Will the UK's gas holders be missed? | Hacker News Reader

Will the UK's gas holders be missed?

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65 pointsteoruiz81 comments

They have just finally taken down the last one in Bath. This is a 'good' thing. What has to be realised is that the ones that are being taken down are usually in the heart of a city and take up valuable 'brownfield development land.

The UK is suffering from a housing shortage in certain areas of the country and has very few options to expand housing stock that do not involve developing greenfield sites.

I do wish they could have come up with a way to incorporate the existing structures into the new development but this would be perceived as a massive long term maintenance issue and probably not an optimum housing density.

From a city point of view, 2000+ new homes vs three defunct gas holders is a no brainer in revenue generation (£4,000,000 per year in taxes). http://www.bathwesternriverside.com/overview/

But is there a shortage of brownfield land in most places? I guess Bath is different from most places.

In this case they are easier to redevelop compared to, say, an old industrial complex where land contamination may be an issue.

the one in Dublin, Ireland, was converted to apartments http://armchairtravelogue.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/dublin-gasw...

There's also the Gasometers of Vienna which are gorgeous: http://www.wiener-gasometer.at/en

Each gasometer was redesigned into a complete urban space by a different architect.

I lived there for a few months. The structures are extremely sturdy, with some fantastic views from the upper levels. The base of the Gasometers have been cleverly fashioned into a shopping complex, with adjacent cinema and gym. No need to ever venture outside! (Even the underground train station can be reached under cover.)

My apartment overlooked one of the hollow central 'cylinders': not much sunlight reached the interior, and - without net curtains - not much privacy (since neighbors opposite had a clear view across the space).

After seeing a huge crowd queuing in the lobby one evening, I realized the basement was used for rock concerts! And yet, not a sound (or vibration) reached the residential areas above.

Great place to stay for a while...

The gasometers in Bath were in the middle of a pretty substantial industrial complex, and the land is substantially contaminated - but apparently a few feet of turf is "good enough".

Has more to do with where the industrial centres of the 19th century were within a city and how cities have evolved and developed over time, making those centres prime residential zones now. In Bath's case there is a clear need for more housing in the centre with massive objections from residents to the development of greenfield sites on the outskirts of the city.

Sites like these are politically 'easy' to develop. From a urban landscape point of view, taking an industrial zone and re-classifying it as a residential zone has it's risks in that you drive out the ability for employment opportunities in the city. However, in Bath's case, the industrial sectors are now on the west side of the city towards Bristol.

Agreed but honestly we need to open up (some) greenfield land as well.

The housing shortage in the UK is crippling and it will only get worse.

The housing shortage is very location-specific. Stoke-on-Trent were selling houses for £1 and giving renovation grants to anyone who promised to actually live there and make the area less run down.

If only there were ways of moving jobs out of London. London housing by comparison needs to go up more - not the >10 story tower blocks, more like 5 storys. Unfortunately this would probably involve clearing a lot of picturesque spacious Victorian terraces.

Thought something like 40% of new apartments are bought and never lived in. They are a financial investment/safe capital holding vehicle.

  > If only there were ways of moving jobs out of London.

If only there were a significant class of jobs whose work product could be transmitted electronically at negligible expense.

I know, right? And yet loads of them are concentrated in extremely expensive cities.

(I also agree with the points below about the housing shortage being localised. We should do what Silicon Valley did a long time ago and move some firms to a new area.)

No, we need to spread out a bit.

The UK is a ridiculously unsustainable mix of mega-high demand cities with others in almost constant decline. There's no reason everybody has to work in London, Birmingham and Manchester.

That, and stopping developers sit on land while they wait for house prices to come up. Screw it, if we need houses so much, why aren't councils renationalising housebuilding?

There are so many more, objectively better options than continuing the cycle we're currently locked into.

why aren't councils renationalising housebuilding?

They're not allowed to do so, they don't have the money, they don't have any way to raise it, and it would be vulnerable to NIMBYs.

My understanding is that the densely populated cities are the most sustainable form of living we do. It reduces carbon emissions because we need don't have to drive so far to get to the shops or work, and we can use public transportation, further reducing the carbon emissions. The housing gets expensive, because of demand, but it reduces destruction of wildlife habitat. http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/04/why-bigger-cities-are-gr...

