Driveway

The driveway is in! Kip shoveled the snow off of the roof and the sun melted the remaining ice. We were worried about the roof dripping onto the driveway since we don't have gutters yet! We left the black plastic down onto of the XPS foam insulation as an extra moisture barrier.Once things dried out, we were able to put down the wire mesh that we planned to use to tie the PEX tubing to. It was pretty easy to cut to the right size and wire together.

 

Ted (the guy doing the in-floor heating system for the house) supervised us while we laid the tubing down on the driveway. The PEX was a bit stiff and hard to wrestle, but we managed to get it all down. The trick was to figure out what spacing we needed to cover the entire driveway but not have extra tubing left over. In the end we had a mix of 18" apart in the middle and 12" apart on the top and bottom. Hopefully that's enough to heat the driveway!
All of the neighbors driving by were jealous to see that we plan to heat the driveway. They'll probably laugh at us when they see us out there shoveling since we don't actually plan to buy the rest of the system components necessary to hook it all up. Those items aren't in the budget right now, plus we're young and enjoy shoveling, right?

After getting the tubes all down and connected to the manifold with Ted's help, we did a pressure test and all looked good. We finished up tying the tubes every 2' as the sun set and covered it all back up with the concrete blankets to keep it warm. The driveway sure was slippery with the black plastic and concrete blankets. I think everyone took a spill and slid partway down the driveway. Hopefully it's less slippery with the concrete!

The concrete company arrived bright and early Thursday morning. It was a cold morning, but the sun was out and it wasn't very windy.

They put thicker mesh onto of the tubes and tied them together in order to keep the tubes from floating in the concrete and to give the slab more strength. They used an overhead pump to get the concrete up the driveway. Pretty big piece of equipment for our size driveway! 3 truck loads (26yds) of concrete to do the driveway. It's a 6" thick slab...which looked pretty thick! They worked for a while to smooth out and finish the driveway surface. They covered it with plastic and concrete blankets.

 

The concrete company came back Friday morning to do the washing step to make the surface exposed aggregate. All looked good. They covered it up again with blankets. Monday they came and rolled up the blankets (guess it's cured enough that frost is okay now!)

 

I thought this was a cool shot where you can see the pink foam. We'll fill in along the sides of the driveway with dirt/rock/landscaping so that it's all hidden.