Give me steam And how you feel can make it real...

August 14, 2020 9:01 AM

The Curious History of Steam Heat and Pandemics "The Spanish Influenza, which caused just over 20,000 deaths in New York City alone, “changed heating once and for all.” That’s according to Dan Holohan, a retired writer, consultant, and researcher with extensive knowledge of heating systems and steam heating. (Among his many tomes on the topic: The Lost Art of Steam Heating, from 1992.) Most radiator systems appeared in major American cities like New York City in the first third of the 20th century. This golden age of steam heat didn’t merely coincide with that pandemic: Beliefs about how to fight airborne illness influenced the design of heating systems, and created a persistent pain point for those who’ve cohabitated with a cranky old radiator."
posted by storybored (61 comments total)

Huh!

I love radiant heat far above forced air, and have sometimes lived with decently maintained steam systems, which are such a joy.

Someone with a specialty in sewage treatment could probably date the 19th-c Anglo obsession with sleeping in tightly enclosed spaces to keep the dangerous miasmas out.
posted by clew at 9:13 AM on August 14, 2020 [4 favorites]

I wondered why this is about steam only. Do/did they not do liquid water radiators in NYC? Or is the article just ignoring the distinction? I can see how steam might be preferable in some cases, but I don't really know the full pro/con list, other than liquid water systems don't clang. My house has liquid water radiators, and after I replaced the (original 90 yr old!) boiler, it can easily toast us with the windows open, but it's also super efficient and I don't have to blast it, so that's nice.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:18 AM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

I've been meaning to post Dan Holohan's writings/talks for a long time. This is a really fun rabbit hole, if you think you might be remotely interested and you're looking for some interesting reading/watching. This article links to a version of his talk, The Lost Art of Steam Heating with Dan Holohan, at The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York. He's an engaging speaker and the talk is just under an hour.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:19 AM on August 14, 2020 [7 favorites]

Fascinating. I always assumed my incredibly wasteful past habit of turning on the radiator and opening the window in order to avoid being steamed was an accident of poor design. (I'm pretty sure the need to stretch elastic bands over the always-broken pressure relief valves was the result of poor design. And also painters who didn't give a damn.)
posted by eotvos at 9:20 AM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have the Lost Art of Steam Heating! this guy is an amazing writer and historian, and he made me fall in love with my steam radiators. and they work great now that I actually understand them!

but his info about how they spec'd out radiators to heat a house with windows wide open in winter (I live in Minnesota, no less) makes so much sense as to why they seem overly large - it's because they are! they were so concerned about "bad air" that people kept windows open at all times.

In later years, to try to reduce the heat load of the radiators, people painted them with reflective metal paint, which could reduce their thermal transmission by up to 30%. Anyone seen radiators with old silver or copper-colored paint on them? that's why.
posted by EricGjerde at 9:26 AM on August 14, 2020 [14 favorites]

I don't know. I'm not convinced that radiator systems were specced to keep a building at a comfortable temperature with the windows wide open. It sounds like a story too good to be true.
posted by Automocar at 9:33 AM on August 14, 2020

Whoa, cool! My c.1920 building gets so warm I often don't turn on any radiators until an unusually cold spell, and even then only one of the three in my (not that big! one-bedroom!) apartment. I love radiated heat, and even love the clanking sound. Nice to know the crazy heat that has me opening windows in midwinter is intentional!

Conversely, I grew up with radiators that had been installed later in a house that was mostly c.1850, with some rooms (including my bedroom) a later c1940 addition. The old part of the house was okay -- 18" thick stone walls and all -- but my bedroom was constantly, consistently very cold unless you were literally sat on the radiator.

So I guess the result of this rambling is that yes, I love radiators, but I love good insulation more. Nevertheless, this is wonderful and I'm looking forward to watching the talk LobsterMitten posted.
posted by kalimac at 9:36 AM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

I wondered why this is about steam only. Do/did they not do liquid water radiators in NYC?

I'm guessing it's because steam is much better at circulating. Since it's a heated, pressurized gas, steam naturally rises through the pipes. Inside each radiator, heat is transferred to rooms by allowing the steam to condense back into water which dribbles back down the pipe to the boiler.

Water being a dense liquid doesn't circulate as easily, and unlike today circulating pumps were pretty much nonexistent.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:37 AM on August 14, 2020 [7 favorites]

(The following is probably apocryphal) NYC was (in part) heated with steam because the steam was a by-product of electrical production. (As I was told) Coal and then gas was burnt, steam made and then driven through turbines. On the other side of the turbine the steam is still steam, but has given up most of its energy - so it's sent out to heat houses.