The ones at Kings Cross are being converted into a building. They are listed.

I think we go too far in terms of romantising these kind of structures. It is impressive and valuable as a functional object not a thing of beauty or ugliness.

The more we fetishise heritage the less acceptable new structures and designs becomes that are "out of context". For example, a wind turbine should only need to generate power efficiently. It should not need to look good.

While I generally agree with you, the UK does make a fair amount of revenue from tourism (~9% GDP) so keeping a few iconic examples around might be a good idea. For much the same reason that castle's are interesting if largely useless structures.

Approximately no one comes to the UK to look at gas holders. It's not like number of infrastructure nerds coming to look at King's Cross and St Pancras would drop if we were to remove the gas holders nearby. But yeah, convert them into park-like areas if the community wants (as they're doing at King's Cross)

People go to Paris to see a radio tower that's rather short by modern standards. Hint: Tower.

I don't think there are any gas holders that are going to become that iconic but a lot of tourism focuses on interesting infrastructure like dam's, buildings, towers, walls, bridges, etc.

Utility is having something work efficiently and effectively.

Beauty is the art of making something pleasing and desirable to humanity.

Engineering and architecture should aim to do both. When utilities are ugly they can depress the price of properties around them, making people less willing enable future needed projects. I mean, is your home a (subjectively) ugly gray box with no decoration. I mean the purpose of a house is to shelter you from the elements.

I don't think we should abandon aesthetics, just that protectionism is a bad way of going about it.

For the most part homes in the UK are designed to fit in with their surroundings not be beautiful. I don't find hundreds of identical red brick buildings particularly asthetically inspiring and decoration is usually kept to an absolute minimum by developers. What we end up with is endless estates that all look exactly the same in order to protect sensibilities. We need to accept some creativity and change.

>We need to accept some creativity and change.

Yeah, like this. http://www.choishine.com/port_projects/landsnet/landsnet.htm...

For example, a wind turbine should only need to generate power efficiently. It should not need to look good.

That's obviously bollocks - human beings aren't machines - they enjoy existing in an environment that they find beautiful. So, we should consider aesthetics when designing technology that is visible.

I live near the Bethnal Green gas holders and I run at least once a week down the canal past them. They're quite interesting to look at but they're also in prime London real-estate, and the capital has a huge housing shortage. It's frankly inconceivable to keep them, that land is worth millions and there are people who need a place to live.

As much as it is nice to cherish our past, it seems it's OK for the haves to say let's keep it, when the have nots are struggling with ridiculous rents.

I came here to make a tangential point:

I have run past the same gasometers and I found them fascinating and inspiring for the same reason: a tiny part of the city where the space and skyline is reserved for a unique part of our history that isn't simply converted into modern urban sprawl.

Is it a good idea to convert them into new flats which are 90% landlord owned, if not owned by Chinese investors who leave them empty so they can't support local business - the typical fate of new property in London? How does it help your 'have nots' with their rent? Aren't you just stripping out all the cultural and local heritage?

A good reason for 'use it or sell it' laws; not just for land, but habitable properties as well. If no one has lived in it for 2 years the government should be able to force you to sell it.

Sure.

The goal of capitalism is that stuff is used in an economically efficient way, and capitalism is a bit broken when that doesn't happen.

'Use it or sell it' is needed but dangerous: applied naively, this creates false incentives.

Well, yes, but they have successfully replaced them with housing, which is a pretty daft use of a rather badly contaminated floodplain, which isn't shy on the flooding bit.

There's a reason that that area of town used to be tanneries, gas-holders, and chemical works.

Whenever some new structure comes around, people complain and moan about noise, how they look, and generally take a 'not on my doorstep' attitude.

Then, X years later, when they get taken away, people say they miss them.

Yes, that seems to be a fairly common human behaviour. One of many that may seem illogical. But since they are human behaviour, and we're humans not machines, we should work with it to maximise happiness rather than say "that's illogical we should stop".

Human nature is to reject change, we all trend towards the familiar.

