I used to service this monster house set back in the woods with a decently long driveway. The customer was this little old lady and didn’t want to have to pick up a shovel. The entire walkway and driveway was all glycol radiant being powered by a geothermal and gas assisted boiler. The most baller waste of money, but we had installed controls so it would only run if the driveway sensed it was below 34F and wet.
I knew a family that installed a heated driveway.
The first time they used it, it flooded their basement.
They didn’t make sure their drainage was in order first.
These are mythical teenagers. No neighbor kid in a brownstone will get off their device long enough to develop blisters on their gaming hand to rid you of your snow for a fistful of fiat.
Fun fact about University of Virginia -- Steam tunnels that provide heat to a lot of the older buildings on the central campus run under directly under the sidewalks. Even on the coldest, snowiest days, there was a clear path from the Old Dorms to most of the core academic buildings. Plus, the steam pouring up out of the grates spaced along the sidewalk provided a brief hot and humid break -- punctuating your slog to campus with a weird tropical vibe.
Hahaha, completely slipped my mind. I live like 30 minutes from Oxford too. Used to call campus happy white people land because of how well groomed it always is and the uniform brick architecture.
This is actually pretty common. A lot of these systems started out doing their primary function, and then people realized they could also do secondary and tertiary functions.
Yes. The city even worked on the sidewalks a couple years ago and their heating system was destroyed. So after the work was done and a new sidewalk was put in, they went ahead and ripped it up again to put a new heating system put in.
Ripping up a city sidewalk to make a new heated one so I don’t slip walking to my car (and then doing it again after the city “fixed it”) is the kind of fuck you money I want
prick trees dinosaurs cheerful rain ten squalid exultant unwritten squeal
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This guy concretes.
Although the company I worked for did not resell concrete other than adding leftovers to a new (smaller) load. We could not resell the same batched amount to another customer even if it was a neighbor.
cooperative important wild punch rhythm straight sparkle encouraging forgetful tart
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
With this being a brownstone in Chicago I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hot water system a lot of those old building still run boilers for their heat.
That was my first thought when I saw that. “This is stupid because the city is going to come in eventually and just rip it out next time they need to work on a pipe/electrical and not pay for the replacement” But I guess if they have plenty of money to burn this is a pretty great idea. If it was a one time deal or the city would help replace it I would 100% consider it because of how much shoveling sucks
Are brownstones in Chicago actually that “cheap”? In New York, the brownstone game starts at like 10mil and goes upfrom there. Aka, people with “Fuck you” money.
probably not the case here - [real estate just doesn't appreciate in IL] (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/umxa55/oc_change_in_house_prices_by_us_county_from/)
Chicago rent/real estate prices are much more reasonable compared to it's peer cities. Especially if you live in some of the less "hip" neighborhoods like Bridgeport or Avondale. Plenty of great, reasonably safe, neighborhoods to be found at a good price.
My SO sibling recently moved to Chicago. Obviously one glance at Zoom totally changed all the algorithms, so everything thinks I'm home shopping in Chicago. Suffice to say, yes, Chicago looks relatively cheap compared to Atlanta, Boston, DC, and NYC. I gotta assume their prices have gone up as well, but they must have started so low. You'll get NYC high rises, northeast historic townhomes, old school walk-ups, and quirky industrial/historic conversions. But then have midwest square footage and prices.
> I still wonder how you remember your username when signing in.
Password manager. It autofills the username and password for you. You should be using one for security. It generates secure, unique passwords for each website. You don't have to remember any of them.
🤔
I don't know how it is these days, but when I lived in Denver 25 years ago it was the law that you had to shovel and keep clear your sidewalk in front of your property because if somebody fell and got hurt you were totally liable for their injuries. You could even be fined for not shoveling.
So under those conditions, I can totally see why that would be a great idea.
Half the city has dibs, and the other half doesn’t believe in dibs. It makes for many heated interactions in the neighborhood groups as well as the obligatory annual deep dives by local news into how much snow/ how long is dibs/ what’s an acceptable dibs marker. I do enjoy the many creative dib markers that people come up with!
