Hydronic snowmelt flatwork · Kilnwick Hollow & the Grange roads · Est. 2008
The driveway that shovels itself.
Meltline pours 4,000-psi concrete with half-inch PEX loops tied to the rebar before a single yard of mix arrives — warmed by glycol from your own boiler or a dedicated unit, zoned by a slab sensor, and commissioned by us on the first hard freeze of the season. No plow scarifying the lawn border. No ice sheet at the mailbox. No five o’clock shovel.
It melts at 28°F, slab temperature
The zone control watches the slab, not the air — glycol circulates when the concrete itself approaches freezing and stops three degrees above it. Snow lands on a surface already warmer than it is and leaves as water while your neighbour is still looking for the scraper.
Twenty-five years on the loops
The PEX we tie down is rated for fifty years at the temperatures a melt system actually runs. The twenty-five is OUR number: loops laid by Meltline stay leak-free, or we open the slab and make it right. The only two we have ever opened were opened for widenings, and both loops survived the excavator.
One crew, pipe to pavement
The same three people who lay your loops screed the concrete over them — no concrete sub meeting a plumbing sub at the kerb on pour morning. The crew that starts your slab is the crew that commissions it in December and the one that answers the phone in year nine.
Rates, printed
The melt card
Heated flatwork is a heating system with a slab on top of it, so the card prices the system: insulation, loops, manifold, controls and the pour itself in one number per square foot. Boiler work is the only line quoted after the survey reads your mechanicals — and it is priced before you sign anything.
Installed, per square foot of heated slab
New heated driveway or apron$21.50 / sq ft
6 in compacted base, 2 in XPS insulation, rebar, PEX at 9 in centres, 5 in of 4,000-psi
Heated walkways & entries$23.80 / sq ft
Same loop and sensor spec, sized to spare boiler capacity where it exists
Overpour retrofit on a sound slab$16.40 / sq ft
2.5 in of insulated, looped concrete over your existing drive — levels minor settles
Electric-mat retrofit, small areas$14.20 / sq ft
Steps, landings and the first ten feet of apron where hydronics cannot reach
Dedicated melt boiler & manifoldfrom $4,900
Wall-hung, sized to the zone load, glycol fill and first fire included
The annual glycol visit$180 / yr
Pressure test, freeze-point check, sensor calibration — booked by us every autumn
How it goes
Loops to first freeze
The heat-loss morning
We measure the slab areas, read your boiler’s plate, and calculate zone by zone whether the house system carries the melt or a dedicated unit earns its wall space. You leave the visit with loop drawings and a fixed number.
Loop day
Insulation down, rebar chaired, half-inch PEX tied at nine-inch centres with zip ties, never staples — and pressure on the loops BEFORE the truck arrives, so a nicked pipe announces itself at the gauge rather than in February.
The pour over the pipes
One continuous placement over live, pressurised loops, screeded by the same crew that tied them. Control cuts on the mapped grid inside twelve hours, every loop crossing sleeved where a joint has to pass.
First-freeze commissioning
When the first hard cold arrives we balance the manifold, calibrate the slab sensor against ice water, set the melt point with you watching, and write the numbers inside the mechanical cupboard door.
The warm end of the loop
The melt lives in your mechanical room
A melt slab is a radiator you park on, and like any radiator it needs a heart at the other end of the pipe. House boilers on the Grange roads usually have the spare capacity — the survey reads the plate and the gas bills and says so either way. Where they do not, we hang a dedicated wall unit beside the manifold, sized to the zone load and nothing more, and the whole assembly fits inside a single cupboard. You will walk past it daily and hear nothing.
Running cost, said before you sign
A typical Grange drive melts a whole season on roughly the gas a snowblower eats in fuel and servicing. We model your zones against your actual fuel bills at the survey and put the seasonal number in writing beside the price — and if the honest answer is that only the walkway earns its loops, the walk is what we quote.
The Hollow & the Grange, 2025 — 2026
Slabs that never saw a shovel
Six heated pours from last winter, photographed the morning after storms the township was still digging out of. Ask any of these owners what February looked like from their front window — they will enjoy telling you.
What does a winter actually cost to run?
On the Grange roads, a two-car drive and its walk ran $210 of gas across last winter. Zoning is what keeps it sane: the sensor only calls for heat when the slab itself nears freezing, so a dry, cold week in January costs nothing at all. Your contract carries the modelled seasonal figure before you sign, computed from your own fuel bills.
What happens in a power cut?
The circulator stops and the slab coasts — thermally, a melt slab is a battery, and it holds enough warmth to ride out every cut your road has ever had. For the long ones, a small generator transfer on the circulator and controls runs the entire system on less than a refrigerator draws; we quote it with the card if your pole has a history.
Can you heat a slab that is already there?
Two ways. A sound slab takes a two-and-a-half-inch insulated overpour with new loops — which also levels minor settles and buys forty years. A slab with movement in it gets broken out and poured properly instead. The survey tells you which one you own before you have paid for either answer.
What about the glycol — is it safe around dogs and gardens?
Food-grade propylene glycol, the same fluid that winterises a boat’s fresh-water system, sealed in a closed loop that never meets the driveway or anything growing beside it. The autumn visit pressure-tests the circuit and checks the freeze point — $180, booked from our calendar, not your memory.
Does the heat wreck the concrete?
The loop runs between 85 and 105°F — warm bath water. Cyclic freezing is what wrecks concrete, and a melt slab is the driest slab on your property all winter; dry concrete does not spall. Our oldest heated drive is going into its seventeenth winter with the broom finish it was born with.
Fair questions
Asked across the fence
The five every neighbour asks over the drift. The shop line below runs seven to five all season; the crew phone answers earlier on snow mornings, because that is when the questions do.
The melt ledger
Seventeen winters, counted
We are the third house on Hollow Hill Road with a Meltline drive, and the street now treats our front yard as the proof. The plow contractor charges us for the lane only. My husband misses the shovel the way you miss a toothache.
The fire hall apron had to melt by the first hard freeze, and it did — commissioned on the nineteenth of November during a sleet event, in front of the whole crew. Two winters of apparatus traffic since, and the joints are still the only lines in it.
They modelled the whole season against our gas bills before we signed, and the estimate has landed within twenty dollars two winters running. When a stone lorry clipped a loop crossing, they found it by pressure test in an hour and sleeved it — no slab ever opened.
Loop season runs April to October — the melt calendar for new slabs closes when the frost does · autumn glycol visits are booking now · (555) 311-2694 · melt@meltlineflatwork.example
Send the slab; we’ll send the number
Rough dimensions of the drive, walk or apron, what heats the house today, and the worst thing winter does to your morning — the fixed quote follows the survey, loops to commissioning. melt@meltlineflatwork.example