Posted on 11/15/2008 10:36:39 AM PST by LibWhacker
Now that you mention it, back when I was in the Army the barracks I lived in was one of a group of barracks heated by coal held in the basement of one of the buildings. Got snagged into a coal detail once... Hard, nasty work!
You could say that it warmed you three times:
First, from the exercise of shoveling the coal.
Second, from the heat the burning coal gave off.
Third, the warm glow you must have gotten from knowing that you were sharing your wealth (of heat) with others more needy than you.
/channeling BHO
A Brief History of Con-Ed:
http://www.coned.com/history/steam.asp
_______________________________________________________
New York City Steam Pipe Explosion: (16 secs only)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-J1MJIFLhQ
A very close friend is a missionary in Perm Russia where she keeps an apartment. I could fill a book with her horror stories of the Russian approach to municipal services.
Amen!
God rest her soul. And may she be speedily delivered from the pangs of purgatory. + We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. +
No, It really is the hot water system. We spent some time in Siberia in the summer and they would turn off different sections of the city to repair the pipes. You would have no hot water when they were working on your section. There are no individual hot water heaters, it is all piped from a central location.
It was a heating pipe. Kind of like a hot water radiator kind of thing.
Lobsters around the world said “Finally one for us!” /sarc
The Edison Street power plant in downtown Milwaukee did exactly that for years. As you might guess from the name it was a DC generating plant. When electricity became available in Milwaukee it was almost exclusively used for lighting and to power building elevators. Much of downtown and the lower east side was DC into the 1960's. As buildings changed ownership they were required to convert to AC. The power plant was then converted to gas fired steam boilers only and the electrical generators were scrapped.
The down side of running boilers "once through" is that you will likely have problems with corrosion and mineral deposits in the boiler tubes. This occurs because it is not economically feasible to condition your water properly and you usually just use tap water. Closed circuit steam cycles (both fossil fueled and nuclear) allow you to de-mineralize your water and adjust it's Ph to neutral as well as remove any particulate contamination. As such you are running nearly pure water.
The city collects for your heating usage by running the water that condenses out of your radiators thru a water meter before dumping it down a sewer. I take exception to the "ultra-hot" description as the steam is probably no hotter then 212 degrees, the apartment building I managed while attending MSOE was about a mile from the steam generating plant and the pressure at the inlet valve was around 5 psi, defiantly "wet" steam!
Regards,
GtG
PS I lived in the basement apartment and cranked open a six inch gate valve when upstairs tenants banged on the pipes. Needles to say, my apartment was always toasty and warm.
The steam going into the power generating turbines is around 1000 degrees, but the OUTPUT steam coming out the other end has cooled considerably to 350 degrees. See the article at the link I posted.
Injuries and deaths from steam have not been unusual among US Navy sailors.
Dreadful. RIP.
I was talking about the steam entering an apartment building a mile away from the power plant. At 5 psig it most assuredly was NOT 350 degrees. Common sense tells you that no one in there right mind would ever use superheated steam in a domestic heating loop. You could cook food on your radiators! Also, most of the plumbing in those downtown buildings would never have held up to elevated pressures involved.
Regards,
GtG
PS I graduated from MSOE in 1967 with a BS in mechanical engineering. I've had Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer up the yin-yang and I was the "human thermostat" who cranked the valves for the "city steam" that heated our building.
Who knew.
Sounds like the system is archaic.
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