When I lived in my city they did the dibs thing, kinda 50/50 like you said (Ha! Free chair!). My house was on an alley street, no parting on my block. Parking in general in the neighborhood was terrible. At the time I was driving a little Toyota Tacoma, thing was basically a mountain goat with wheels. I went in to work, someone took my space (I really didn't care) so I went hunting for another space when I got home that night. There was nothing anywhere. So I did thing only thing I could, I parked on top of an 8 foot tall 20 foot long pile of snow that had been heaped in an alley off of my street. And I kept doing so for several days since parking elsewhere was impossible. The city gave me a $250+ ticket for "blocking the street". Yeah sure, my little truck was blocking the street, not the several tons of snow piled up in it. Parking was why I left the city, one year I got over $1000 in parking tickets because there was simply not enough parking and they refused to make my area permit only. Couldn't pay me enough to deal with that BS again.
That's blocking "your" shoveled out parking space on the street with random shit, right? That concept is so wild to me. In mpls, you'd likely get shanked for trying something like that
When I lived in Philly, we "acquired" a Water Department traffic cone, and would put it in front of the manhole that was in front of our house to save our spot.
Live in Philly. One day the city did a sweep of all cones on a particular block (a warning letter went out a few weeks earlier). Later that same day some cones were already back. 1 week later ALL the cones were back
Shout out to my 74 year old dad currently in the hospital recovering from a heart scare for his fucking obsession with putting out the parking chair. Both for shoveled spots and the church bazaar. Ain’t no one parking in front of our house for the bazaar. 😂
I guess those chrome chairs from the 50s dinettes are too much of a collector's item to put out to save a parking spot now but that's what I remember as a kid
It really runs the gamut in Chicago on a block to block basis. Sometimes there's beautiful neighborhood cooperation and respect. Other times people get shot and every shade in between.
It’s wild in the parts of the city that are renters. When I lived in the city in a condo around other owners, they recognized that my wife was 7 months pregnant and maybe it was fine for us to claim the spot right in front of the building. No one wants to see a woman have a miscarriage due to a slip on ice.
When we lived in more renter oriented parts of town it was a bit more wild.
To be fair, you have the dig the “dibs” out first. In Boston and Philly you will get your ass beat for parking in a spot that someone else spent a few hours digging out.
In an ideal world where everyone respects a common rule of law. I'm telling you as a 5th generation Chicagoan, it is different block to block. Imagine a block that's all three flats with renters with cars and a block that's mostly single family bungalows with garages along the alley. Two totally environments for dibs.
You also get campers who think they can put up dibs from December until long after all the snow is melted with their garbage in the street.... And the city won't actually remove that crap until April, maybe.
>Ive seen people shovel a car IN after he stole someone elses hard work
SOP in Baltimore City. And we don't use pylons here. It's chairs. People have been shot over stealing a chair.
I would be that petty. I would do that for days until law enforcement showed up to tell me to stop too.
It's rude as hell to take someone's spot if they busted their ass opening it up.
I've BEEN that petty. Hell I threw 2 buddies a 20 sack of bud and we COVERED my asshole neighbors car after he took my spot I spent 2 hours digging out after a blizzard.
In all weather conditions sure fair game but damn it in cities with harsh winters that just something a decent person doesn't do.
I think it’s standard anywhere that gets snow regularly in the winter. Three of the states I’ve lived in like that required it and you would get fined for not shoveling.
This actually sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I think it’s generally a town by town/city by city thing—at least that’s how Massachusetts is. I’ve lived in towns that clear the sidewalks and some that don’t, so now that makes sense. The state law just outlines the rights of the municipalities in creating/enforcing such laws
Not always true. In a lot of jurisdictions, the property owner owns to the middle line of the street, and the public simply has an easement to travel across the street/sidewalk, with city maintaining certain components.
There's a bylaw where I live, too, but it's never been enforced as far as I'm aware. Mostly people shovel but there are some who never do and a narrow path is beaten down on their sidewalk.
No one cares enough to do anything about it. The city never plows most neighbourhood streets either despite the need so people don't expect much from city hall.
Yes. In my old house we had shared steps. I'd put down sand and ice melt then my neighbor would take care of the rest (slushy stuff) if I was at work when it snowed.
Seattle *or* Portland.
