How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido

   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido #1  

Garandman

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Mount Sunapee NH / Dorchester, MA
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Hokkaido gets a lot of snow. A friend of mine lives there and he's the only person I know with one of the Honda 1336 Hybrid snow throwers - which cost him $8,000. Niseko is considered the 2nd snowiest resort in the world (behind only Mt Baker Washington) with 595" of snowfall a year. Sapparo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics.

Leonz is passionate about explaining how Hokkaido gets rid of their snow. This is his thread to explain why Boston and all the other major cities in North America and Europe lack vision because they have not implemented "Snow pits."
 
   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido #2  
And the rest of the story? I'm curious.
 
   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido
  • Thread Starter
#3  
OK, you asked for it....

They need to build a couple of snow melting barns with pits that can be dumped
into by standard dump trucks like they use on Hokkaido Island.

The melt water in the pits is below the boiling point in the pits and they do not
waste a lot effort in melting the snow.

The trucks back up to the railing/wheel stop edge and dump and
the loads slide right out into the hot water.

They could heat the water/snow with a battery of 4-8 Keystoker KG-22 coal stoker boilers
plumbed in line at a very low operating cost per hour to make a almost 2-4 million BTU per hour
of hot water energy with the melt water piping routed to the bottom of the melting pit and using
110 volt power for the boilers and the 2 circulating pumps and a trailer load of anthracite coal to do it.

It would not take much to do it other than beating back the bureaucrats for some space to do it in a couple of places
and the plumbing would be self contained and not connected to the water mains as the single unpressurised water tank for the 4-8
coal stoker boilers would use one pump for circulating the heated water through the piping used for melting the snow could be filled
by a water delivery truck.

The plumbing is simple and the installation would be fast and ready for the next winter quickly-it would take longer to excavate the pit and
pour the base foundation and the concrete walls of the melting pit than it would to install the boilers and the simple plumbing and piping loops.
 
   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido #4  
Wow!! Fantastic lead in - where is the remainder.
 
   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido
  • Thread Starter
#5  
Buut wait, theeere's more! A lot, lot more. Leonz is unphazed by the fact that Boston, for example, averages one tenth the yearly snowfall and has a population 50 times higher. His suggestion is to burn coal.

============================================================================



The snow melting pits are in several prefectures and work well,
why not copy them for Boston?

A snow melting pit would take up little room as the pit itself is
narrow very deep and long to allow four or five trucks wide to
dump at one time.

For that matter a small wheel loader with a plow blade could be used
to push dumped snow into the receiving pit to reduce any chance of
the haulage truck causing any damage to the building and this would
allow large dump trailers to haul snow to a snow melting pit site with
speed as the snow would just be dumped and pushed into the melting
pit later.

A small anthracite coal stoker boiler consumes a small amount of coal
per hour and can heat huge amounts of water to 180 degrees quickly.


A melt pit that is 20 feet wide 80 feet long and 40 feet deep would hold

80 by 40 by 20=64,000 thousand cubic feet of water times 6.84251
which is the number of gallons of water that occupies a cubic foot
equals 437,921 gallons of heated water in total volume(rounded higher).

So if the pit was filled to seventy percent of its volume with hot water it
would have 306,545 gallons (rounded higher) of hot water for melting it would
continue melt the snow and ice into liquid that would eventually reach the scupper
drains and flow to Deere Island eventually from the storage basins.

Saying that The melt water is heated to 180 degrees on a continuous basis and becomes
the heat source to aid in melting more snow and ice and the water temperature could be
increased to two hundred degrees to increase the heat and melting power available to
reduce the snow to liquid and the melt pit would also be evaporating the melt water as a
steam vapor at the same time.

A battery of coal stokers would provide all the hot water needed to melt the snow at all hours.

The coal bins of the stokers would have to be filled and the boilers would have a closed loop
water system that could be fed from a pressure tank that receives city water.

The 300,000 plus gallons of heated water that would be in the pit is huge energy source that could be counted
on to do the work quickly as it is done on Hokkaido Island. The snow would melt quickly and would add to the thermal mass available to melt the snow that is being dumped as soon as the other truck pulls out. I am sorry I do not have a
link to the Youtube video that I viewed showing how quickly they were dumping and melting the snow.

Piping the 8 plus boilers in series would provide a huge amount of hot water.

The use of a Victaulic piping system would be quick and easy to repair if a leak was found as the pit could be pumped out quickly and the pipe gasket repaired quickly using a steel floating work platform that would be lowered into the pit.

Compressed air would be used to find the leak quickly and the plan of repair could be done quickly.

