Review of technologies for snow melting systems

Abstract

Precipitation is liquid or solid water falling from clouds to the Earth’s surface. Snow is a solid precipitation in the form of ice crystals. Due to many serious problems associated with snow accumulations during winter season, the removal of snow in winter seasons, is not only a convenience, but can as well enhance safety and prevent property damage. Residential, commercial and industrial applications of snow melting have gained widespread acceptance. This paper reviews the researches on snow melting systems. The most researched and currently used snow melting systems are hydronic, electric and infrared systems. The review showed that hydronic snow melting systems is the most used system currently. This was observed as a result of the availability of choice of energy source options. However, the hydronic snow melting system has long payback period. One possible solution to compensate for this problem will be to combine snow melting systems with HVAC systems. There have been many researches on snow melting systems for pavement and bridge applications except for roof. To help minimize the collapse of buildings as a result of heavy snowfall on roofs, roof snow melting needs more attention. The paper further reviews the concept of snow building loads by comparing standard codes like ISO 4355, ASCE 7-02 and South Korea’s code for calculating snow building loads. The snow building load calculated by ISO 4355 represented higher value than others. The paper also presented a review on factors such as snow density and snow water equivalents in details and describes their importance in the aspect of snow melting system design.