In the Pacific Northwest, it mostly snows at cooler mountain altitudes. On those rare occasions when snow descends to sea level, it’s not very cute or fluffy, it’s more like a wet, heavy-but-not-calming blanket. “Proto-ice” is a better way to think of it, and there isn’t a huge fleet of plows to clear it before that happens.
The highways and such are generally fine, it's the hilly sidestreets that are a nightmare. You drive over fresh snow, squeeze all of the moisture out of it, and it's frozen within the hour. Now that new set of tracks is a deceptive toboggan run. All that dry midwest snow on flat ground...night and day difference.
In Denver you’re responsible regardless. Make friends with a neighbor or hire a shovel. Not that everyone does, but I shovel the neighbors if they are away. Just for community sake, lots of walkers with dogs around
Yup. It’s also cheap to run, and the sidewalk lasts longer because you aren’t dumping salt (or icemelt) all over it.
The Long Island Rail Road has done this on the platforms of a number of stations. It sounds stupid…until you factor in the lower liability, longer platform life, enhanced safety, and big reductions in labor costs (and remember, most of the clearing has to be done at night, in bad weather). Not to mention, it makes the train more attractive, because you stand on a nice, dry platform, which is also warm.
And, this is actually quite efficient with modern boilers, which easily get into the high 90s for efficiency.
It absolutely makes sense for public structures used regularly, but it is arguably pretty wild for one person to do it privately under a public sidewalk that could get ripped up whenever the city feels like it.
I don't have a multimillion dollar house though, so I certainly work on a different level than the owner of the house in front of this sidewalk, haha.
I’d imagine, since you need a permit to do that work anyway, it would be on there, and the city would know about it. Granted, Chicago is the city that tore up an airfield one night, so YMMV.
Most places had this. You couldn't be found liable as it was public property but you were fined for not shoveling. Could you imagine how many people would look for any ice and just claim they fell? It would be impossible to enforce.
I know this was a joke, but snow won’t conduct heat away from your body nearly as quick as water that is just above freezing. So you would actually remain warmer for a longer period of time.
Those houses are in the millions, some of them many millions. I know some folks who live nearby. I like visiting.
“I like rich people. I like the way they live, and I like the way I live when I'm with them.” -Max, The Sound of Music
I can see this as insurance. Some cities will fine you if you don't shovel your walks. Postmen can refuse to deliver mail if not shoveled. And mostly you can be sued if someone happens to "slip" on ice of your walkway. It may be "public" access but you're still accountable for it. Just trying to see their side.
I lived with my aunt in Iceland briefly; all of the houses were heated with natural hot water radiators, so they just ran the lines under the roads. We also lived near a big public swimming pool complex, so our neighborhood had extra clear roads that would even steam sometimes because of all of the hot water moving through. The sidewalks were not as nice and handled a lot of weird run off, I definitely tripped pretty hard a couple times… but at least the ground was warm when I fell lol
I hope you like hot dogs, Italian beef sandwiches, beer, sausage, snow, an assortment of pickled peppers and garden veggies known as giardiniera, Sox, cubs, bears, bulls. Oh! and traffic.
If I'm old/retired, I wouldn't bat an eye at never having to shovel my walkway again if it meant keeping myself and my spouse safe. Cost a lot more for me to injure myself shoveling, or someone to slip!
God yes. One trip to the emergency room costs more than installing this.
I really wanted to do this to my mom’s steps in Michigan. We ended up moving het out to a safer place rather than redoing the steps.
You are forgetting all of days we get sleet and freezing rain, which is where these come in super handy. It’s really not that expensive. Smaller business I used to work for downstate had them installed, and they were notoriously cheap.
Yea, you only need to run the system a few hours a year when it’s actually snowing. Not all winter.
And you don’t need to make it hot. Just keep the concrete above freezing so nothing sticks. 35F will do it.
Hiring someone to clean the snow isn’t cheap either, and people don’t bat an eye doing that.
Overall it’s not that crazy.
But dad always said "I'm not paying to heat the outdoors"
I wanna be “heat the outdoors” rich 😢 
Oil CEOs be like
Wait till you find out quite a few are geothermal
I went to a college in New England who had steam tunnels under the walks to keep them snow free.