And for building owners it was - for most of the next 70-odd years, cheap. Poorly metered if at all. Then in the late 90's someone at ConEd (the elec utility that provided the steam) woke up to the waste and started charging for it. I spent five years working on steam systems, making them efficient, in some cases ( especially with new windows) steam use could be reduced 75% !

Steam is a crazy, magical thing. (And Dan Holohan a real treasure.)
posted by From Bklyn at 9:38 AM on August 14, 2020 [17 favorites]

Thanks EricGjerde! The tops of my steam heat pipes, above the part wrapped in insulation, are painted silver! I had always wondered why.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 9:38 AM on August 14, 2020

His book goes into some good detail on that - we have two properties here that were both built during the influenza pandemic in 1918 and they both have monstrously large radiators. one has a 33 segment radiator that is over 9 feet long in a front sun room.

but anyhow, as he also says, everyone who knew what they were doing with these systems back in the day are all dead.
posted by EricGjerde at 9:39 AM on August 14, 2020

In the quarter-century I've lived in New York, this past year is the first I've spent in a place that did not have steam heat. I actually thought I'd miss it! You can dry your clothes and pots on the radiators, the hissing is kind of reassuring, and once you figure out how to repack the valves and level your radiators you can reduce the clanking to nearly nil. Sure, if you're in a corner studio of a big building you're just going to have to alternately freeze and cook all winter long but... steam! It's easy and reassuring!

And then I had modern radiant heat and holy shit what was I thinking. Warm floors! Controllable temperatures! Not losing floor space to heavy blocks of iron! Not having to worry about toddlers burning themselves, or accidentally touching a blazing-hot pipe, or having a valve just decide to blow right the fuck off the radiator, spewing a spigot of scalding steam into your room! I'm often nostalgic by default but... nope. Steam was terrible.
posted by phooky at 9:50 AM on August 14, 2020 [11 favorites]

This is fascinating -- so many things make sense now! I will say that radiant heat is the best, no question, but I vastly prefer steam radiators to forced-air (ugh). I really miss being able to put a dish of water on the radiator to humidify the room; forced air makes my sinuses dry & miserable, and humidifiers are fussy to clean and expensive to run.
posted by ourobouros at 10:20 AM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Not heating related but we put in a steam shower last year and love it. I like to pretend I’m steaming in the “for health”!
posted by misterpatrick at 10:24 AM on August 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

100% here for the post title... well played.
posted by sockshaveholes at 10:27 AM on August 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

I've never lived anywhere with a steam radiator. But this has gone a long way to explaining why in so many old movies I've seen they're always opening windows when the kids go to bed, even in winter.
posted by Fukiyama at 10:39 AM on August 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Poor Little Jim, with his mild state of moral insanity!
posted by clawsoon at 10:43 AM on August 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

ourobouros: I really miss being able to put a dish of water on the radiator to humidify the room; forced air makes my sinuses dry & miserable, and humidifiers are fussy to clean and expensive to run.

I've turned to putting a giant stewpot full of water on the stove overnight, set to simmer. Sometimes I'll put a fan behind it to move the humidity around a bit.
posted by clawsoon at 10:46 AM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

I don't know. I'm not convinced that radiator systems were specced to keep a building at a comfortable temperature with the windows wide open. It sounds like a story too good to be true.

I'm with you. Particularly this quote "Steam heating and radiators were designed to heat buildings on the coldest day of the year with all the windows open."

That has to be an exaggeration. You can't keep a room warm on the coldest day of the year with the windows open. Below zero Fahrenheit?

This particular quote seems to be to come from only one source -- the author of the article. I would like to see some of these supposed engineering manuals.
posted by JackFlash at 10:55 AM on August 14, 2020

That has to be an exaggeration. You can't keep a room warm on the coldest day of the year with the windows open. Below zero Fahrenheit?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you never lived in any of my apartments I guess. Polar vortex, -13 degrees F, windows open, residents actively perspiring.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:01 AM on August 14, 2020 [27 favorites]

As someone who grew up and lives in Southern California, I've still only seen radiators in old cartoons.

Apparently we have what's called "forced air" here, which people upthread don't seem to like, even though it's great.

