:word: Because you know, one would turn enough electricity into heat to melt snow 24/7/365 and the other would turn enough electricity into heat to melt snow only when needed. :fuzzyfish:Your argument is invalid.
a heating element doesn’t need to be very powerful to melt the snow
Yeah, like as powerful as a regular light bulb. lol
I wonder what the life span of the heating element is compared to the life span of a bulb. Obviously the heating element wouldn’t be used when it’s above whatever temperature they deem the cutoff so that would increase the time between servicing. They’d have to leave a buffer since the heating elements wouldn’t immediately clear the snow when activated…maybe on at 40 degrees with a 2 degree hysterisis? Would there be a thermostat at each intersection or would a whole new remote system need to be designed and implemented to arm/disarm the heaters? What a mess…
the engineers did their job with the design. It’s not the engineer’s job to implement the technology into each intersection, that comes down to the decision of the consumer/town board.
These are pre-engineered devices that somebody essentially pulls off the shelf and decides to use. I guarantee that this is a problem only for the North.
Your highway supervisors and elected officials are the ones who would be at fault if somebody needs to be blamed.
Maybe the heater could be like a rear window defrost. Pretty simple.:gotme:
Does the highway dept or whatever even pay for electric or is it more or less free for them?
Are there meters at everylight?
Either way I would bet LEDs with heaters are way cheaper.
I can see it now: “$100 million dollar study on led trafficlight costs”. lol
In New York we’ll spend millions converting to LEDs then just spend millions more adding regular bulbs back in next to the LEDs to act as a snow melter. That way we can spend twice as much and still keep the 9 man union teams employed changing out the heating bulb.
Well if they are converted as needed instead of making some huge special project out of it…
NY is in my opinion, the most ass backwards state in the union. With that said, yes, I can see NY making a huge special project out of it.
Probably will end up with a hybrid design, a standard changeable bulb flanked (encircled) by some rows of LEDs so when the regular bulb burns out, the light is still functional.
Naw we’ll have street lights with wiper blades. :tup:
oopsie.
Or they’ll continue to use the LED bulbs but the entire housing will be fed 220V to heat up to 300°+ F to melt everything that touches it. They’ll just short a wire, ground it to the casing and VOILA! Cheapo solution… LOL
What if they don’t have 220? Can you run a stop light on two 110 volt lines?
Then they’ll have to run a natural gas line and install a burner hanging underneath to heat the thing up…
Can’t they just put an extra lense on them so the snow can’t build up inside like that?
They were preparing for the lack of snow fall due to global warming??
lol
Why don’t they make the whole airplane out of that shit the indestructible black box is made of?
I know it wouldn’t help in blizzard like conditions but it would be a cheap temp fix to block general snowfall from building up.
Don’t forget to put a visor over that new lens so that sun glare doesn’t blind the light. Of course, then snow will build up in that one too so you’d need another lense to keep the snow out of the visor over the anti-snow lens.