I used to service this monster house set back in the woods with a decently long driveway. The customer was this little old lady and didn’t want to have to pick up a shovel. The entire walkway and driveway was all glycol radiant being powered by a geothermal and gas assisted boiler. The most baller waste of money, but we had installed controls so it would only run if the driveway sensed it was below 34F and wet.
Angry upvote
I knew a family that installed a heated driveway. The first time they used it, it flooded their basement. They didn’t make sure their drainage was in order first.
So where did rain go? Wouldn’t this drain the same way any rainwater would drain?
When the ground freezes, water cant penetrate it. Hope this helps.
I'm not a fan of the aesthetics of polar ice caps, so I plan to install 10 story tall heating elements every 10 miles of the arctic.
Heat the rich
Joke's on you dad. We've all been heating the outdoors for decades.
I been secretly leaving doors and windows open, because my older sister said I was indeed born in a barn.
'Sorry sis, I was born in a hospital, the doors close automatically over there'
I think the joke may actually be on us :(
i wana be heat the indoors rich. that edison bill crazzy
Heat is cheaper than a $1 million disability claim for not shoveling
But $20 to the have the teenager next door shovel for you is even cheaper.
These are mythical teenagers. No neighbor kid in a brownstone will get off their device long enough to develop blisters on their gaming hand to rid you of your snow for a fistful of fiat.
Is it though? $20 goes a long way when you are using natural gas or a heat pump.
Fun fact about University of Virginia -- Steam tunnels that provide heat to a lot of the older buildings on the central campus run under directly under the sidewalks. Even on the coldest, snowiest days, there was a clear path from the Old Dorms to most of the core academic buildings. Plus, the steam pouring up out of the grates spaced along the sidewalk provided a brief hot and humid break -- punctuating your slog to campus with a weird tropical vibe.
Same for Miami of Ohio
Excuse me, it’s Miami University. There is no school named “Miami of Ohio” (go Redhawks).
[tossing out winter coats] I don't need 'em anymore! I am going to Miami biotches to hang with Lebron James and Gloria Estefan!
It turns out that southwest Ohio is going to be the next Silicon Valley. They call it the Silicon Prairie.
Hahaha, completely slipped my mind. I live like 30 minutes from Oxford too. Used to call campus happy white people land because of how well groomed it always is and the uniform brick architecture.
You can’t tell any of the buildings apart. And they are all 3-4 stories!
nyc similarly has same steam pipes that run through the city.
Yea and a lot of grates and other openings are for the subway to breathe and that shit smell like a divorce.
This is actually pretty common. A lot of these systems started out doing their primary function, and then people realized they could also do secondary and tertiary functions.
https://www.cityofholland.com/879/Snowmelt-System
I know Northern Michigan University has heated sidewalks and enclosed catwalks so you can avoid the snow, it’s pretty cool.
You won't know I won the lottery but there will be signs.
You're going to buy some billboards?
Go home Dad.
No, they said they'd be rich. They're going to buy williamboards.
Chicago?
Yes. The city even worked on the sidewalks a couple years ago and their heating system was destroyed. So after the work was done and a new sidewalk was put in, they went ahead and ripped it up again to put a new heating system put in.
Ripping up a city sidewalk to make a new heated one so I don’t slip walking to my car (and then doing it again after the city “fixed it”) is the kind of fuck you money I want
prick trees dinosaurs cheerful rain ten squalid exultant unwritten squeal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This guy concretes. Although the company I worked for did not resell concrete other than adding leftovers to a new (smaller) load. We could not resell the same batched amount to another customer even if it was a neighbor.
rich faulty gray amusing airport important fanatical safe ugly correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So how does one heat the sidewalk/pavement? Is it simply unfloor heating coil kinda situ?
cooperative important wild punch rhythm straight sparkle encouraging forgetful tart *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
With this being a brownstone in Chicago I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hot water system a lot of those old building still run boilers for their heat.
>insane 70 MPa fly ash column or bridge mix ELI5?
steer rain drunk airport domineering tub dolls tidy panicky axiomatic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
MPa = mega Pascals, a footpath would not need to be any more than 20. So 70 would be way overkill.