Although, in fairness, if I turned off my heater for a week during winter, my house miiiight get down to 63F. Perhaps forced air sucks if you live somewhere where it actually gets below 50F more than a few days a year.
posted by sideshow at 11:03 AM on August 14, 2020

About the ‘scaled to heat with all the windows opened’ One of the systems we upgraded was designed so that air came in from street-level gratings, passed over (enormous) radiators in the basement and then the heat was ducted up to the specific rooms. The heat was then pulled out of the rooms by fan, and let out of huge ducts on the roof! That is, air passed over the radiators exactly once. And the radiators were controlled by pneumatic valves, replacement parts for which were still available 90 years later (Johnson Controls I’m lookin at you). It was a hilariously inefficient system.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:09 AM on August 14, 2020 [4 favorites]

It may be an an unsourced claim, but now at least I feel less responsible for destroying the environment, as I did when I would open the windows in the middle of February. Even so, I preferred that to when the steam heat doesn't work and you have to keep pleading with maintenance to see about the boiler. I'm cold-natured and anxious, so it is difficult to know how comfortable I should be and should have a right to be, which is a weird place to be coming from if you're going to call the management office.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:11 AM on August 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Municipal steam heating appears to be common in Sweden. In the part of Stockholm I live in, homes generally don't have boilers, but get hot water and heat from steam pipes, from a central heating plant.

I have been wondering why Sweden hasn't been completely annihilated by the Rona despite not having any sort of lockdown and mask-wearing being almost unheard of. A half-joking explanation is that Swedes are socially distanced at the best of times, and there could be some truth in that, though if robust steam heating does serve to minimise the recirculation of infectious air, that could also contribute to keeping R low.
posted by acb at 11:12 AM on August 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

(Also, as a Southerner, I didn't grow up with radiators, and regard them with fear and awe. Good place to melt chocolate and raise bread, though.)
posted by Countess Elena at 11:12 AM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

I think air conditioning has made us think of indoor spaces as sealed and impermeable. This is a very recent development. For most of the history of windows, they've been just open holes in a wall. Glass as a cheap and universal technology is pretty modern, and even a hundred years ago, the indoor/outdoor divide was probably not nearly as great for most people as it is for most of us now.

I liked having radiator heat when I lived in New York, but boilers are scarier to maintain than a regular furnace.
posted by rikschell at 11:14 AM on August 14, 2020 [6 favorites]

A number of towns in northern Minnesota had/have municipal steam heat, similar in a way to what NYC has, but on a smaller scale. Homes within the radius of the steam plant have a higher market value since they can tap into a very cheap and efficient heat source during cold frigid winters. It's pretty nice.

We actively seek out homes with passive radiant heat (aka radiators) vs. forced air systems, for aesthetics and for health purposes. Whenever I have to stay in a place with forced air I always notice the difference - or at least my sinuses do :)

to each their own, but we are happy with the combo of radiators for heat and mini-split AC for cooling in the days that need it.

And as far as someone talking about heating in the winter, our house has a 250k BTU boiler which is almost double the spec for a house of this size, with radiators to match. we've cranked them up on a -25F day just to air out the house in winter and not freeze while doing so and it's kept it passably warm. I think maybe their thought process was more on the order of "leaving windows open a crack for air flow" vs. "wide open". but Minnesota winters aren't exactly marginal.
posted by EricGjerde at 11:18 AM on August 14, 2020 [3 favorites]

I took a deep dive into Dan Holohan's steam heating materials after we bought a house with a malfunctioning steam system. I used his books to sort out a totally messed up system and love my radiators now. The way these systems work is absolutely fascinating, especially when you get into the various vacuum/vapor systems.

Anyway, for those of you doubting Dan's assertion about radiator sizing for windows open, if you read his books he has the numbers to back it up. My house was built in the 40s, so well beyond the pandemic, and the radiators were sized for closed window heating. Here's the thing--if you see a steam radiator appropriately sized for closed-window heating, it is small. Smaller than you think it should be, because most of us are used to looking at hot water radiators if we ever look at them. Lots of places dealt with their oversized pandemic-era radiators by converting them into hot water systems, which put out fewer BTU's per square foot of EDR (a measure of radiating surface area). When that didn't reduce the output enough, they wold paint them with silver or gold flake paint, which reduced radiating efficiency even more. I've lived in pandemic era housing before, and those radiators are indeed stupidly huge. I have no doubt they'd cook the rooms if they were still steam operated.
posted by TrialByMedia at 11:22 AM on August 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

That has to be an exaggeration. You can't keep a room warm on the coldest day of the year with the windows open. Below zero Fahrenheit?