The one inch Victaulic pipe could be used in long pipe runs with a single eighty foot joint connecting to the end wall pipe joints providing a 200 foot loop of pipe that would have 160-180 degree water running through it

So for example 38 pipe runs with the pipe running in ladder runs would have 7,600 feet of one inch pipe that would or could be split amoung the eight boilers with each boiler heating 950 feet of pipe fully exposed to the snow and melt water

The Island of Hokkaido lies in an area of immense wet weather events
and as result of the northern seas surrounding it is subject to snows with heavy
moisture content that create huge snowfall events on a daily basis
(meaning several feet overnight)on most of the islands inhabited areas
and the smaller cities have no where to put the snow so many snow
melting pits are used.

Even a single snow storm would be worth the investment.

When the Boston/Massachusetts Bureaucrats ask college engineering professors and
civil engineers "How do we solve our snow problem many have said "I don't know"
or "simply use rock salt"


I have also suggested same to the mayors office and it probably ended up in the
in the deleted dust bin of history.

Better yet they could steam distill the melt water and sell it so.............................

It takes brilliant engineers to design things and an amateur to destroy them as
was said about the Titanic.

You only have to look out in the harbor to see Deer Island and the three lives it took to
solve a sewage problem that they "ALL" could have solved three years before the deaths of the
two divers that was described in great detail in the book "Trapped Beneath The Sea" by Neil Swidey.
instead of passing the buck down the road to the next administration of the Bay State Or Boston itself.

Three men died needlessly because of cost cutting/shoddy work and jury rigged diving equipment and their families are the ones left behind to look at a couple of memorial plaques on Deer Island.

I hope this answers your questions.

============================================================================



The snow melting pits are in several prefectures and work well,
why not copy them for Boston?

A snow melting pit would take up little room as the pit itself is
narrow very deep and long to allow four or five trucks wide to
dump at one time.

For that matter a small wheel loader with a plow blade could be used
to push dumped snow into the receiving pit to reduce any chance of
the haulage truck causing any damage to the building and this would
allow large dump trailers to haul snow to a snow melting pit site with
speed as the snow would just be dumped and pushed into the melting
pit later.

A small anthracite coal stoker boiler consumes a small amount of coal
per hour and can heat huge amounts of water to 180 degrees quickly.


A melt pit that is 20 feet wide 80 feet long and 40 feet deep would hold

80 by 40 by 20=64,000 thousand cubic feet of water times 6.84251
which is the number of gallons of water that occupies a cubic foot
equals 437,921 gallons of heated water in total volume(rounded higher).

So if the pit was filled to seventy percent of its volume with hot water it
would have 306,545 gallons (rounded higher) of hot water for melting it would
continue melt the snow and ice into liquid that would eventually reach the scupper
drains and flow to Deere Island eventually from the storage basins.

Saying that The melt water is heated to 180 degrees on a continuous basis and becomes
the heat source to aid in melting more snow and ice and the water temperature could be
increased to two hundred degrees to increase the heat and melting power available to
reduce the snow to liquid and the melt pit would also be evaporating the melt water as a
steam vapor at the same time.

A battery of coal stokers would provide all the hot water needed to melt the snow at all hours.

The coal bins of the stokers would have to be filled and the boilers would have a closed loop
water system that could be fed from a pressure tank that receives city water.

The 300,000 plus gallons of heated water that would be in the pit is huge energy source that could be counted
on to do the work quickly as it is done on Hokkaido Island. The snow would melt quickly and would add to the thermal mass available to melt the snow that is being dumped as soon as the other truck pulls out. I am sorry I do not have a
link to the Youtube video that I viewed showing how quickly they were dumping and melting the snow.

Piping the 8 plus boilers in series would provide a huge amount of hot water.

The use of a Victaulic piping system would be quick and easy to repair if a leak was found as the pit could be pumped out quickly and the pipe gasket repaired quickly using a steel floating work platform that would be lowered into the pit.

Compressed air would be used to find the leak quickly and the plan of repair could be done quickly.

The one inch Victaulic pipe could be used in long pipe runs with a single eighty foot joint connecting to the end wall pipe joints providing a 200 foot loop of pipe that would have 160-180 degree water running through it

So for example 38 pipe runs with the pipe running in ladder runs would have 7,600 feet of one inch pipe that would or could be split amoung the eight boilers with each boiler heating 950 feet of pipe fully exposed to the snow and melt water
 
   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido #7  
I typed my previous response before you posted the rest of the fairytale . They could just dump the snow in Fukinscam bay It's hot there year round --- Trevor
 
   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido #8  
I googled "Hokkaido snow tank" and found nothing but a mention.
Perhaps the technology is not so dramatic as to be of interest.
 
   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido #9  
For your interest for and about snow melting tanks:

From APWA the American Public Works Association

The article is "Winter walking tour of Sapporo, Japan"

I wish I could make a link to it but my computer skills are poor.
 
   / How they get rid of snow in Hokkaido #10  
More on snow melting tanks from the U.S. Roads homepage

March 1, 1997

The article is titled:

Winter Maintenance Practices

"Learning from abroad"
 

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