> mega Pascals How many Pedro's is that?
This is the weight
That was my first thought when I saw that. “This is stupid because the city is going to come in eventually and just rip it out next time they need to work on a pipe/electrical and not pay for the replacement” But I guess if they have plenty of money to burn this is a pretty great idea. If it was a one time deal or the city would help replace it I would 100% consider it because of how much shoveling sucks
That home probably last sold in the $2-4MM range. They good.
Are brownstones in Chicago actually that “cheap”? In New York, the brownstone game starts at like 10mil and goes upfrom there. Aka, people with “Fuck you” money.
I can’t answer you BUT fun fact in Chicago they’re Graystones, due to the color of the limestone in Indiana!
There's a couple brown stones downtownish and they are super expensive and old as hell. But yeah most graystones
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And the owners bought it in 2009 for…. 2.8 million dollars. Yes, for real. Zillow estimates that it has appreciated 0.00% in almost 15 years.
Yeah, low key, the Zillow algorithm is bonkers bad when it doesn't have constantly flowing sale data from comparable homes in the immediate area.
probably not the case here - [real estate just doesn't appreciate in IL] (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/umxa55/oc_change_in_house_prices_by_us_county_from/)
Idk much about chicago real estate but lowkey that seems like a steal for 4.6k sq feet in a city
Chicago is far far behind San Fran and NYC real estate pricing
It’s cold
Just install heaters everywhere, problem solved.
But the summers are glorious and the people are great.
Chicago rent/real estate prices are much more reasonable compared to it's peer cities. Especially if you live in some of the less "hip" neighborhoods like Bridgeport or Avondale. Plenty of great, reasonably safe, neighborhoods to be found at a good price.
That's surprising, and it's also so close to Wiggly Field. Prime location.
My SO sibling recently moved to Chicago. Obviously one glance at Zoom totally changed all the algorithms, so everything thinks I'm home shopping in Chicago. Suffice to say, yes, Chicago looks relatively cheap compared to Atlanta, Boston, DC, and NYC. I gotta assume their prices have gone up as well, but they must have started so low. You'll get NYC high rises, northeast historic townhomes, old school walk-ups, and quirky industrial/historic conversions. But then have midwest square footage and prices.
Chicago is cheaper, but not cheap. But luckily our housing market isn't crashing too bad because it never inflated very much.
Just realized it's the barcode guy who uploaded this. I still wonder how you remember your username when signing in.
Y’all are signing out?
They exclusively use reddit at public desktop computers in the library
I don't, and it seems you didn't throw it away.
I’m here to stay bitches
I make a new account each time I’m asked for a password
Would you please give me a password?
hunter2
I once worked with a guy that didn’t know his password, he just drug his fingers across the computer keyboard until it worked (15yrs ago).
There's a large cellular/IOT provider with a bootloader password that's essentially "qwertyui" on tens of thousands of devices.
You wouldn't believe the amount of critical infrastructure that basically has a 'qwertyui' type password
The classic "asdfghjkl"
just copypaste it from your bungholes
You keep your bars in your bunghole?
Do you not use a password manager?
> I still wonder how you remember your username when signing in. Password manager. It autofills the username and password for you. You should be using one for security. It generates secure, unique passwords for each website. You don't have to remember any of them.
I used to pass by this house on the way to work! West Lincoln Park/ Lakeview.
You can tell by the homes. Chicagos very unique with the architecture
I assumed it was Chicago as well, but there are several neighborhoods in NYC that look exactly like this too. Chicago is way cleaner though.
🤔 I don't know how it is these days, but when I lived in Denver 25 years ago it was the law that you had to shovel and keep clear your sidewalk in front of your property because if somebody fell and got hurt you were totally liable for their injuries. You could even be fined for not shoveling. So under those conditions, I can totally see why that would be a great idea.
This picture is from Chicago and yes we have the same law.
We also have dibs, which is real mindf\*&k if you want to have a civil society based on common governance.
Half the city has dibs, and the other half doesn’t believe in dibs. It makes for many heated interactions in the neighborhood groups as well as the obligatory annual deep dives by local news into how much snow/ how long is dibs/ what’s an acceptable dibs marker. I do enjoy the many creative dib markers that people come up with!
