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It's so interesting to see this on Hacker News. Through the bizarre strange fortune of life I'm the owner of a mediocre building built in the late 1800s located

It's so interesting to see this on Hacker News. Through the bizarre strange fortune of life I'm the owner of a mediocre building built in the late 1800s located in an old mining boom town. It has a very robust steam heating system in place but the town is absolutely in the middle-of-nowhere. The cost of getting someone to just look at the pipes is about $200, not to mention any work. Paid three different people to look at it and nobody knew up from down, got 3 radically different opinions on what should be done. After a ridiculous amount of searching and reading, I've come to find that basically nobody knows what they're talking about on the subject. The advice online and in person essentially amounts to witchcraft. I noticed people using the same adjectives/verbs to describe steam-heating that sellers of essential oils use. Finding Dan Holohan's website was like finding a miracle. Steam heating is so simple and efficient but it was done in an era when documentation and standardization was more nonexistent than today. If you sit down and draw diagrams and think about the system you have in your house it becomes so simple... but without that hour of logic and shaping of the problem you get no where fast. It was such a good 'back to the basics' experience for me that I wouldn't trade for my doctorate degree.

ransom1538 8y ago
There are buildings in SF that still use steam. There must be a maintainer there still alive.
- chrisdhoover 8y ago
  Most homes in San Francisco have zero heat. Many added a gas wall heater in the late ‘50’s but they are a ridulcus heating method. To stay warm in Frisco, drink hot toddy’s, where three layers; t shirt, flannel shirt, hoody, rest in bed with you running laptop on you chest, and — go to the corner bar full of people and drink some more.
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    I was horrified the first time I saw a gas wall heater. Gas fireplace to heat the outside! Even more horrified when my Lebanese roommate needed to keep the ambient temperature 85 using a gas wall heater.
wlesieutre 8y ago
It's weird for me to think of this as a forgotten technology having gone to Penn State where all of campus was heated by a district steam system. Between east and west campus, they have a capacity of 700,000 lbs of steam per hour. https://opp.psu.edu/unit/steam-services https://opp.psu.edu/unit/steam-services https://news.psu.edu/story/460837/2017/04/17/campus-life/one-year-later-reflecting-penn-state%E2%80%99s-switch-coal-natural-gas https://news.psu.edu/story/460837/2017/04/17/campus-life/one...
- allday 8y ago
  In our little corner of northeast Ohio (east side inner ring Cleveland suburbs), the -majority- of homes use steam heating, as they were constructed in the late 19th and early 20th century. Never quite occurred to me that this is a historical/geographical oddity. There's at least one HVAC company around here that still specializes in boilers and radiators. We had our boiler replaced last year and the system tuned up - there's hardly any water hammer or hissing now and as other commenters have mentioned, the heat feels great.
- romed 8y ago
  Many universities and other institutions like hospitals are steam heated because they have the steam anyway from their own combined-cycle power plants. I guess this is a legacy of universities having power before widespread electrification? In any case it’s very efficient. Steam can provide not just heating but also cooling and refrigeration. If you already have the technical staff to run your own power station then maintaining steam distribution should cause you any additional headaches.
  - Kadin 8y ago
    Up until the advent of inexpensive heat pumps, using electricity for space heating wasn't very practical. There were some electrically-heated (using resistance-coils baseboards) in the 50s and 60s, I guess when they thought electricity would be "too cheap to meter" soon enough, but it requires electrical distribution infrastructure well above what you'd otherwise need for housekeeping loads. The big reason for centralized steam rather than small boilers in each building was fuel. Penn State (and many other colleges / institutions in the northeast) was originally heated with coal. There was a rail spur that ran to the campus power plant for delivering it. Delivering coal to each building would have been a lot of effort, and negates the efficiency of a large boiler compared to small ones. So you create the steam in one place and then distribute the steam. (Also there used to be fairly strict rules on having a licensed "operating engineer" at each boiler when it was operating.) With natural gas now being the dominant fuel, it's almost certainly more efficient to distribute the gas and then generate the steam (or hot water, much more common today) near the point of use, with a high-efficiency boiler/heater.
jimktrains2 8y ago
Many of the buildings in downtown Pittsburgh are still steam heated. I believe the same is true for Oakland (the university district of Pittsburgh). http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2013/02/14/Is-Downtown-Pittsburgh-heat-system-losing-steam/stories/201302140473 http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2013/02/14... http://pacthermal.com/ http://pacthermal.com/
emiliobumachar 8y ago
Well, did any of the 3 radically different opinions on what should be done match your own?
gdubs 8y ago
Are you hoping to maintain the system for historic reasons? If so, sounds like a fun project :) If not, mini-split systems might be a good solution for upgrading the home's heating (and cooling).
segmondy 8y ago
I own a 100yr old house, hot water radiators, all the radiators were busted when I bought it because it wasn't properly winterized. All the pros tried to get me to replace it with forced furnace. I ended up buying used steam radiators and doing everything myself for the fraction of the cost and it's been 10 yrs. You're absolute correct, draw a diagram, being at first principles and it's easy to reason about the system.
- organsnyder 8y ago
  Our house is about the same age, and has a similar system (ours wasn't neglected, thankfully). I'd never consider trading it for forced air—it's completely quiet, very efficient (we got a new 95% efficiency boiler), and extremely comfortable.

