A Friendlier Way to Combat the Winter
Carsen LaPierre May 2, 2018
I want to focus on just the impact our school is making, though. Because even for such a small area as Plymouth, New Hampshire is, it can still have a big impact on numbers and resources. I did a little digging and contacted the people who are directly in charge of what Plymouth State University spends every year on salt, brine, and plowing, and to see just how high a number we can get on our own.
I originally got in contact with Ellen Shippe, who is the director of the physical plant here at Plymouth. She connected me with two people, a Brett Melanson who is the supervisor of the grounds operations and Amy Magdich, who is the maintenance control planner/scheduler.
Brett gave me the statistics on the actual numbers of what is spent each year in resources and how much equipment we currently own to combat the winter. The equipment we own are nine trucks with plows, seven with sanders, one skid steer (a small plow basically), and two sidewalks machines. Brett also told me that twenty gallons of gas are used to remove snow per snowstorm on average every year. Since supplies are used per storm, I was given costs on those as well. Brett informed me that the supplies, on average, cost about $11,500. With salt ending up at about $8,000, sand at $2,000, and brine at around $1,500.
Amy, on the other hand, gave me the numbers for how much(on annual average and this years average)the school pays for each zone in the process of snow removal. The schools snow removal process consists of seven zones. The prices spent per year is normally around 3,029 hours and a cost of 458,896.32 dollars but this year it went up 904. 25 due to overtime hours and the dollars spent went up 26,292.69 dollars. Which, for a total, ended this year with the school spending 3,933.25 hours of working and and grand total of 85,290.01 dollars spent this year. Keep in mind that 1.5 yards of just salt is used per storm, and it is easily tripled with ice storms.
The fix I would like to implement to this recurring problem are heated roads and walkways. As of right now, there are three different types of heating installations for roads with heating systems that can be fixed and function much like the heaters and boiler systems that heat our homes. As with many innovations though, this one also has cons and pros to itself.
Some drawbacks to heated roads and driveways include the fact that concrete can be stressed by hydronic heating tubes if the heat is not evenly distributed. When the fluid temperature is drastically higher than the slab temperature, cracking can be a possibility. Pavement may have to be torn up in order to fix malfunctioning heating coils, as well. Occasionally, only resurfacing will be needed, but usually, the whole driveway would have to be redone.
(A road heating coil under a walkway)