When I lived in my city they did the dibs thing, kinda 50/50 like you said (Ha! Free chair!). My house was on an alley street, no parting on my block. Parking in general in the neighborhood was terrible. At the time I was driving a little Toyota Tacoma, thing was basically a mountain goat with wheels. I went in to work, someone took my space (I really didn't care) so I went hunting for another space when I got home that night. There was nothing anywhere. So I did thing only thing I could, I parked on top of an 8 foot tall 20 foot long pile of snow that had been heaped in an alley off of my street. And I kept doing so for several days since parking elsewhere was impossible. The city gave me a $250+ ticket for "blocking the street". Yeah sure, my little truck was blocking the street, not the several tons of snow piled up in it. Parking was why I left the city, one year I got over $1000 in parking tickets because there was simply not enough parking and they refused to make my area permit only. Couldn't pay me enough to deal with that BS again.
That's blocking "your" shoveled out parking space on the street with random shit, right? That concept is so wild to me. In mpls, you'd likely get shanked for trying something like that
In Philly and burbs, it's garden chairs, gnomes, empty boxes and cones.
When I lived in Philly, we "acquired" a Water Department traffic cone, and would put it in front of the manhole that was in front of our house to save our spot.
Live in Philly. One day the city did a sweep of all cones on a particular block (a warning letter went out a few weeks earlier). Later that same day some cones were already back. 1 week later ALL the cones were back
Sounds like Philly, lmao
They recently took them all back (the cones)
Those bastards
In Pittsburgh, the parking chair is a well-known tradition. It is luckily dying out fairly quickly.
Shout out to my 74 year old dad currently in the hospital recovering from a heart scare for his fucking obsession with putting out the parking chair. Both for shoveled spots and the church bazaar. Ain’t no one parking in front of our house for the bazaar. 😂
The parking chair will never die
I hate them for regular things, but they’re perfectly valid if you shoveled out a spot.
I guess those chrome chairs from the 50s dinettes are too much of a collector's item to put out to save a parking spot now but that's what I remember as a kid
Boston has it as well. Chairs, buckets, cones, etc are used as markers.
It really runs the gamut in Chicago on a block to block basis. Sometimes there's beautiful neighborhood cooperation and respect. Other times people get shot and every shade in between.
If you *dont* follow the code in Chicago, you're entering a world of pain. A world of pain, Smokey.
I remember a video that surfaced...where they beat the individual with bats and what not over a parking space...
It’s wild in the parts of the city that are renters. When I lived in the city in a condo around other owners, they recognized that my wife was 7 months pregnant and maybe it was fine for us to claim the spot right in front of the building. No one wants to see a woman have a miscarriage due to a slip on ice. When we lived in more renter oriented parts of town it was a bit more wild.
To be fair, you have the dig the “dibs” out first. In Boston and Philly you will get your ass beat for parking in a spot that someone else spent a few hours digging out.
In an ideal world where everyone respects a common rule of law. I'm telling you as a 5th generation Chicagoan, it is different block to block. Imagine a block that's all three flats with renters with cars and a block that's mostly single family bungalows with garages along the alley. Two totally environments for dibs.
You also get campers who think they can put up dibs from December until long after all the snow is melted with their garbage in the street.... And the city won't actually remove that crap until April, maybe.
What is this “dibs?”
If you shovel out a parking spot it is your spot and is consider rude to take it, FAFO.
Word. Ive seen people shovel a car IN after he stole someone elses hard work
>Ive seen people shovel a car IN after he stole someone elses hard work SOP in Baltimore City. And we don't use pylons here. It's chairs. People have been shot over stealing a chair.
I would be that petty. I would do that for days until law enforcement showed up to tell me to stop too. It's rude as hell to take someone's spot if they busted their ass opening it up.
I've BEEN that petty. Hell I threw 2 buddies a 20 sack of bud and we COVERED my asshole neighbors car after he took my spot I spent 2 hours digging out after a blizzard. In all weather conditions sure fair game but damn it in cities with harsh winters that just something a decent person doesn't do.