Those out liners that do reject change are usually hailed or hurt.

Hopefully it will be that way with wind turbines when they are replaced in decades to come with some unheard of power source.

It's possible that the people who oppose these projects are not the same people who miss them when they're gone.

I didn't hear anyone complain when the Tricorn Centre[0] was removed which was called "the 3rd ugliest building in the UK." Several UK prisons are literally more attractive than that place was...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorn_Centre

I am trying to imagine a building sized cylinder appearing and dissapearing throughout the day in my neighbourhood, on a regular basis. Seems kind of cool to me.

I heard this story on the radio first, which led to me being nonplussed when I later saw the pictures.

Stories like this, and the current frenzy for listed buildings in the UK makes me feel there is a little too much respect afforded past architecture. Should we be keeping structures that aren't beautiful either by the standards of their time or ours, simply because it is old? Will we be eventually constrained in creating new styles, if we are stuck preserving past ones?

Well an inventive architect could incorporate the theme of these into a new structure, if not actual pieces. I could see bringing some of the decorative structure for a large indoor area, or modeling the exterior on it.

However similar sentiment can lead to stagnation as areas are not developed and instead become depressed from disuse. Now granted most of the push is likely coming from the lack of housing for the rich than trying to find new space for the poor

Here is a converted one in Dublin [0] - I thought it looked very good when I visited it.

[0] http://omparchitects.com/en/projects/the-gasworks/

And here's one in Amsterdam: http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/clubs/photos/2012-04-0...

They are extremely beautiful. At least the classic Victorian ones.

You need to keep a couple of them. Hence the 1980s skate park that recently got Listed status. We built loads in the 1980s, then most of them closed and got demolished, leaving just a few remaining.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-29801513

I was wondering if these could be used to store hydrogen generated by solar water-splitting? Could the hydrogen be piped in place of natural gas? Or combined with natural gas? seemingly "town gas" was primarily hydrogen [1]. Or it could generate electricity via combustion or fuel cell, providing dispatchable renewable energy with grid-scale storage :)

An averaged-size gas-holder has capacity of ~50,000 m^3 [2]. Gas holders store gas at essentially atmospheric pressure, so the stored hydrogen has an energy density of ~0.01 MJ/L [3] = ~10^7 J/m^3. So the gas-holder energy capacity is ~5*10^11 J = ~140 MWh

In comparison Dinorwig pumped-storage power station in the UK has an energy capacity of ~9000 MWh [4]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas#Composition

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_holder

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

[4] http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_191.shtml

Thought storing Hydrogen was notoriously hard because it can penetrates rather effectively through pretty much anything.

I can't find a reference now, but as I understand it this isn't so much of an issue at low pressure.

Apparently underground low pressure storage has been used successfully: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Underground_hy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas

Seemed to be not to hard with town gas (which was >50% hydrogen)

Hydrogen is explosive, corrosive, and it literally leaks through materials, unlike natural gas. Town gas may have had it as component but it sounds scary, unlike natural gas.

The caption of one of the photos - 'The pylon stays, the gas holder will go' - made me think: Will pylons ever go away? Is there any possible future tech out there that might make electricity pylons a thing of the past too?

On premise solar maybe? Or at least reduce the necessity for so much transmission.

Sure, we just need decent local power generation. For example, if we can get each village or even block to have its own little nuclear plant, who needs pylons?

It is possible to put that all underground, that's just extremely expensive. (That's currently a hotly debated topic in my region, since the new north-south connection in Germany is very controversial and underground transmission is sometimes brought up as a solution, though not really a realistic one.)

I really don't know if underground transmission will ever be economical. In principle it's possible, though, if you want to spend the money.

Not perhaps extremely expensive, but it may be more expensive than setting up pylons. But for instance when crossing waters, it is more practical to have an underwater cable than build pylons across sea.

