How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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yogi
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How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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Nothing I can say beyond the video ...

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/13 ... Iu3Kur.mp4
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Kellemora
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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Ha ha, I saw that on Farcebook the other day!

Because our greenhouses were heated with steam heat.
We had a huge metal roller that looked like a yard roller.
Cousin George decided to modify it to accept one of the smaller high pressure steam hoses we used to steam dirt in the dump truck. He could do a fairly large area while connected to the hose, then disconnect the hose and roll that sucker clear to the street and back before he had to heat it up again.

When I had to pour new slabs in my driveway in Creve Coeur, I bought plastic heating tubing like used under floors and under flower benches in the greenhouses. They were filled with mineral oil, because water would freeze in them.
In my garage was an electric oil filled heater with a long pipe, like inside a baseboard heater, only without the fins.
The tubing was wrapped around this pipe, and had a little pump of it's own to run the oil through the buried pipes.
It worked great the first two years, then I guess one of the tubes cracked somewhere where the seams are in the concrete. In any case, it quit working. So I cut the tubing off and sold the heater unit to a small greenhouse guy to do his under bench heaters.

I had previously tried using electrical heat tape in the concrete walkway. It only helps if you turn it on and leave it on before it snows, and then it might melt, but not if the temp gets below around 20 degrees. Then it does nothing at all.
It was only buried about 1/2 inch below the top too, so should have worked great. It was still in place when I sold the house.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I picked that video off Imgur but it certainly has all the elements of being Facebook material. Your stories about heating your driveway are similar to ones I've heard in Chicago. One of the local DJ's had his driveway torn out and the new one furnished with a heating system, but I don't recall if it was oil or electric. In any case his report was the same as yours. It worked fine when the temps didn't go too far below freezing, but that's not typical in Chicago. They may not get up to the freezing point for several weeks during a given winter. The DJ admitted he made a mistake. Personally I like the flame thrower idea but would be concerned about the after effects. That melted snow will flow downhill and probably leave a giant pool of ice at the end of your driveway. Even if the pavement is clear of snow, you probably would not be able to turn into it from the street. :grin:
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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Only one place I've lived, the driveway slopped downhill from the street to my garage.
The person who owned house before me, installed a storm grate about 6 inches wide across the width of the driveway, about 2 feet in front of his garage, at the lowest point in the drive. It already had a drain on either side of the driveway, but was useless in the winter until he installed the cast iron grate over a foot deep trench which was only lined with PVC plastic to form a bottom and sides.
Instead of being perfectly flat, his driveway had about a 2 inch high rounded curb on each side as part of the original pour.
What I liked about this is I could put lots of salt on the driveway, and it wouldn't get out into the yard, and would wash down into the sewer. Not that I was big on salting, but had to there, because I didn't want to slide down into the garage door, hi hi.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I've see those homes with a garage slightly below grade. I could never understand why anyone would want a driveway, i.e. watershed, sloping into the house. True, it's the garage and not the living quarters, but it still seems like a bad idea particularly around the Chicago area. My drives were either flat or sloping toward the street. There was a time or two when I could not make it up the incline due to the depth of the snow, but not being able to get into the garage seemed like a better predicament than not being able to get out. And, being the paranoid guy I am, any watergate across my drive would have to take on the proportions of a fully fledged moat. LOL
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I live on a hillside, and all the houses on the other side of the street, their driveways slope downhill to the house.
But the houses themselves are slightly raised on the front, so you do have a porch to step up one step too.
So, right before you get to the garage, if it has a garage, there is a slight uphill area for about four feet.
But each house is done a little differently too. Many do not have garages at all, but still have the downhill driveway going to the side of their house. Which, if they built a basement, it would be a walk out basement on the rear of the house.
These hills here are STEEP. My garage floor is a good three feet above the bottom of our back door, and our garage is built into a hill, so the back side is earth sheltered up about 5 feet above the floor on the back.
Then our backyard goes uphill sharply after that.
Less than 30 feet up our back yard, your feet on the ground are higher than the peak of the garage roof.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I've had basements with water leaks but never a flood. Those leaky basements were enough to put fear in my heart regarding an unintended pool of water below my kitchen floor. The house before this one was technically near the bottom of a hill with a drainage ditch between the house and the sloping land. The house had a basement but the land immediately surrounding the house was graded so that it was a couple or three feet above the flood plane. As I mentioned earlier, that saved us from flooding when the 100 year rain came down. Thus, the best place for a home is on top of the hill and nowhere else. This Missouri home is on land that is tiered and built into the side of one of them. As was the case with the old house the land around the building is graded above street level somewhat but that would not prevent a flow of water reaching us should the street flood. The saving grace here is that the water would go mostly around the house. The back yard has some storm sewers but that too slopes down one level to the row houses in back of us. Those row houses would get the brunt of any street flooding. However, I've been amazed at how quickly things drain around here. The storm sewer system must be fantastic. In any case, I'd have some strong reservations about a landscape that directs the flow of water toward my house.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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Nearly every where in Missouri, at least in St. Louis and surrounding counties has excellent storm sewer systems.
Down here we have ditches that always overflow and run across the streets, hi hi.