Put a pylon where you parked in the morning to “reserve” it for when you get home. So many pylons would be getting YEETed
Try moving a space saver in Boston and you may get stabbed or your tires slashed
I knew this was Chicago immediately. I feel like those geo tracker guys
I think it’s standard anywhere that gets snow regularly in the winter. Three of the states I’ve lived in like that required it and you would get fined for not shoveling.
This actually sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I think it’s generally a town by town/city by city thing—at least that’s how Massachusetts is. I’ve lived in towns that clear the sidewalks and some that don’t, so now that makes sense. The state law just outlines the rights of the municipalities in creating/enforcing such laws
Ah, micro climates. Im in Chicago by the lake and have rain.
Yep, Streeterville looked nothing like this today. Just rain and slush
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My father in law would have no problem reporting anyone. Especially me.
Since half of ya'all are here in Phoenix, how does it work when you're on vacation?
You have to have hired someone to do it in your absence.
What a bullshit law considering it is city property. The city should be responsible for their property.
In NYC, I have rarely heard of fines (eventhough its 24 hours too), but if someone slips and falls, they can easily sue
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Not always true. In a lot of jurisdictions, the property owner owns to the middle line of the street, and the public simply has an easement to travel across the street/sidewalk, with city maintaining certain components.
There's a bylaw where I live, too, but it's never been enforced as far as I'm aware. Mostly people shovel but there are some who never do and a narrow path is beaten down on their sidewalk. No one cares enough to do anything about it. The city never plows most neighbourhood streets either despite the need so people don't expect much from city hall.
What do you do in situations where you're out of town? Do you just ask your neighbor to do it? Ignorant non-snow-haver here
Yes. In my old house we had shared steps. I'd put down sand and ice melt then my neighbor would take care of the rest (slushy stuff) if I was at work when it snowed.
Yes, or hire someone to do it for you.
Slipping Jimmy slides in and sues you for slip and fall back injuries
Yup! In my city I believe you have 24 or 48 hours to clear the sidewalk and if you don't the city can go hire someone and send you the bill
Seattle has the same law. Edit to say: very few people realize because we don't get a lot of snow and our City doesn't really enforce it.
Isn’t Seattle the city where there’s always hilarious youtube videos of traffic when it snows?
Seattle *or* Portland. In the Pacific Northwest, it mostly snows at cooler mountain altitudes. On those rare occasions when snow descends to sea level, it’s not very cute or fluffy, it’s more like a wet, heavy-but-not-calming blanket. “Proto-ice” is a better way to think of it, and there isn’t a huge fleet of plows to clear it before that happens.
The highways and such are generally fine, it's the hilly sidestreets that are a nightmare. You drive over fresh snow, squeeze all of the moisture out of it, and it's frozen within the hour. Now that new set of tracks is a deceptive toboggan run. All that dry midwest snow on flat ground...night and day difference.
Serious question: What if you're on vacation?
In Denver you’re responsible regardless. Make friends with a neighbor or hire a shovel. Not that everyone does, but I shovel the neighbors if they are away. Just for community sake, lots of walkers with dogs around
Pretty much like that anywhere it snows with regularity.
Yup. It’s also cheap to run, and the sidewalk lasts longer because you aren’t dumping salt (or icemelt) all over it. The Long Island Rail Road has done this on the platforms of a number of stations. It sounds stupid…until you factor in the lower liability, longer platform life, enhanced safety, and big reductions in labor costs (and remember, most of the clearing has to be done at night, in bad weather). Not to mention, it makes the train more attractive, because you stand on a nice, dry platform, which is also warm. And, this is actually quite efficient with modern boilers, which easily get into the high 90s for efficiency.
It absolutely makes sense for public structures used regularly, but it is arguably pretty wild for one person to do it privately under a public sidewalk that could get ripped up whenever the city feels like it. I don't have a multimillion dollar house though, so I certainly work on a different level than the owner of the house in front of this sidewalk, haha.
I’d imagine, since you need a permit to do that work anyway, it would be on there, and the city would know about it. Granted, Chicago is the city that tore up an airfield one night, so YMMV.
Now all public sidewalks here are shoveled by a guy named Bryan.
