Snow-Free Playgrounds

Kids playing on a playground in the dead of winter in a mountain town which gets an average of 166 inches of snow—that’s nearly 14 feet, by the way—every winter?

Forget about it.

That is, unless you’re lucky enough to live in Steamboat Springs, CO, a ski resort town that sits in the rugged Rocky Mountains at 6,695 feet. Steamboat Springs (population 12,088) is about 150 miles north and west of Denver.

The town’s school district features two elementary schools—Strawberry Park and Soda Creek—with snow melt systems that keep the playgrounds free of snow during the long winter months, providing the school kids with play opportunities you normally wouldn’t find in some towns in the snowbelt.

Pascal Ginesta, director of maintenance, operations, and transportation for the Steamboat Springs School District, explains how the system works. “It is the same basic setup that is used in a commercial and residential sidewalk or driveway snow melt system. The difference is the fact that it’s a playground, and we have applied a layer of soft material on the concrete substrate. The system has its own natural gas boiler with waterlines that circulate through the concrete to warm it and melt the snow.

“The system is activated from a sensor that senses falling snow and turns the boiler on. When the snow stops falling, the boiler turns off. That means the system only ever functions during snowfall, which never has a chance to accumulate. The two playgrounds are currently in their third winter and, with regular maintenance, have been trouble-free.”

We asked Ginesta what the annual cost of operating the system is, but he said, “The actual cost is a tough one, as the systems run off the same meter as the buildings. That being said, it’s better and safer than paying someone to shovel a playground or a sidewalk in the long run.”

Children’s Playstructures & Recreation, Littleton, CO, installed the playgrounds as well as the poured-in-place surfacing around and over the warming tubes.

One school official at Strawberry Park Elementary said the school, in an effort to save money, turned the system off during the Christmas break one winter. It snowed quite a bit during the holiday break, and with the system off, the snow accumulated and had to be shoveled off because the system couldn’t melt it all. “That was a lesson learned there,” she said.

However, the school is very pleased with how the snow melt system is working, she said. “It’s great. The kids have a dry place to play.”