New York City, Lower East Side apartment. Yes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:23 AM on August 14, 2020 [8 favorites]

I wondered why this is about steam only.
One, steam can work with a single pipe - the gaseous steam flows up in the top part of the pipe, and the condensed liquid returns to the boiler via the bottom part. As long as you can slope the pipe, it's cheaper and less work to retrofit.
Two, phase change. The energy given off when a pound of steam condenses to a pound of water is (roughly) equal to the energy if a pound of boiling water was cooled off and started to freeze. Hot water isn't kept at boiling, and it doesn't return almost freezing when it's headed back to the boiler.
Three, the amount of mass you have to move to heat more than one or two stories with hot water is vast (partially due to point two). That's a lot of water to pump. And a lot of water to heat, and a lot of water to pump.
Four, even in two-pipe steam, the it's all gravity. Steam rises, condensed water drains back down. All by physics.
posted by notsnot at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2020 [8 favorites]

You can't keep a room warm on the coldest day of the year with the windows open.

(Fond recollection of wearing shorts in the winter-time in my DC apartment in that 1907 building)
Oh yes you can! But boy was that system noisy -- it was like pieces of valves had broken off and were hitting stuff in the pipes, going back and forth.
posted by Rash at 11:28 AM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

> Perhaps forced air sucks if you live somewhere where it actually gets below 50F more than a few days a year.

It really does. When it's genuinely cold outside and the forced air is running almost constantly, it removes all the moisture from the air. I once had to repaint a wall in the middle of winter, and -- no kidding -- the paint dried within seconds of being laid onto the wall. It's hell on your sinuses (and for those with allergies, it's even worse, because it can kick up dust, dander, etc.).
posted by ourobouros at 11:31 AM on August 14, 2020 [6 favorites]

That has to be an exaggeration. You can't keep a room warm on the coldest day of the year with the windows open. Below zero Fahrenheit?

Repeating what others have said, it's running joke here in NYC about having to have your windows open in the middle of winter because of the radiators. It's good to know that this was meant as a feature, not a bug.

Also don't forget that most NYC buildings are giant lumps of cement or brick joined onto other similar giant lumps, making for much better insulation than freestanding stick built homes. In my Brooklyn brick rowhouse, I keep the thermostat set at 65 in winter and don't even open up the radiators on the second floor and I'm still sleeping with my windows open.
posted by newpotato at 11:40 AM on August 14, 2020 [4 favorites]

Heating the air and opening the windows is also a straightforward way of getting rid of excess indoors humidity, which was a big problem with line-dried clothes indoors and boiling-centered cuisines.
posted by clew at 11:50 AM on August 14, 2020 [8 favorites]

Oh, and shout-out to the Peter Gabriel deep cut for the post title!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:55 AM on August 14, 2020 [6 favorites]

Yeah when I was living in Winnipeg I rented an apartment with radiators and I'd routinely open the windows in the winter to help bring down the temperature. I felt bad doing it so I also spent a lot of time wearing shorts and t-shirts.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:59 AM on August 14, 2020 [3 favorites]

We have big steam plants for both Downtown and the Northside of the city but it's all for heating skyscrapers and stadiums; I don't think it's used in any residential building. The plant near me is pretty cool looking though and you can walk up and look at the generators through the windows.
posted by octothorpe at 12:13 PM on August 14, 2020

On the "coldest day, windows open" thing - I looked it up in one of Holohan's books (The Lost Art of Steam Heating Revisited, p. 116 and following). He doesn't give an exact citation for it there but: There are two stages to this, first is the broad stale air theory of disease, which is given in a bunch of attributed quotes from literary or other writings from the 1850s-1890s, and then he offers a piece from Edward Richmond Pierce writing about how to size steam heating systems, from 1911 - Pierce gives the additional factor (30%) the engineer should add for "when rooms are heated during the day and opened to outside air during the night". Then after the 1918-19 pandemic gave new urgency to the Fresh Air Movement, Holohan says "You can see it in the engineering books published after 1920. The authors wrote of the Fresh Air Movement and cautioned engineers to specify boilers and radiators that will be large enough to heat the building on the coldest day of the year, with the windows open."