When dad bought his house in 1966 at the BOTTOM of the hill, where all the mud washed from the construction projects going on, I worried about his basement filling up with water. It never happened, simply because of the massive size storm drains the subdivision installed.
Down close to Manchester Road and Sulphur Spring Road, there was a massive box, probably about 50 feet long by 15 feet high, and perhaps 30 feet wide where many of the storm drains ran into before leading on out to the large creek down that way. Somehow it controlled how much water was let into the creek, but there were times when you could see water coming over the angled top also. Actually, it looked neat when it overflowed, as it formed like a waterfall.

One of the funniest things I ever saw with public storm sewers happened down at the bottom of Solomon's hill right before you get to Barrett Station Road. There was a watershed creek that crosses under Manchester Road.
Now lets say it rains in Des Peres, but not in Kirkwood.
As you come down Solomon's hill you can see the creek on the left is nearly dry, but on the right side of the road it is very high near flooding point. That is because the storm sewer empties just to the right of the bridge.
Now for the funny part. Where this storm sewer exit is under the bridge it is covered with iron bars like a jail to keep kids out of course, hi hi. They normally keep this drain clear of debris. But with a heavy storm, all the twigs, leaves, branches, and who knows whatever else was in the storm drains that didn't wash through yet, after a heavy rainstorm, they always have to go and clean the storm sewer system exits.
Well, apparently there was much debris and it clogged the sewer, so where the water goes in off the roadway, water was coming out of those onto the road. It looked like a river taking up most of the right lane and the closer you got to the bridge, both lanes were flooded, but no water on the bridge itself.
Then suddenly, several slabs of concrete from the right lane lifted up and went sailing down and kept going when the water turned right into the creek and piled up blocking the bridge.
This problem they had there is one of the reasons Manchester Road was rerouted so it now takes a different path.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I'm always amazed at the brute force flowing water contains. That hundred year rain I keep bringing up overwhelmed the storm sewer on my neighbor's property. My creek didn't rise high enough to give me a problem because the water flowed out into the street first. I lived at the intersection of a "T" and the storm sewer was located on one of those short arms. It got so bad that the water started flowing down the street that ended at my house. The people directly across the street from me lost their driveway and sidewalk. The water could not have been more than 8 or 10 inches deep at that point, but there was a lot of it and it was flowing quickly. The creek flowing through my back yard was nothing less than a white water rapids. You could not stand in it without being washed away.

