The Lost Art of Steam Heating (2017) [video]
youtube.com
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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.
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://news.psu.edu/story/460837/2017/04/17/campus-life/one...
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.
I just don't think central heating has the advantages today it used to, unless you're in the unusual situation that you have a "free" source of steam (e.g. from process equipment). The boilers used now are compact, low maintenance, and have impressive remote management features. The "steam plant" staff here went from a dozen operating a building to a computer workstation at the facilities operations desk for remote monitoring and a few roving maintenance technicians.
We are also currently transitioning from a central standby power plant to generators located at each building. This is being done for almost the exact same reasons - the generators today are small, low cost, perform testing and exercise automatically, and are remotely monitored.
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.
Article: https://www.miuraboiler.com/resources/news/blowing-off-steam
http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2013/02/14...
If not, mini-split systems might be a good solution for upgrading the home's heating (and cooling).
Steam Heat Should Be Silent
Water hammer, that banging and knocking that is so prevalent in steam heating, is not normal. Don't let anyone tell you that it is.
Water hammer is also destructive. It can break pipes from fittings and cause injury. It's not normal. It has definite causes, and you can make it go away.
Hissing air vents aren't normal. In a well-balanced steam system, you should never hear air venting. When a vent makes noise, it's trying to tell you that it's handling too much air.
Holohan's main conceit is that there are very few plumbers who understand steam heat, and as a result, there are very few systems that work as designed by the "Dead Men". The idea that steam heat is inherently noisy is one of the main myths that he wants to dispel.
Tying this back to HN, there's probably some useful parallel here to systems architecture and maintenance programming. How many systems will keep working as well as they were designed after several generations of "repairs" have been performed on them? How can one design systems to make it more likely that they will continue to work as designed?
So in summary steam is wonderful as long as humans don’t get involved.
Theoretically, I don't think this is correct. And in practice, I'm sure it's not always true. That is, I've tuned up a steam system using Holoway's advice, and there was no problem with turning individual radiators on or off.
In normal operation, the steam is condensing in the radiator, and then draining back to the boiler by gravity. Opening the valve after a period of nonoperation is not significantly different than the rush of condensation one gets at system start up when the radiator is cold. If the pipes are layed out correctly, when the valve is opened the water will drain back to the boiler with no outside action required.
What is true is that the standard "one pipe" steam radiators work poorly when the user decides they want half the heat, and turns the steam valve halfway. In this case, the higher speed of the incoming steam through the smaller opening prevents the water from flowing out, and the radiator works poorly. The correct approach to variable heat on one-pipe steam systems is an adjustable exit air valve. Still, this should also "fix itself" quickly as soon as the shut-off valve is fully opened.
I always wondered why the radiators in some buildings had two apparent temperature controls, one at the bottom of one side (generally a big gate valve) and another at the top of the other side (which I presume is the "exit air valve").
As a student, nobody ever told us how to actually regulate the heat, so there was a lot of randomly opening and closing valves until the thing either got hot or cooled down as needed. Or, more commonly, you just ran the thing full blast all the time and opened a window when it got too hot, titrating the cold air from outside against the overwhelming heat from the radiator.
A couple of laminated instructions stapled to the wall near each radiator probably would have made the system perform much better.
If that's true, it would definitely be a problem with the system, not the user. A heating system that malfunctions semi-permanently if you turn off one radiator is not a good heating system, and it's not reasonable to demand that residents swelter in their rooms to accommodate the system's failings.
Never the right attitude. If users have constant issues with a system, its a system flaw. You can't upgrade the users.
You absolutely can. You just have to state and keep stating that the system is for adults who can be bothered to read half a page of instructions once in their life, instead of fostering a culture of ignorance.
We have a similar problem with software UX, too.
You're quite right that this is an ongoing problem in software UX. The problem is devs who insist that the user should accommodate the software rather than the other way around.
I'm not saying hundreds. I'm saying couple dozen. Anything you interact with more often than twice in a lifetime. Nobody complains that they have to learn how to use a pen. Or a bike. Or a car. Or a gas stove. Or a microwave oven. People just suck it up, spend the necessary effort, and enjoy significantly improved capabilities. If you use something daily, you owe it to yourself to learn how to operate it.