In his bibliography, the texts he includes that were published from 1920-29:

The Part of Air Vents in the Steam Heating Process by JF Musselman, 1921
Steam Boilers ed. Terrell Croft, 1921
Practical Heat ed. Terrell Croft, 1923
500 Plain Answers to Direct Questions in Steam, Hot Water, Vapor and Vacuum Heating by Alfred G King, 1923
Designing Heating and Ventilating Systems, by Charles A Fuller 1923
How to Build Furnace Efficiency by Jos. W Hays, 1924
The Richardson Manual, pub. by Richardson & Boynton Co, 1925
The Dunham Handbook, pub. by C. A. Dunham Co, 1925
Technical Instruction in Heating and Ventilating Engineering, by Ara Marcus Daniels, 1926
Steam and Hot Water Heating by Ara Marcus Daniels, 1928
Audel's Answers on Practical Engineering for Engineers, Firemen, Machinists, by Gideon Harris and Associates, 1929
Mechanical Equipment of Buildings, Vol I: Heating and Ventilation, by Louis Allen Harding and Arthur Cutts Willard, 1929

There were engineering standards for all these things (eg he has a whole thing about the history of standardizing pipe diameter and what it meant for the industry) and these books would have been giving quantitative guidelines for how to size the radiators and boiler that a building would need. So it isn't far-fetched to me at all that these books would contain advice to design for the heaviest load the system would face, and as of 1911 there was already a standard factor to add because people would open the windows overnight.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:22 PM on August 14, 2020 [9 favorites]

When I lived in Chicago, the apartment I lived in had radiators in the bathroom, living room, and bedroom. Just the bathroom radiator kept the whole place warm, with windows open in the winter and shorts and t-shirts inside.

Now in Southern California with one floor heater for the house (there was one in the back, but there was a fire many years ago before we bought the house so now there's only one), and I have an extensive sweater/hoodie collection as well as a selection of lap blankets. The cats are extra snuggly in wintertime, which is nice.

(And I've had that Peter Gabriel song stuck in my head all morning thanks to the post title)
posted by mogget at 12:24 PM on August 14, 2020

Forced air:
Downside, it blows a lot of hot dry air at you. Not great.
Upside, YOU CAN HAVE CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING. (Not some fake split system with separate register things in every room, real central AC.) Also, system doesn't rely on gravity, so your blower and heat/AC unit can be in the attic, or a closet, or wherever.

If you're not going to need central air, and you are going to have a basement, steam heat can be nice. I will say that apparently the "hugely over-powered steam radiator" phase must have ended by the 1930's, as my house in Rhode Island was definitely never ever ever over-heated during the loooong winter. On the other hand, I once took a work trip to Bavaria in February, and the guys in the office there had windows cracked above the radiators so it didn't get too hot. IN GERMANY. Where they care about energy efficiency, and seem to generally have their shit together.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:48 PM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

I grew up in a house with hot water radiators, and my current home has them too. I know less about steam than hydronic heating, but one of the challenges with hydronics, especially old-style hot water radiators, is even distribution of heat. The flow of water has to be carefully planned when plumbing in the radiators, or you can have much more hot water going to certain rooms than others. Since hot water is less dense than cold water, it tends to rise upwards faster, as well (which is how it's distributed through old-style hydronic heating systems in the absence of pumping), which means upper stories tend to heat up much faster and stay hotter than lower stories. Traditional hot water radiators don't have flow-control valves (the shut-off valves aren't really designed for flow control) so it's hard to adjust this to provide even heating throughout a house if it's not done right to start with. In my current house this is a particular problem: our thermostat is on the first floor, which is heated less efficiently than our second floor and so tends to be 5-10 degrees colder in the winter. Setting the thermostat for comfort on the first floor leads the second floor to be really hot, and we have to open windows at least partially in order to keep it comfortable. Setting the thermostat colder tends to be less predictable, though, but always makes the first floor way too cold. Despite its quirks, though, I much prefer radiant heating over forced air. It's way more efficient, and provides a much more pleasant form of heating. Forced air heaters just dry the air out way too much and give me sinus problems. Plus sitting next to a nice hot radiator after being out on a cold day is wonderful.

Now there are thermostatic flow-control valves for radiators, which I've been wanting to install in my house ever since I moved in. These basically give you zoned control over the amount of hot water flowing through the radiator in every room, compensating for any problems in the design of the hydronic circuit. In theory it should make the whole system much more efficient by causing more of the hot water to be distributed to rooms where it's needed and less wasted in rooms that are already too hot.