I often think about the mesa rock formations out west. They were formed by water that was draining from the ocean that covered them at one time. Some of those mesas are several hundreds of feet tall. Spooky.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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Yeppers, Water can do a lot of damage. We used a water jet to cut through concrete block and foundations to install a door or window. I'm sure they would be dangerous devices if they didn't have all the safety gizmo's on them.
Like early nail guns you could shoot like a gun, but now they have to be pressed down on the board before they will shoot.
The water cutters were much the same way. They had a long cylinder that slid back and forth, it had to be pressed against the wall to work, and other settings controlled basically how deep it would cut, sorta, not at all accurate, it had more to do with time than anything else. You had to keep the thing rolling at the speed it wanted to go or it would either cut too deep or too shallow.
They were nothing at all like power washers which use a lot of water either. Just enough water to do the cutting and wash the dust away. A three foot long cut into concrete block only used about 3/4 gallon of water, which was captured in the bottom catch tray at the bottom of the wall. The catch tray was taped to the wall so the water would go into it.

I watched a 15 minute video, a simulation of how some of those deep gorges were formed. It started with a mountain nearby and a fairly flat ground the water spread out over like during a flood. Pretty soon a channel was formed, and the channel just kept cutting deeper and deeper during the heavy rain seasons.
It was interesting to see how many lakes were formed for a time, and then they too eroded away into the rivers.
So, when you look up at those 100 foot high or higher top areas, at one time, that was the level of the ground.

Before the Interstate Highway was installed. Once a year for like 100 years or more, a family went and took a picture of the a waterfall and stream that led to a lake. In the beginning of their show, the early pictures from the late 1800s were like 5 to 10 years apart, and not always from the same spot. But from around 1905 on, every picture was taken from the exact same location and the camera at the exact same height. They were all in black and white up until the 1960s. They had a set date but had to shift it until something like 3 or 4 days after a storm, so the sky was clear and bright, so some of the pictures may have been a week or two after their control date.
It was truly amazing how much changed from like 1890 to 1990. Then the changes slowed down considerably from 1970 when there was not much water after the Interstate was built. They quite taking pictures in 1990 since nothing changed in 20 years following the Interstate cutting off the water supply to the waterfall.
It was neat to see how the water etched away at the top and further back into the hillside, until the top broke off and fell to the bottom which changed how the water hit and disbursed before flowing back into the river, which is now nothing more than a tiny creek you can step over.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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Niagara Falls is horseshoe shaped due to erosion. Apparently they cut off the flow, or reduce it greatly, during the winter months when there are few tourists; all to slow down the erosion. If they let it go, the cut would go so far back that the falls would disappear. Being a natural wonder they are doing all they can to stop that from happening. The Grand Canyon is another example of what erosion can do. The river appears to be cut into the ground, but the Mesas in Arizona are the opposite. The mesas appear to rise up from the ground. My understanding is that there once was an ocean in place and it drained to what we see today. When all the Arizona Ocean water finally drained, the mesas remained standing.

I've seen them cut street pavement with those water cutters. I can't imagine how much pressure is behind that water, but it's got to be in the thousands of psi. Amazing stuff, to be sure.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I'm sure there are a few things they can do to protect the falls from eroding too far back.
I know they do divert some of the water to the edges somehow, but never looked into how that is done.

Yes, the water jet cutting tools use a pressure of anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 psi and I'm sure some of the more expensive units are even higher than that. The ones you see being used to cut pavement are way up there probably around 90,000 psi if not higher. That is why the hoses are as thick as an elephants trunk with only a pin hole down their center.
The compressors do not have a piston per se. The piston is actually a small metal rod about like the pushrod out of a car in size. They have a stroke of about 1/2 inch if that. The power head of the one I used had 9 cylinders, radial style like an old airplane engine. But the whole head unit with all those cylinders was not very big, maybe about 10 inches in diameter if you wrapped a belt around the biggest area.

They work nothing at all like a pressure washer.