What we have with modern UX trends is a culture that despises learning. It's a marketing artifact - a software sells by first impression, not by value delivered, so the less learning user needs to get first results, the easier it is to sell a product or service.
> You're quite right that this is an ongoing problem in software UX. The problem is devs who insist that the user should accommodate the software rather than the other way around.
I meant precisely the opposite and you know it :). The rationale is this: the only way to have software that can be used by a newcomer to its full potential within first 5 seconds of exposure is to dumb the software down to near-uselessness. Which is the dominating trend nowadays. Lowering the beginning of the learning curve by flattening the entire curve creates a hard ceiling on utility of a piece of software (or hardware). If there's nothing to learn, the user is forever stuck at beginner productivity levels. Which means the software isn't really providing much value (it probably provides negative value if the user was forced to upgrade from older software which allowed for mastery).
No, because it means they're being stupid, not that they are "stupids", like it's a zodiac sign. So they should stop being stupid.
> The problem is devs who insist that the user should accommodate the software rather than the other way around.
Writing good documentation is accomodating users, and there is a lot of stuff that is very simple but still can't keep to a common way of how things work (because it's all mostly fluff functionally anyway, and needs to "differentiate itself" in some gimmicky way), and none of it has decent documentation -- so people are left to ask each other in random forums or elsewhere how anything works. IMO that's being lazy, and not paying users for work the developers should have done.
If it was designed "for stupids", it would have very clear instructions in big letters which still would hold true after 20 years, because "stupids" don't always have the latest thing.
https://www.gpsoft.com.au/help/opus12/index.html
Nobody remembers that, or reads all of it just for fun. But it's all there if you need, thorough and up-to-date. Old Opera was also like that, and none of my non-techie friends or relatives ever had problems with it. I'm sure many other programs still are, as in they do follow allll the best practices an application "designed for dummies" would, but then they also have a good documentation, and maybe a CLI interface and other things a programmer might want so called power-users (as opposed to powerless consumers?) to have. Current users are getting ripped off by being trained and conditioned by marketing departments, not peers and teachers with good intent.
I like to think of it in terms of frequency/duration of use. There may not be many (relatively) "power users", but there are a lot of 9-5 users. People who have to work with a piece software 8+ hours a day at work, day in, day out. If a piece of software has near-flat learning curve, it's contributing a lot to the misery of those people. Like, 6 hours straight of clicking through a slow web UI kind of misery, where unbloating the UI would cut that literally in half, adding keyboard shortcuts would cut that in half again, and a semi-decent batch mode would let them be done in 15 minutes, go get coffee, and start working on something else.
Where's the "value" such "user-friendly" software provides the users again?
And here also lies the answer to the age-old question - why people use Microsoft Excel for everything? Because it's a tool for "power users", with no ceiling in sight. It's flexible where most dedicated software is stiff, which gives people a way to optimize their work.
> Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
That always risks being patronizing, but at least we should allow users options and deeper documentation, for those who want to use them -- they shouldn't get punished by being restricted to the lowest common denominator. That doesn't mean there can't be friendly defaults, "wizards", and whatnot.
Oh yes, and it's so deeply ingrained in the culture.
At my previous job, our customer made us use a pretty crappy, proprietary integrated system for task management, bug tracking and version control. Everyone hated it with passion. It took me over a year to finally stop and think for a moment - that maybe it has some more efficient modes of working, and maybe there is some logic to its organization? I clicked Help -> Manual and, lo and behold, I was looking at a large compiled help file describing everything. Every functionality, the fundamental concepts behind the software's UI and data representation. Hell, it even mentioned the API. 30 minutes later, I still didn't like the software, but I was finally somewhat comfortable with it.
I was probably the first person to do that in that company. A lesson here is that unfortunately, the instinct to bitch about software instead of trying to find a manual is strong even in power users. I took that lesson to heart, and these days I'm e.g. very friendly with Info pages in my OS. Turns out if software you regularly use has a decent manual, reading it (or at least skimming, and I mean cover to cover) has absurdly high payoff.
> they shouldn't get punished by being restricted to the lowest common denominator. That doesn't mean there can't be friendly defaults, "wizards", and whatnot.
Exactly. Lower the start of the learning curve, but don't flatten it entirely, don't dumb down your application for the sake of "easy to use". Power always comes with some amount of complexity and learning.
