iron poles about the length of a broomstick flattened on one end to a slight wedge that they'd repeatedly lift and drop to shatter the ice so it could be shoveled off the walks. Most of the students walked on the snow beside the walks in the winter because the ice was so treacherous.

My father's workplace installed a heated driveway on a ramp leading out of the parking garage under the building - apparently it stopped working after about 2 years. This was back in the 1980s so I'm sure improvements have been made since then in the technology.

Thanks Lampert I will look into that do you have a source of engineering or design?

To Coppes Commons:

Since I am primarily located in Southern California, there are no companies nearby who specialize in geothermal. However, I understand that they are common in areas of more extremes in the weathersuch as Pennsylvania or Michigan, etc..

That is a good question for the Houzz people out there.........

Can anyone recommend a good company that installs geothermo heating and cooling systems..?

Thank-you very much I apreciate the time you take to answer

@essen12, thanks for the link. That is brilliant! What a great idea.