Heating your Hardscape – Cost Case Study
Imagine for a second, a warm cup of coffee, a cozy blanket and a great book while sitting in the window watching it snow the first major storm of the season in Sparta, NJ. Seems really great doesn’t it? Would be a shame to ruin that great feeling when you have to go outside and shovel wouldn’t it? What if the possibility of shoveling wasn’t even a consideration? You might be thinking, “Can a landscape, hardscape, and masonry contractor near me do something about this?”.
You might be pleasantly surprised to find out that fully automated hardscape heating systems are more cost effective than you might have thought. With the technology available today, a heating system can be easily added to nearly any hardscape project to create anything from a dog run, to a heated walkway, to a heated driveway. In this article I will walk you through a case study helping you to understand what the results and costs of your future heated hardscape could look like.
Related: 5-tips-for-getting-your-backyard-landscape-design-completed-before-summer
In the spring of 2020 we were contacted by Anne and Charles, who were looking to upgrade their walkway to a newer and more modern design. While discussing the old and new walkways we learned that snow removal was a real pain point for them and a large reason why they wanted to upgrade the hardscape. During the landscape design phase of their journey we considered the question, “what if snow removal was not an issue?”. I mean more so than just moving to a warmer climate. This idea appealed to Anne and Charles so we began planning the new heating system for their hardscape renovation.
We called the engineers at the vendor and got to work designing the new walkway for Anne and Charles. It was important to have an easy to use system that required little to no care and just worked on its own. The engineers came up with an efficient system that could be incorporated into our design, be fully automated, and operate efficiently regardless of the storm they faced.
The system itself comprises of heat mats that are installed under the pavement and must be placed during the initial installation. Retrofits could be possible, but in this case the old walkway was in a state of failure and slated to be replaced anyways. The mats were installed in between the gravel base and the final hardscape surface and wired in by a licensed electrician.
The automation component of the system does require hard wiring into the electrical panel of the home and all the related components are placed neatly in a small separate panel in the utility area of the home. All the components are conveniently provided by the vendor and the electrician can virtually plug and play.
The heating system is fully adjustable to deal with micro climates and regional weather conditions to ensure exceptional performance fine tuned to the area. For Anne and Charles the system picks up the moisture and senses that the temperature could lead to freezing or snow conditions. It anticipates this activity and turns on and off all by itself. In addition to this full automation, the system also includes a small panel installed in their garage so they may turn on and off easily if the need arises, or even activate the system with the push of a button if for some reason snow drift or refreeze become a problem and the sensors do not pick it up.
Anne & Charles sent in this pic 1 hour after the snow stopped during a recent storm that delivered 16” to the area. The snow was gone 1 hour after the picture was taken.
Maintenance is virtually none. The manufacture does suggest turning off the panel in the off season to conserve any small electrical usage involved with the sensors. Depending on the location of the sensors, cleaning them on occasion may help ensure the system operates with full efficiency. Most providers would be happy to provide a maintenance package to go along with the system to create a truly hands free option.
So all this sounds great right? I suppose you are now asking yourself what the cost is for something like this. Here is the breakdown of the system and long term costs using Anne and Charles’s walkway as a benchmark. Certainly your system can be fine-tuned to meet your needs and scale will impact what your investment might look like.
Anne and Charles added a fully automatic heating system to their new walkway in Sparta, NJ. It can be expected that the installation would be similar in the nearby towns of Green, Blairstown, Frankford, Chester, and Denville. The entire investment to add heat to their walkway was approximately $8000. Let’s look at how this breaks down.
The walkway replacement cycle for most homeowners is 20 years so we will use this timing as our benchmark. That breaks down to only $400 per year. In the area Anne and Charles live they can expect to have 12-15 snow events and an additional 6-10 ice and low accumulation events per year. Let’s call it 18 events and say the cost for the system is $22 per storm. That’s not too bad considering in 20 years, $22 is likely to be the cost of a sandwich. The cost to operate the system is variable, but for Anne and Charles we calculated the cost at about $1.50 per hour. That might put the cost to operate at $10-$20 per event. Let’s call it an average of $15 per event.
Anne and Charles can expect to spend $37 per event over the life of the system, or about $650 per year. Now consider the fact they never need to add any deicing materials that cause deterioration, never have to call the plow company to come back to shovel, or even need to put down that book or coffee after the snow storm the value of the system increases exponentially.
I really appreciate you taking the time to learn about this topic, and hope the article provided some valuable information. If you feel it might be right to add heat to your hardscape or create a custom heating plan to take the shoveling out of that dog run than we would love to hear from you. As always, if this is not right for you, that is OK also, but we would love it if you share this article with anyone who you feel it might be.
Enjoy the snow, and keep reading!