Yes you can. It's called education. People are generally not idiots. Make it easy for them to learn how to do something right and the overwhelming majority will do that thing right. It's when you leave them to figure out something they have no domain knowledge in on their own that causes problems.
That's not true. I've had issues with my house steam system in the past where I added too much water to the furnace and draining the furnace did the trick. Any excess water will simply turn to steam and cycle itself out of the system.
Perhaps it would need to be antifragile in some way, and have direct immediate feedback on "bad repair" vs "good repair".
As an example, I always assumed that the radiators were always just full of steam while running, but the systems actually work by cycling between steam production and condensation phases. There's an alcohol filled bladder at the base of every radiator that boils and expands when the steam fills the radiator, sealing off the flow at that point, forcing the steam to route around to the next radiator. Once all the radiators seal off the pressure in the system rises, triggering the boiler to shut down. The water condenses inside the radiators as they emit their heat and cool, the bladders open, the water drains back down to the boiler, and if the home temp is still low the cycle starts again. Who knew?
For now we're actually planning on keeping it around while it's all in good working order.
Holohan describes the differences here: https://heatinghelp.com/systems-help-center/a-steam-heating-...
He also points out that the failure point of the system you have is that the "steam traps" tend to fail frequently and silently. The system still heats, but runs less efficiently. He says the traps typically have only a 3 year lifespan.
The house was built in the 20's by a commercial plumber who put in some more commercial-style amenities including some state of the art for the era tankless flush-valve toilets. I love them, wife hates them.
Quickly tried to find a picture of this, but don't know what exactly i'm looking for. Can you post a link?
edit: It's just like what you'd find in any modern commercial building in the US, just with a much older form factor of toilet. When we moved in I got curious why most new homes don't have them. Found out that they don't use any more water than a normal toilet, but they do require a higher water flow rate. The high flow rate requires at least a 2" water main into the house (which we have), while most modern residential construction uses a 1" or less.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Art-Steam-Heating/dp/0996477241/...
I had oil fired steam heat (live around Boston). Back when heating oil hit $5 / gallon, I got rid of it. It was costing me $3800 / year, but the efficient gas furnace that replaced it costs $700 / year. I'm sure this will only last as long as the fracking boom, but it definitely already paid for the installation.
So now my most expensive utility is water ($1700 / year).
I gave that talk at The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the city of New York, not at The Arsenal. I did talk about the Arsenal, though. That's a wonderful place. GSMT is at 20 W. 44th Street in Manhattan. It's a landmarked building, across the street from the Harvard Club. Visiting there is like watching Night at the Museum. I'm currently V.P of the Society.
I founded HeatingHelp.com in 1997. I retired in 2016 and our daughter, Erin Holohan Haskell, now owns the site. It's a terrific resource for heating system, both old and new.
Dan
The house was a bit of a dump, and the quality of the heat didn’t really make up for the lack of air conditioning, but I still have fond memories of that steam heat 20+ years later.
The previous place had a fairly modern boiler, no more than a decade or two old. Being a tenant, I have the luxury of getting to largely ignore these things, but, from what I could tell, it required less maintenance than the current place's furnace.
Man, I miss wood heat.
I've only had steam heat.
I have a modern boiler and the only maintenance I have to do (so far) is pay a professional to do the yearly servicing.
Every year, a full visual inspection of the heat exchanger, especially important after 5 years of life. We're looking for the first signs of perforation, and/or cracks. A "smoke test" isn't sufficient.
Visual inspection of ductwork take-offs on plenum - leaks, seals, etc. Same for system cabinet.
Check the safety switches -- roll out/limit sensor (millivolt), draft induction (exhaust blower) pressure switch, cabinet switches, etc.
Clean the flame sensor.
Visual inspection on the ignitor. Cracks = replace. Check values on start capacitor for blower motor. Replace if > +/- 15% of spec.
Blow out P-trap on condensor drain (only applies to condensing furnaces, of course -- the >85% efficiency models, but that's most of what is installed these days). Oil blower motor and draft induction fan bearings. Observe flame color.
After 10 years, or as needed, check exhaust with combustion analyzer for proper C0/C02 range.
Observe 2 startup/cool down cycles for proper operation. Look for proper ignition, flame color/depth/shape, listen for odd sounds that would indicate issues (vibration, flexing, etc.)