ransom1538 8y ago

There are buildings in SF that still use steam. There must be a maintainer there still alive.

chrisdhoover 8y ago
Most homes in San Francisco have zero heat. Many added a gas wall heater in the late ‘50’s but they are a ridulcus heating method. To stay warm in Frisco, drink hot toddy’s, where three layers; t shirt, flannel shirt, hoody, rest in bed with you running laptop on you chest, and — go to the corner bar full of people and drink some more.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  I was horrified the first time I saw a gas wall heater. Gas fireplace to heat the outside! Even more horrified when my Lebanese roommate needed to keep the ambient temperature 85 using a gas wall heater.

wlesieutre 8y ago

It's weird for me to think of this as a forgotten technology having gone to Penn State where all of campus was heated by a district steam system. Between east and west campus, they have a capacity of 700,000 lbs of steam per hour. https://opp.psu.edu/unit/steam-services https://opp.psu.edu/unit/steam-services https://news.psu.edu/story/460837/2017/04/17/campus-life/one-year-later-reflecting-penn-state%E2%80%99s-switch-coal-natural-gas https://news.psu.edu/story/460837/2017/04/17/campus-life/one...

allday 8y ago
In our little corner of northeast Ohio (east side inner ring Cleveland suburbs), the -majority- of homes use steam heating, as they were constructed in the late 19th and early 20th century. Never quite occurred to me that this is a historical/geographical oddity. There's at least one HVAC company around here that still specializes in boilers and radiators. We had our boiler replaced last year and the system tuned up - there's hardly any water hammer or hissing now and as other commenters have mentioned, the heat feels great.
romed 8y ago
Many universities and other institutions like hospitals are steam heated because they have the steam anyway from their own combined-cycle power plants. I guess this is a legacy of universities having power before widespread electrification? In any case it’s very efficient. Steam can provide not just heating but also cooling and refrigeration. If you already have the technical staff to run your own power station then maintaining steam distribution should cause you any additional headaches.
- Kadin 8y ago
  Up until the advent of inexpensive heat pumps, using electricity for space heating wasn't very practical. There were some electrically-heated (using resistance-coils baseboards) in the 50s and 60s, I guess when they thought electricity would be "too cheap to meter" soon enough, but it requires electrical distribution infrastructure well above what you'd otherwise need for housekeeping loads. The big reason for centralized steam rather than small boilers in each building was fuel. Penn State (and many other colleges / institutions in the northeast) was originally heated with coal. There was a rail spur that ran to the campus power plant for delivering it. Delivering coal to each building would have been a lot of effort, and negates the efficiency of a large boiler compared to small ones. So you create the steam in one place and then distribute the steam. (Also there used to be fairly strict rules on having a licensed "operating engineer" at each boiler when it was operating.) With natural gas now being the dominant fuel, it's almost certainly more efficient to distribute the gas and then generate the steam (or hot water, much more common today) near the point of use, with a high-efficiency boiler/heater.

jimktrains2 8y ago

Many of the buildings in downtown Pittsburgh are still steam heated. I believe the same is true for Oakland (the university district of Pittsburgh). http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2013/02/14/Is-Downtown-Pittsburgh-heat-system-losing-steam/stories/201302140473 http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2013/02/14... http://pacthermal.com/ http://pacthermal.com/

emiliobumachar 8y ago

Well, did any of the 3 radically different opinions on what should be done match your own?

gdubs 8y ago

Are you hoping to maintain the system for historic reasons? If so, sounds like a fun project :) If not, mini-split systems might be a good solution for upgrading the home's heating (and cooling).

segmondy 8y ago

I own a 100yr old house, hot water radiators, all the radiators were busted when I bought it because it wasn't properly winterized. All the pros tried to get me to replace it with forced furnace. I ended up buying used steam radiators and doing everything myself for the fraction of the cost and it's been 10 yrs. You're absolute correct, draw a diagram, being at first principles and it's easy to reason about the system.

organsnyder 8y ago
Our house is about the same age, and has a similar system (ours wasn't neglected, thankfully). I'd never consider trading it for forced air—it's completely quiet, very efficient (we got a new 95% efficiency boiler), and extremely comfortable.