I think at least some of these issues apply to steam radiators, too. I wonder how much of the issues with folks in apartment buildings getting way too hot in the winter is due to steam distribution rather than just oversized boilers per se, since the boilers need to operate at a level to make sure the least-efficiently-served apartments are heated. Maybe thermostatic flow control valves could provide a better compromise between the overall efficiency of steam heat versus the waste of having to dump that heat through an open window into a freezing cold night.
posted by biogeo at 12:58 PM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

With steam you have a temperature-operated valve at the end that lets the cold air out and so lets the steam in. (Once the hot steam gets to the end, it shuts off.) They sell them with different orifice sizes so you can balance out which ones fill faster (or you can get adjustable ones).

They do tend to fail eventually and allow steam to blow out the opening at the end, which isn’t great.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 1:10 PM on August 14, 2020

Two pipe steam, like I have, makes this easier. The steam trap replaces the thermostatic air vent and can be sized to control radiator speed. Then you can fine tune with the radiator input valve. If the trap fails, the steam goes into your return lines instead of the room. You will know this is happening when your return lines start hammering like crazy. The trap element is easily replaced.
posted by TrialByMedia at 1:21 PM on August 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

I used to think steam heat was ideal until I realized the repellent smell that was giving me an extreme headache was a VOC component of an anti-scale, anti-rust compound almost everybody was adding to their boilers.

It made whole buildings smell like crap — crap from a hydrochlorocarbon based organism rather than the hydrocarbon forms more common in this biosphere.
posted by jamjam at 2:49 PM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Twelve years ago my wife and I bought a house in Queens with steam radiators. It's a semi-detached wood-framed house built in 1928 (think Archie Bunker). It hadn't really been updated much at all (we're the third owners) and the first winter the pipes banged like crazy and the valves kept breaking and blowing clouds of steam. I learned to replace the valves (radiators take different valves depending on how far they are from the furnace) and drain the furnace periodically. Now the whole system is almost completely silent. I'm a steam heat fan.
posted by Drab_Parts at 3:10 PM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Municipal steam heating appears to be common in Sweden

District heating in Stockholm is mostly hot water based, as is largely the case elsewhere. Steam based in Stockholm will be first gen and likely date from before 1940.
posted by biffa at 3:15 PM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Surprisingly (to me anyway) downtown San Francisco has an extensive central steam generation and distribution system.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:53 PM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

This is going to raise some eyebrows:

Some buildings in NYC use the ConEd steam system to cool as well as heat.
posted by bilabial at 5:08 PM on August 14, 2020 [3 favorites]

That has to be an exaggeration. You can't keep a room warm on the coldest day of the year with the windows open. Below zero Fahrenheit?

I lived in an apartment building in NYC that was old and had that kind of radiator. Can confirm, that thing was *ROBUST* and not at all controllable, at least by me -- I loved it, the person I was living with spent half that winter on the fire escape.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 5:34 PM on August 14, 2020

Lived for a while in student co-op housing in Toronto, which utilized re-purposed residential houses. The house I was living in used radiator heat. I had a room on the first floor that was chilly in winter — the people on the third floor needed to keep their windows open. I had a small workshop set up in the basement — the waste heat from the furnace made it more comfortable than my room.
posted by rochrobbb at 6:57 PM on August 14, 2020

Spokane, WA had steam heat as a downtown utility back in the early 1900s. The building still stands today and the smokestacks are amongst the most definitive features of its downtown (along with the Monroe Bridge and the Pavillion Tent/Clocktower. Spokane is an interesting place.
posted by hippybear at 8:40 PM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

In my time running a 1911 clocktower in Baltimore that was an unfaithful copy of the tower from the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence erected to advertise a tranquilizer-laden fizzy hangover cure, one of my favorite challenges, other than mastering the operation of the clock itself, was managing the original 1911 steam radiator heating system.

Our system had no boiler, being connected into the steam mains running throughout downtown boiler, and was, barring some modernization to the regulators on the ornately cast radiators, much the same system that was installed in 1911, and it worked beautifully once I'd successfully absorbed the detailed lessons imparted to me in long chatty sessions of explication by our regular steam guy. Most of the problems came down to the fact that a steam system for a 19-story Edwardian-era tower was an avant garde technology for the time, when the city was still full of horsecarts and the mains supply for the building was DC-power from a neighborhood power plant, so things like the complete absence of insulation would make the feed line turn into a giant condenser, and the older regularators never worked well (the new ones were a joy).

