7 ms·
Many American universities use district heating for the whole campus. Also, as made famous by the many steam vents in NYC movie shots: https://en.wikipedia.org
by gamegoblin 4y ago
Many American universities use district heating for the whole campus.
Also, as made famous by the many steam vents in NYC movie shots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating#United_States
- dwighttk 4y agoAs the first dorm on the loop my freshman year, I’d get back from crew practice, go into the bathroom, turn on all three showers, and flush the three toilets about three times each to flush all of the hot water out of the cold water line so that I wouldn’t burn myself when taking a shower. I never heard if anyone got hurt when I took a day off and slept in.
- jefftk 4y agoWhy was the cold water line hot?
- dwighttk 4y agoIt was next to the hot water line and not insulated (enough) and it had pretty much just been sitting there all night.
- pastage 4y agoLucky you didn't get legionella. That is not up to spec, cold water lines should always be below 25°c. I have never seen such an installation, even in development countries it was done correctly.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agosame, been in two developing countries with similar heating system, never seen such a problem. sounds disturbing
- knodi123 4y ago> That is not up to spec, cold water lines should always be below 25 Yikes, that's tough. In my city, the cold water pipes are buried close enough to the surface and the brutal sun that it comes out of the tap about 27-29c during the day.
- thedougd 4y agoIt's possible there's a faulty faucet mixing valve somewhere in the building causing hot water to mix into the cold line.
- dwighttk 4y agoThe hot water from the cold tap reliably went away once the water started running which is what made me think that it was sitting still next to the hot water that caused it
- vesinisa 4y agoThis is most unfortunate but in proper district heating systems the scalding hot district circulation water never touches your house's heating / warm water. A heat exchanger is employed to insulate the different circulation systems. For example, my house has district heating and the warm water side is capped at +65C to protect against burns. It's still pretty damn hot of course but I've never had any problems like you described, and I've lived in a dozen different houses in my city - all with district heating. Probably the system in the dormitory was somehow badly designed or incorrectly tuned.
- dwighttk 4y agoI’m not positive I would have been scalded if I didn’t do that, but I do know that just turning on the cold line would yield at least uncomfortably hot water.
- mulmen 4y agoThe University of Idaho uses district heat. The pipes run under the sidewalks so the waste heat keeps the sidewalks clear in winter.
- thombat 4y agoBy German standards that's still poor insulation. In winter in Leipzig the district heating pipes have snow sitting on them.
- Symbiote 4y agoSometimes this is intentional to keep paths clear. Idaho is much colder than Leipzig in winter.
- krageon 4y agoWhen the sidewalks are melted, it becomes waste heat. The rest of the year, it is waste heat. No matter how cold it is, if you accidentally leak heat it is wasteful - even if the side effect is something you may otherwise want.
- mulmen 4y agoIdaho summers are very hot. The district heat only runs part time. It is all waste heat from the power plant. There’s ample hydroelectric and wind power in the region as well. I’m not sure if the plant does demand shifting over the course of seasons but it could only run in winter because it runs on biomass and employs students. Many campus facilities are essentially jobs programs for students. The mission is experiential learning. I got a B.S. in business that included welding.
- krageon 4y agoThat sounds pretty cool
- 4y ago
- duxup 4y agoUniversity of Minnesota still has it and has been upgrading it: https://cpm.umn.edu/combined-heat-power-plant https://cpm.umn.edu/combined-heat-power-plant
- instaclay 4y agoSt. Paul also: https://www.ever-greenenergy.com/project/district-energy-st-paul/ https://www.ever-greenenergy.com/project/district-energy-st-...
- unethical_ban 4y agoTexas tech in Lubbock does it. Blew my mind then and now.
- sawjet 4y agoYet anytime it snows/freezes somehow the school shuts down. There is no drainage for runoff to accumulate so it just sits on the roads. Alum from 2012
- arka2147483647 4y agoFrom finnish point of view, those seem small. In finnish, the term is ”kaukolämpö”, literally ”far heat”. You dont heat a ”district”, you heat the entire city. I mean, electricity wires go everywhere, why not heating pipes. And so the network for Helsinki looks like this: https://twitter.com/energiahelen/status/1511998227008176129?s=21&t=EnpwN08eiUGT8sFtQR0EhQ https://twitter.com/energiahelen/status/1511998227008176129?... The red lines is the heat pipe network, it covers the entire city. When Americans talk about ”district heating” they miss the scope of the thing.
- mcosta 4y agoMore people live in New York than in the whole of Finland.
- scotty79 4y agoWhich only makes more sense for the New York to be heated by a network of pipes.
- brtkdotse 4y agoA series of tubes, you say?
- hGfbjHzuHv 4y agoIt’s not a truck.
- scotty79 4y agoI never understood why it was so funny. For me it was good first order of approximation of how internet works. We actually do pipe some stuff around and it flows from one place to another. Is the series of tubes so hilariously unimaginable for Americans?
- mgiampapa 4y agoPortions of NYC are heated by pipes. ConEd operates the largest commercial steam system in the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system