need contacts for boston area for putting in danfoss gx system for driveways any help?

More important then just finding a contractor who will do it, is finding someone who can do it correctly. Line voltage mats MUST be in a sand bed under the asphalt and on top of the crush run to prevent damaging it when they roll the rock on and yet still be close enough to the surface to be effective. Then you have to find an asphalt company who will run asphalt over a sand bed instead of a crush run and still guaranty their work.

Sorry that I didn't offer the information that you asked.

Good luck.

dano:

Installing the Danfoss GX system can MOST definitely be installed under asphalt. I have installed heated driveways using the Danfoss heating element in asphalt and it worked perfect and is covered by warranty which is 10 years and 5 times the cost of the materials. I bought the system from Warmzone and they said by the time asphalt reaches a job site and is exposed to the open air it has usually dropped a 50 to 100 degress. The GX cable is made to handle that kind of heat unlike many of the other Home Depot quality wires people sell. If they are nicked or in a case like asphalt losing their outside jacket from the heat will result in a faulty system. I have been trained to splice a GX cable and it is a piece of cake. Warmzone and Danfoss now have this very sophisticated fault finder that can find any problem that may arise. I think that finder is collecting dust as I have never seen one of their products sustain injury. That GX cable is awesome.

See this link for a contact for you I found on their installer locator for MA: http://www.warmzone.com/locator/results_details.php?id=70&dist=

Good Luck.

Since this is a green building forum I have to ask. How is heating a driveway considered green?

Using electricity - half of which is lost in transmission - can not be called green. But I have designed several commercial snowmelting systems using waste heat. This is green as grass.......

hehehee

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You really should try to get your facts straight before making blanket statements. Snow melting is sometimes a necessity and is usually a luxury and nothing else, no matter how you build it. Dream on about being green as grass. Burning waste oil is worse than burning fuel oil for the environment. The glycol, when it leaks into the earth (I know, yours never leak), is only green in color! Shall we both go on?

Not talking driveways, but if they had to truck out all the snow from NYC it would be far more energy intensive then melting it (like they do now). Although one could argue removing any of the snow is a waste of energy.

It does make me wonder, the energy consumed by a snow blower vs the energy consumed by a radiant system, hummmm…

You are right of course Brock.

The electric guys always get excited when I point out the intrinsic and unavoidable waste associated with production and distribution of electricity. My brother has been making it for 30 years in a coal fired super critical plant. So you see - to coin another phrase - my facts are a straight as an arrow.

As for waste oil - not the waste heat I was referring to - the EPA in fact encourages the practice and has determined that burning waste oil on site is the best disposal method currently available. Greed is an ugly thing.

hehehee

That reminds me of a joke.

ON JULY 20, 1969, AS COMMANDER OF THE APOLLO 11 LUNAR MODULE, NEIL
ARMSTRONG WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO SET FOOT ON THE MOON. HIS FIRST
WORDS AFTER STEPPING ON THE MOON, 'THAT'S ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND,' WAS TELEVISED TO EARTH AND HEARD BY
MILLIONS.

BUT JUST BEFORE HE REENTERED THE LANDER, HE MADE THE ENIGMATIC REMARK 'GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY'

MANY PEOPLE AT NASA THOUGH IT WAS A CASUAL REMARK CONCERNING SOME RIVAL SOVIET COSMONAUT. HOWEVER, UPON CHECKING, THERE WAS NO GORSKY IN EITHER THE RUSSIAN OR AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAMS.

OVER THE YEARS MANY PEOPLE QUESTIONED ARMSTRONG AS TO WHAT THE 'GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY' STATEMENT MEANT, BUT ARMSTRONG ALWAYS JUST SMILED.

ON JULY 5, 1995, IN TAMPA BAY, FLORIDA, WHILE ANSWERING QUESTIONS
FOLLOWING A SPEECH, A REPORTER BROUGHT UP THE 26-YEAR-OLD QUESTION TO ARMSTRONG. THIS TIME HE FINALLY RESPONDED. MR. GORSKY HAD DIED, SO NEIL ARMSTRONG FELT HE COULD ANSWER THE QUESTION.

IN 1938 WHEN HE WAS A KID IN A SMALL MIDWEST TOWN, HE WAS PLAYING
BASEBALL WITH A FRIEND IN THE BACKYARD. HIS FRIEND HIT THE BALL,
WHICH LANDED IN HIS NEIGHBOR'S YARD BY THE BEDROOM WINDOWS. HIS
NEIGHBORS WERE MR. AND MRS. GORSKY. AS HE LEANED DOWN TO PICK UP THE BALL, YOUNG ARMSTRONG HEARD MRS. GORSKY SHOUTING AT MR. GORSKY. 'SEX! YOU WANT SEX?! YOU'LL GET SEX WHEN THE KID NEXT DOOR WALKS ON THE MOON!'

TRUE STORY.

Jeez I,m in a good mood.

hehehhee

Your "facts" may be true at your brothers 30 year old plant but not where newer, cleaner burning more efficient plants are generating it or hydro, nuclear (not nukular) and wind are producing it much more efficiently.  Electric radiant is using the generated power more efficiently than any other form of radiant. That's a fact you intrinsically neglected to mention b-BOILER.

Further, your using simantics regarding the burning of used oil and the EPA. They only recommend burning it because it's the only other way to get rid of it instead of dumping in the ground. I'm sure that as a boiler technician you've never dumped any oil in the ground but burning it still produces the byproduct (heavy metals) that are damaging the water we all drink and the air we breath. I guess it depends on how much longer you're on the earth depends on how much that matters to you. But I assure you, burning waste oil is "putting lipstick on a pig!"

So to answer the original question again is, no, snow melting is not green. However, if you're going to accomplish it, doing it with electricity is the "greenest", easiest, most reliable form of radiant to do it with. And there's no chance for loosing glycol (anti-freeze) in the ground.

View this article in Radiant Living Magazine discussing the issues faced by installers. Then rethink about whether this is the system you want in your driveway if/when it fails.

http://www.radiantlivingmag.com/radiantliving/2008fall/?u1=texterity

First get rid of the Uponor ad that pops up then click on Snow Melt Freeze Protection article when it comes up.

OK, if you want to get serious. Name a "newer, cleaner burning more efficient plant", or a radiant snow melting system driven by wind generated electricity.

A former director of the Nuclear Energy Commission recently commented that IF congress decided tomorrow to build a nuclear power plant, we couldn't flip the switch for 15 years!

The fact is; clean coal plants are the best we will do for some time. My daughter (a mechanical engineer) did her internship in a coal-fired power plant and her conclusions concur. The amount of fuel used to make AND deliver electricity in most of the country is outrageous. Whereas it may be 100% efficient at the terminal point of use, it is a fuel intensive refined commodity that is at present anything but Green.

Coal fired plants produce the bulk of electricity in these United States and coal produces twice the CO2 as say natural gas.

Propylene Glycol I use for snow melting is not toxic.

Electric heat is not at the present time Green.

By the way, I sold two electrical boilers today, giving my customers duel fuel capability made possible by hydronic heating systems.

Your comments are deceptive and serve the electric heating industry but rarely anyone else. There are practical applications dictated by economic realities but pushing electric heat as Green is specious at best.

Not the issue really. I use electric. The market decides the fuel source. We were talking Green here, and so far nothing is free. Solar and wind will not support heating systems of any kind above the Mason/Dixon.