Yukiko ISHIKAWA

In-Situ Experiment of Underground Water Saving Snow-Melting Pipe Control System@in Nagaoka City

Yusuke FUKUSHIMA

The snow-melting pipe system on the road sprinkles underground water from holes of the pipe laid underground. The use of the pipe system causes serious problems such as the subsidence of ground surface and the lack of ground water in spring. The newly-invented pipe system avoids the occurrence of these problems by saving water and makes it possible to construct the pipe sprinkler network for the wider area. The new system controls the pump with the inverter, based on the data obtained by a snow intensity meter. Several measuring instruments are set in the system such as the discharge meter, the snow intensity meter, the temperature meter and three sets of the digital camera. All the measured data are sent by the use of the Internet through ADSL. In this research, the validity of this new snow-melting pipe system is examined by the in-situ experiment. The new system costs about 1.3 times the cost of the conventional system. The new system uses the expensive ultrasonic flow meter to control the pump, but the use of the pressure meter to estimate and measure the water discharge makes the total system cheaper. The original system is improved based on the results of the in-situ experiment. The formula of the necessary water amount is discussed. The simpler formula is derived from the observed results.