Google's Sidewalk Labs Thinks a Reinvented Awning Will Fix Toronto's Winter (engadget.com) 61
One of the prototypes Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs is working on for its planned neighborhood on Toronto's waterfront is a hexagonal paving system. "The slabs are porous and heated, which may keep snow and ice at bay without salting," reports Engadget. "They're easy to replace, and include LED lights that can, for instance, help direct traffic flow during construction or mark street closures." From the report: Sidewalk will also demonstrate what it's calling a Building Raincoat, an awning it says will help protect sidewalks from wind, rain, sun and snow to make outdoor space usable throughout the year. It attaches to the sides of buildings and is fixed to ground anchors. It's made from a durable, lightweight and transparent plastic called ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene).
In addition, Sidewalk will have a number of art installations at the public event, which "use lighting, projection mapping, mud and other techniques to reflect on relationships between humans and animals in public space, and the broader connection of ecology and urbanism." Some of the works will be projected onto the awning. Along with the prototypes, Sidewalk will discuss some of its broader ideas about how to make its neighborhood livable and accessible, in part through affordable housing and its transit system.
In addition, Sidewalk will have a number of art installations at the public event, which "use lighting, projection mapping, mud and other techniques to reflect on relationships between humans and animals in public space, and the broader connection of ecology and urbanism." Some of the works will be projected onto the awning. Along with the prototypes, Sidewalk will discuss some of its broader ideas about how to make its neighborhood livable and accessible, in part through affordable housing and its transit system.
Yeah, let's heat all the sidewalks! (Score:1)
and the awnings, too. It's not like that will consume any significant amount energy, or anything.
Re:Yeah, let's heat all the sidewalks! (Score:5, Funny)
The genius of it is you only have to heat the sidewalks for the first few years. After that, the emissions from doing so make Toronto too warm for ice.
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Close, but not exactly the same (http://www.solarsidewalks.com/).
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Yeah but not just lifeless boring slabs, no, we'll use smart, micro-processing, interlocking, hexagonal blinking heated slabs.
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Winter and tiles don't get along (Score:5, Insightful)
Cities that face winter use poured slabs for sidewalks because there are no cracks for the water to get into, freeze and then expand and break material. This will never make it past a demo section of pavement in a place near city hall so local officials can get their photos taken.
Why, oh, why, would you embed electronics that need to be maintained and repaired into sidewalks particularly once ... I'll stop here. Physics will just take care of this idiocy unfortunately some taxpayer money will get wasted in the process, hopefully not much.
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A few hundred years of working (Score:2)
Cities that face winter use poured slabs for sidewalks because there are no cracks for the water to get into, freeze and then expand and break material.
Pavers are used all over Europe (including in the north) for streets and walkways. Wikipedia showing description and examples [wikipedia.org].
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Seattle isn’t generally that cold... but when it gets icy the absolute worst roads are the ones which still have stretches of exposed cobblestone. It doesn’t take much to make that stuff slicker than snot, as my mom likes to say.
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Paving stones are used in most Canadian cities too (. To me, they appear to last longer than concrete slabs: the spaces between stones give them some room to shift around as the water freezes between them. Concrete just cracks, and then the water makes the cracks worse each winter.
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Actually, poured slabs have the cracking problem. First, concrete cracks. No way around it - concrete will crack, it's to be expected.
Second, the goal is not not resist water, but to shed it. Either by being extremely porous so wat
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Of course roads are curved! You think all roads could be straight lines?!
Fire (Score:3)
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Plus: Reduce tooth decay.
Minus: Melts your face off.
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EFTE has been used on a number of notable buildings without problem, but up until the Grenfell Towers disaster in 2017 you could have said the same about Polyisocyanurate (PIR). You can do an impressive fire resistance demonstration with a block of PIR and a plumber's torch, but it's still possible to design an installation where it presents a hazard because it *can* be made to burn, releasing cyanide.
I suspect there isn't much concern about exposing EFTE to something like a candle flame; it just won't cat
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you need to a little more engineering than a simple small-scale burn test.
The minimal test here is burning an EV car and a fuel truck.
Thunderf00t (Score:4, Insightful)
Man... it's SOLAR FREAKIN ROADWAYS all over again.
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Came here to say this. Whatever happened to that startup that was doing this? Can't remember the name.
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Thunderf00t on youtube keeps making videos about them. They caught them removing snow from the tiles with a shovel and taking photos of the clean tiles, claiming they kept themselved clear of snow.
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You can't fix Toronto. (Score:1)
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Sounds like someone from Calgary.
If they are (Score:2)
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You better hope they're not, otherwise the city of Toronto will be sued by Bon Jovi.
Reinvented? (Score:5, Insightful)
save on salt? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Depends on how the heat is supplied.
Electricity will be very expensive, but on the other hand if you cast a hydronic system into the concrete, it could be very cheap by making use of district heating or any nearby sources of waste heat.
My house uses such heating, but the heat is supplied from the earth via a ground-source heat pump. Might not be the solution for urban roads and sidewalks though as they tend to be dug up quite often for working on utilities.
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if you cast a hydronic system into the concrete
Sounds like a maintenance nightmare.
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you could put in unicorns and rainbows.. (Score:1)
people still are NOT gonna want your spying ass embedded their 'neighborhood', google.
In Finland (Score:1)
In Finland we use kaukolämpö (remote heat) to warm many houses in cities. As nearby power plant generates electricity, there is hot water coming out of the plant that is waste from the energy production. This water is circulated around the houses to warm them. Once the water gets too cold to warm houses, the remaining water is piped under some city streets to melt ice and snow from them.
Because the only thing worse than icy sidewalks is (Score:3)
Ah, melting the ice on the sidewalks. Magic. Poof! It's gone.
Where'd it go?
Remind me, beside what are the sidewalks walked? Oh yeah.
The road.
Because flowing water, yeah, that's what we want at -39 degrees around here.
Sure you can heat the entire city. Sure you can make it all indoors. But if you expect to beat winter, and come out ahead financially, then you've never understood winter.
I'm surprised no one has gone the other way on this. Disposable sidewalks. Full of cracks to absorb the ice and maintain traction. But they only last one season, or less. And they are very easy and very inexpensive and very quick to replace or repair.
Maybe a poured "concrete", fibrous like wood-pulp. Let it crack. Pour some more every month.
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Yeah, it did this winter. I believe it was -25ish, and then a wind chill to -39. I was in it. It was down-right hostile.
That's just Google's cover story (Score:2)
They publically talk about 12 acres of development. Actually, they're going after 350-to-500 acres of prime waterfront property. in return for contributing to an LRT (Light Rapid Transit) line, Google/Alphabet wants a big chunk of waterfront real estate. *AND A PERMANENT CUT OF PROPERTY TAXES IN THE AREA*. This makes the Amazon New York deal look positively beneficial for New York. See https://www.thestar.com/news/g... [thestar.com]