Where it went wrong was when the steam utility in the city was bought by a French bus company, which promptly decided that the not-brilliantly-maintained turn-of-the-century steam mains should run at triple their customary pressure for efficiency, at which point the mains began a regular pattern of rupturing and the new regulator installed by the utility to bring the pressure back to what the tower's system wasn't up to the task. I miss my time there, but was glad to be done with trying to keep the heat on with a limited budget and major supply problems.

What was sort of miraculous, when it worked, was the fact that you had this enormous tower running off a steam mains, with a basement that matched the 10x10 meter footprint of the tower that was more full of machinery to pressurize the water feed to the toilets on upper floors and a massive pump for the fire sprinklers, with just a little panel on one side of the basement that regulated the steam feed. It was steampunk in its most literal sense.
posted by sonascope at 4:32 AM on August 15, 2020 [8 favorites]

That's "regulators" in paragraph 3. Stupid short editing window, argh.
posted by sonascope at 4:38 AM on August 15, 2020

Until a few years ago, I lived my whole life with steam radiators and I absolutely loved them. I lived for the clanking sounds. I could tell time by the hissing sound when they came on at 7am, 12 noon, 4pm and 7pm. I loved that you could dry socks and mittens on them. In my last place, which was well maintained, I loved that I could regulate them a bit by hand. I didn't realize opening the window was ok, but I did like to keep windows open a crack at night while sleeping even though I felt guilty about it.

Now I live in a modern building with an HVAC system I do not understand at all. It's insanely dry in the winter and I've had to get a humidifier in order not to wake up with a sore throat in the winter. I really miss the clanging and hissing. I guess the only advantage is the AC for summer, which is necessary because the new place does not have anything naturally cooling yet like big shady trees, which is another thing I miss.
posted by maggiemaggie at 12:38 PM on August 15, 2020

I once had an oil-fueled steam heat system that had been converted from coal. It was OK, but it would clang on particularly cold nights. The funny thing is that I don’t remember ever thinking about how it worked; just paid the monthly oil bills. But surely it had to have its water topped off. Maybe there was a system that did that automatically, but why would I blithely assume a system like that would just work? And wouldn’t it have accumulated scale?

Well... eventually the piper’s fee came due. The injectors got fouled and the basement was filled with soot while the rest of the house smelled like a campfire.

We had to have it professionally cleaned and, while we were at it had the asbestos insulation on the pipes removed and replaced with fiberglass.

Should have replaced the furnace that was almost as big as a steampunk minivan, but we just had it converted to gas while paying another small fortune to have the underground oil tank removed responsibly.

I still don’t know how the water gets topped up, but it’s not my problem anymore.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:32 PM on August 15, 2020

Huh. I owe someone a mental apology. He let me stay in his apartment in New Jersey and in this and all other matters he was an amazingly nice guy; but the apartment was blazing hot despite the snow billowing around the building in the depths of winter. The temperature was unbearable. I asked him how to turn the heat down and he said "Oh, you can't, just open a window." I couldn't do that, of course: I was used to being shouted at if I left a door or window ajar; but eventually I had to, lest I melt.

Reader, I thought he was incompetent, a liar, or a scoundrel: how could a heating system be unregulated? Perhaps he meant that he didn't know how to fix it; maybe he just didn't care; who was paying for this massively wasteful act of environmental vandalism anyway?

Well, now I know better: Moshe, you were speaking the absolute simple truth and I should not have doubted you. I regret my bad thoughts and thank you sincerely for your kindness and good advice.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:34 PM on August 15, 2020 [4 favorites]

I grew up with hot-water radiators with a converted-to-gas coal furnace. Every year we'd 'burp' the air out of the radiators, and dad had to hire a furnace pro to explain how to keep the expansion tank and pipes properly filled with water via a set of manual valves. Not steam, but still better, when working properly, than the forced air heat-exchanger I live with in the winters now.

The garage was originally a stable, an so had a couple of huge radiators to keep the horses from freezing in the winter; Dad removed them when he realized that cars don't need to be kept heated. He then had to add an additional radiator and associated plumbing to the master bedroom above the garage, as well as a heated water-bed, to keep it comfortable in mid-winter.

My first bedroom was cold enough in the winter that I would routinely have to scrape the ice off the windows in the morning to see what the weather was like outside, so I moved to a smaller, more central room when it became clear that when my bedroom was in the 50s, the master bedroom and the rest of the house was at the government-recommended 65F. This was more due to the late-70s "Energy Crisis" austerity measures than bad design; when you shut off most of the first-floor radiators because "they're not needed most of the time" the heat no longer rises and the second floor corner bedroom becomes inordinately cold.