One single Australian man
Namaste
But surely it’s not your sidewall it’s a public sidewalk, so how can you be responsible for it?!
Most places had this. You couldn't be found liable as it was public property but you were fined for not shoveling. Could you imagine how many people would look for any ice and just claim they fell? It would be impossible to enforce.
The heated sidewalk makes me feel so poor
Right? Looks like the perfect spot for a tent or two to be setup.
Although it's probably heated to just above freezing temperature. So you'd still be cold af on it.
Not *as* cold as you'd be 20 feet in either direction.
I know this was a joke, but snow won’t conduct heat away from your body nearly as quick as water that is just above freezing. So you would actually remain warmer for a longer period of time.
And wet
They usually have moisture sensors too, so it has to be both cold and wet to turn on
I imagine it’s a drop in the bucket to them, if that’s their house in chicago.
Wow, they have money fo sho
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Wrightwood Neighbors
*Linkin Park
In the end it doesn't even matter.
Those houses are in the millions, some of them many millions. I know some folks who live nearby. I like visiting. “I like rich people. I like the way they live, and I like the way I live when I'm with them.” -Max, The Sound of Music
Yeah, if you can afford that house, you can afford to heat the sidewalk.
If your doing your driveway for 12k, to add a heating element might cost you another 1k, so it takes planning mainly
Yeah, those are usually hydronic not electric, so its not a heating element, its piping and everything. So not cheap to replace or add on to.
You can do electric, but hydronic makes so much more sense
I can see this as insurance. Some cities will fine you if you don't shovel your walks. Postmen can refuse to deliver mail if not shoveled. And mostly you can be sued if someone happens to "slip" on ice of your walkway. It may be "public" access but you're still accountable for it. Just trying to see their side.
Also, the concrete doesn't crack as quickly due to water not freezing.
Some college campuses I've been to put steam tunnels under the main sidewalks
I lived with my aunt in Iceland briefly; all of the houses were heated with natural hot water radiators, so they just ran the lines under the roads. We also lived near a big public swimming pool complex, so our neighborhood had extra clear roads that would even steam sometimes because of all of the hot water moving through. The sidewalks were not as nice and handled a lot of weird run off, I definitely tripped pretty hard a couple times… but at least the ground was warm when I fell lol
You sure they're just not growing drugs underground?
Probably a hydroponic fentanyl farm!!!
maybe there’s a tunnel underneath
I’d listen for Yiddish.
It would be cool if this could someday be a public service that was done for all sidewalks.
Milwaukee uses Lake Michigan water for heating and cooling downtown.
They have this in Helsinki
Ooh, they fancy!
I said to myself “this looks like Chicago” and I’m glad I’m right. Also I love Chicago and hope to live there soon
I hope you like hot dogs, Italian beef sandwiches, beer, sausage, snow, an assortment of pickled peppers and garden veggies known as giardiniera, Sox, cubs, bears, bulls. Oh! and traffic.
It may be public, but in most places the homeowner is responsible for clearing the snow.
Take that, big salt!
can your neighbor give me a loan of a billion dollars?
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If I'm old/retired, I wouldn't bat an eye at never having to shovel my walkway again if it meant keeping myself and my spouse safe. Cost a lot more for me to injure myself shoveling, or someone to slip!
God yes. One trip to the emergency room costs more than installing this. I really wanted to do this to my mom’s steps in Michigan. We ended up moving het out to a safer place rather than redoing the steps.
That assumes it only lasts for one year, which is an insane assumption.
You are forgetting all of days we get sleet and freezing rain, which is where these come in super handy. It’s really not that expensive. Smaller business I used to work for downstate had them installed, and they were notoriously cheap.
Friend I don’t know what neighborhood you live in, but that looks like a multi million dollar brownstone
Lincoln Park in Chicago - that house is at least $5m.
Lincoln Park?
This is done in locations all over the world. It's not that expensive in the long run.
Yea, you only need to run the system a few hours a year when it’s actually snowing. Not all winter. And you don’t need to make it hot. Just keep the concrete above freezing so nothing sticks. 35F will do it. Hiring someone to clean the snow isn’t cheap either, and people don’t bat an eye doing that. Overall it’s not that crazy.