Replace the filter unless it's obviously new. (btw, This filter is there to protect the unit from dust/lint, not there to clean the air in the house.)
Replace CO detector battery Not just "ask homeowner to do it" but do it myself. Replace detector out of date (they only last 10 years or so). This is mandatory if you are operating a fuel burning appliance. And Remind homeowner to change smoke detector batteries.
Present a written report of all findings. Compare to last year's report -- look or trends. Keep copy of new on on record at the shop.
This takes about an hour. If your "HVAC Guy" just shimmies into your crawlspace or attic for 15 minutes before climbing back out and saying "everything looks great, see ya in the spring" you're risking your safety and being cheated. Most don't do the whole job. Also, what most shops call a "tune up" isn't anything of the sort; at best it's a cursory visual inspection with gauges on the A/C unit and a check of the start/run capacitors. Most don't even bother to oil bearings.
Every shop is different. There is a wide spectrum of hacks and pros.
So a forced air furnace is basically the same as a boiler where you just call a technician to do your "yearly servicing?"
The company that services my boiler spend well over an hour on it, so I'll assume I'm not getting ripped off there?
Any forced-air system has ductwork, however, and that can get filthy over time and need cleaning.
Maintenance was bleeding the pipes occasionally, which I generally found to be less of a bother than replacing filters.
This type of heating is still used in 'intrinsically safe' environments(where no natural gas/electric heaters can operate safely). Lots of banging and knocking pipes.
https://www.powerhouse.com/boiler-rental/trailer-mounted-boi...
But the heat of vaporization is also huge: it takes about the same energy to boil a quantity of water as it does to take it from 0°C to 100°C.
The main downside is that the vaporization/condensation has to take place at 100°C, which is arguably a bit hotter than is ideal for safe space heating. Also the water returning to the boiler might not be cold enough to condense out the water vapor from the fuel (more important in fuels like natural gas with a big difference between HHV and LHV).
I've sometimes wondered if it would be practical to operate a steam heating system at a partial vacuum so that the condensation/vaporization could occur at a lower temperature, but I haven't seen that done anywhere so I'm guessing the answer is no.
He actually talks about exactly this in the video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQB0KK2rxcw&t=573
"You'll be sending steam up into the building at temperatures, in some cases, as low as 150 degrees" (83 degrees C)
Here in northern Europe, these systems are virtually unheard of. What's quite common, OTOH, are city-wide district heating systems, often run from the waste heat from electric power plants. IIRC the temperature of the heating water mains when going out from the plants is around 110C or so (it's water, not steam, due to it being slightly pressurized [1]). Each house or block then has it's own heat exchanger, used for heating the water that goes to the radiators (which IIRC is kept above 60C to avoid bacterial growth) as well as producing warm tap water.
[1] Which makes for a nice show when there's a break in the heating mains somewhere; lots of steam coming out of the ground.
The main advantage is probably that you don't need any pumps. This can increase efficiency, and removes a major point of failure.
The other big difference is that phase transition from water to steam is very high energy. By weight, steam transports 6x the heat of liquid water, and releases 5/6 of this as soon as it condenses back to water. Depending on the situation, this can be an advantage.
In general, I don't think that either system has a tremendous advantage -- they are just different. For modern systems, advantage probably leans to hot water.
This guy's so amped up and excited about this stuff it's amazing - even if you are not interested in steam heat, you are now!
EDIT: This presentation is also great - similar, but more history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkgM0qCy5o4
In any case I live in Massachusetts and had steam heat for many years and found these books super helpful. There are however some plumbers around here that know their way around these systems.
https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/chem/news/Pages/Emiss...
Was I just unlucky enough to have to cope with lowest-bidder systems?
Sometimes for multi unit buildings the landlord or super controls the heat for the whole building, that can be a case of the heat being set hotter than the occupant prefers, or perhaps just due to poor maintenance the system isn't maintaining temperature properly. I'm not sure why they couldn't just turn off individual radiators in this case though.
A properly set up and maintained steam heating system keeps temperature properly and doesn't overheat the occupants.
Mine had no valves or anything. If you wanted to turn it off, good luck.
And I'm now quite sure I had to deal with a single-pipe system modified to not have individual valves. Quite insane, but I guess that's what cheap owners will do.