Weirdly, I guess, nowadays I don't even bother turning on the heat until it gets pretty darn cold, as I'd rather have a couple of blankets and a down comforter anyway. The advent of "weighted blankets" has been a godsend, giving me that comforting feeling of being cocooned without necessarily the excessive sweat-inducing insulation.
posted by Blackanvil at 9:06 PM on August 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

Fascinating. I've spent the weekend reading Holohan's book on the lost art of steam heating.

What I find odd is the complete lack of steam heating systems in the UK. All buildings here (except maybe some very fancy new ones with radiant heat driven by low temperature heat pumps) are heated using hot water systems in radiators fuelled by natural gas boilers.

Our building stock is presumably about the same average age or older than New York so I wonder why our Victorians and Georgians didn't install steam heating on anything like the same scale. Curious if anyone knows the answer to this.

The great thing about steam is it doesn't require any pumps. Some systems do have them but a properly designed and maintained one-pipe or two-pipe steam system could and can easily heat a 20 story building without a single powered control system, pump, or motorised valve. That is absolutely remarkable and you have to imagine how big an advance that would have been from an era of manually messing about with coal fireplaces! If you grew up having to manually stoke fires and getting all that coal dust everywhere and soot and ashes and still being cold, how wonderful must it have been to have a few steam radiators that kept you toasty throughout the winter?

Of course it does require massive pipes and you have to carefully design the sloping of the pipes, the venting system, and all that to get an efficient and silent system. By comparison a hot water system can be put in any old way and basically work, and the pipes are much smaller. Now that all houses have electricity and pumps are cheap and reliable, the advantages of steam are minimal if any.
posted by atrazine at 1:13 AM on August 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

I once took a work trip to Bavaria in February, and the guys in the office there had windows cracked above the radiators so it didn't get too hot. IN GERMANY. Where they care about energy efficiency, and seem to generally have their shit together.

I've been living in Bavaria for about 2.5 years now and all the heaters I have seen have been radiators, which I think are different than steam. Actually I'm 100% sure they're different based on all yall's descriptions. Granted, these buildings were built at least after WW2 and alot in the 1970s or later (the building I work in was built in the 80s and remodeled in the 2000s) so probably past the steam craze. Though for commercial purposes, maybe steam is still used because in the winter you almost have to wear summer clothes underneath your winter clothes because everywhere inside is steaming hot.

People here open the windows in winter all the time. It really really shocked my Texas-raised self (see the above commenter above about having it ingrained in my soul that opening windows/doors wastes either the AC or the heat). Germans really really stuck with that fresh air = healthy philosophy. And I can actually see the point, if you dont have a forced air system and the windows here are sealed really well when they're shut, then you would never get fresh air without opening a window.

I wonder how much of this idea that people must open their windows in winter for fresh air is due to the technology of the time (i.e. no forced air systems yet) and how much is a hold-over from European immigrants, of which the US just had a huge flood in the mid-to-late 1800s. Like is this a European custom that followed immigrants? It seems like it could be if Americans had to be convinced of it during the 1918 pandemic.
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:04 AM on August 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

It really really shocked my Texas-raised self (see the above commenter above about having it ingrained in my soul that opening windows/doors wastes either the AC or the heat).

First off, and this is a derail, but Bavaria is the Texas of Germany, and vice versa.

Second, and I almost gasped: this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of how in the South the two coldest months of the year are July and August because the offices still have the AC cranked down to like 68 so if you are a sane person and try to wear warm-weather clothes because it’s hot outside you will freeze your ass off all day.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:49 AM on August 17, 2020

First off, and this is a derail, but Bavaria is the Texas of Germany, and vice versa.

Lol you're not the first person to tell me that and I agree. That's probably why I fit in so well here.

Second, and I almost gasped: this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of how in the South the two coldest months of the year are July and August because the offices still have the AC cranked down to like 68 so if you are a sane person and try to wear warm-weather clothes because it’s hot outside you will freeze your ass off all day.

Oh yes I am the person that is always carrying a sweater with me in the summer because inside is freeeeeezing. I literally had a space heater under my desk at work that I used in the summer because it was so cold and I kept a blanket at my desk too. (Though that was poor office design. The thermostat was in an office that had floor to ceiling windows and got direct sun all day long.)
posted by LizBoBiz at 12:32 AM on August 18, 2020