I would only be guessing if I said I knew how they worked, but I think each cylinder is fed from the previous cylinder in order to built the pressure up to what is needed. Or it could be three feed three, which feed the final three. Not sure how they do it. There is only one water intake area on one cylinder, and one pressure outlet on the cylinder next to it. No tank to hold pressure like used with air compressors. There is a bleed tube in the steel pipe the hose connects to and when you turn off the jet from the hose, the water sprays out the bleed in a wide spray so is harmless, but still stings.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I visited Niagara Falls when I was still a teenager. Back then they said the only way to save it was to divert the flow, and that will only work for so long. The Army Corps of Engineers was involved in some way. It would be a shame to lose such a treasure, but I've been there and done that. No need to go again. LOL

It's hard for me to imagine how 60,000 psi of pressure can be created by any means. It's just a matter of cramming enough air into a small space, but that chamber has to be air tight. It's the same problem I have with imagining how it is possible to cool something down to nearly absolute zero. It's been done many times but exactly how would be interesting to know. Yes, I know, Google is my friend. Maybe when I get around to it ...
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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Dang, just lost another informative post, where I explained a lot about water jets, how they work, etc.
I only had my left hand on the keyboard when I got knocked out to the black log-in screen.
Dang. At least I know I was going to make a capital letter S at the time.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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Playing around trying to figure out what caused it. Can't seem to duplicate it.
Hmm.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I am perplexed and saddened by your loss. I'm certain it would have been educational. :bleh:
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I just wish I could figure out what is doing it.
I've tried every key combination I can do with only my left hand.
I can do some weird things, but not take me back to the log-in screen.
I do know Ctrl-W closes the browser, hi hi.
I'm beginning to think it is not what I'm doing, but a glitch in the program, since I cannot seem to duplicate it.

Basically, I talked about the two main types of water jets, crankshaft and direct drive, and their differences.
Then I talked about our tractor hydraulics with the 2500 release valve, and the 10,000 psi release valve on the pump itself.
Then I talked about my late wife's oxygen tank refill system, before she switched to liquid oxygen.
But you know me, I got overly verbose on each topic, hi hi.
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I've read stories about losing editing windows here in these forums many times. Some of those stories go back before your arrival here. I can't say conclusively that phpBB is flawless; in fact I know it's not. But, like yourself, I can't deliberately produce the problem, and much less repeat it. In the past I just noted all the complaints and figured it was a cockpit problem.

Having said all that, I know I mentioned to you a while back that some software updates are waiting for me to install them. Perhaps this would be a good time to actually do something about it. :mrgreen:
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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I check phpBB forums every once in a while, and I know the problem is not from a bad file like a few have found was the problem with their installs.
But I've never found anyone who did have the same problem I hit ever find a way to duplicate it.
This is why I say it must be a rare glitch in the software.
Someone did think it might be if as a user you are on the system, and the owner come along and opens the ACP file? for editing or something. As the few times it has happened to him, was about the same time the owner of the site just happen to be on doing something.
I'm beginning to think that might be what it is.
I say that because, I post my replies and get back to see your responses the next day.
But the other day when it happened, you had responded to one of my comments which I saw when I logged back on after getting kicked back to the log-in screen. So maybe there is something to that line of thought?
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Re: How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

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The ACP is the Administrator Control Panel. The only time that could be accessed on this board is when the forumadmin account is logged in, and that is only a rare event. I can't exclude a glitch in the phpBB software as the source of the problem. I can say it's been around for generations of software if that is the case. We have three versions of this site covering all the years we have been on line and somebody has managed to lose their lengthy reply in nearly every version. We are on a 3.x release cycle today, but I've seen this problem reported back in the 2.x days. Not sure about the 1.x because that goes back a dozen years or more. The reason I was suspecting cockpit problems is because only a few people were affected by this random glitch; the same few every time.

As the phpBB software gets improved, the specifications change as well. If it's a software issue, the most likely culprit to cause what you are seeing is the underlying php. There is a minimum version of php that must be used and we do have that installed. But our host also offers three or four versions beyond the minimum required by phpBB. They tell me that some people have reported problems with the latest releases of php, but they never specified what the problems are. And, php is used in many different instances on this shared server, not only for phpBB. I will in fact check to see that we are running the minimum or better php when I do the site updates.

About the only solution I can suggest for the time being is to do your editing outside this website. Then just copy and paste it into the editor. If you lose that, you will always have the original. You can also try using the "save draft" function built into the site. But I have no feel for how reliable that is because I never use it. In any case, when I get around to installing the updates, I'll report about here.
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