Not only expensive to run things underground, it introduces maintenance nightmares. Overhead lines can easily be inspected and even repaired while in service [1]. Underground lines cannot easily be inspected or repaired. Even when there are multiple lines, failures can overload the remaining lines as happened in Auckland [2]. If you want to get an idea of the hassle repairing an underground line is like, read this series of posts [3].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA9oBEHRLqQ&hd=1

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Auckland_power_crisis

[3] http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/

It's no future tech - building electricity transfer and distribution underground is a perfectly standard thing to do, particularly in European cities. Where I live, even countryside 20 kV distribution lines are being dug into ground, to avoid trees falling on the wires in winter and subsequent power cuts, and to reduce maintenance cost (no need to clear trees and vegetation from around the lines).

There are some limitations; for instance, on long transfer lines underground - we're talking about 100 km here - you may need to convert to DC in between because underground cables have stronger reactive components which makes voltage control difficult.

20kV is not very much, the one in the picture is probably 275 or 400kV.

The pylon shown is the end one — the wires on the left side go down to the ground. It's probably on the edge of a city somewhere, within British cities electricity distribution is buried.

Yes, 20 kV is not much, but also 400 kV can be underground. What I meant is that even with such low voltage as 20 kV and even in countryside it may be worth it to bury the cable.

practical room-temp superconductors might make electricity transmission possible on smaller towers, but unless we get some cool tech like mostly autonomous underground cable tunneling robots, its likely to remain cheaper to run them on poles in most places for the forseeable future.

The train from Cheltenham to West Drayton used to travel past some light industrial sites. I strongly associate the smell of coffee[1], canals and car-scrapyards, and the gas-holder next to that line with visiting my parents when they lived outside London.

There's a bunch of this functional stuff that just gets churned over. That's probably mostly good, but it'd be nice to keep a few of them around as examples.

I think we (in the UK) can be dismissive of stuff that's only from the 1950s or 1920s because we have so much that is much much older.

[1] The Nestle factory?

The coffee smell is because of Heathrow. They do about one roast a week for all the onboard catering.

No, it was the Nestlé factory in Hayes (West London), although it's recently closed down. A train heading out of London to West Drayton would pass very close by.

http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/local-news/nestl-factory...

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Nestle+UK+Ltd/@51.50038,...

The US produces and consumes enormous amounts of natural gas. Demand peaks in winter, and there is need for seasonal storage, mostly underground.[1] The amount stored is far greater than what could be contained by gas holders.

Gas holders used to dot the periphery of big cities in the US, and some probably still do. But there's actually a newer solution: LNG. This sounds expensive, because large amounts of energy are required to liquify the gas. But the 600:1 volume improvement makes it worthwhile.

Two LNG tanks or 1200 gas holders? You decide! :)

Of course, sometimes things go horribly wrong[2], which is how I first learned about LNG for "peakshaving"[3] purposes.

[1] http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publicat... [2] http://www.kulr8.com/story/25118246/fire-and-explosion-at-na... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lng#Small-scale_liquefaction_p...

I've always wondered about making a building that follows the same form and re-using the frame externally (though obviously not for structural support)

Some of the frames are a real work of art. Shame it's all going to be scrapped.

The Victorians put so much soul in to public utilities it seems a real shame to not recognise them for more than gas tanks.

Some of the frames are Listed, so they should stay standing.

They absolutely did.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/The_Octag...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossness_Pumping_Station

They saw public works and modern engineering as a statement of intent about where we where going in the future and they took pleasure in making things beautiful even when it was hidden (indeed it was common for ladies and gentlemen to go on tours of civic works including sewage treatment plants).

I think we could do with a little bit more of that attitude sometimes.

You might want to google Gasometer, Vienna.

http://www.wiener-gasometer.at/en/

In Austria they built apartment complexes inside their considerably larger gas holders, see http://www.wiener-gasometer.at/en

There is a plan for something like that at King's Cross in London.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=120093256&postc...

And on the other side of the ocean, a deactivated gasometer at Rio de Janeiro (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas%C3%B4metro_de_S%C3%A3o_Cri...) will also be replaced by residential and commercial buildings (http://oglobo.globo.com/rio/terreno-do-gasometro-vai-ser-ocu...).

Yes, I will miss them they have always been there and now, nothing.

An office/block of flats will not keep people waiting. Can't see stars, can't see horizon.

I rather like the one in Granton Edinburgh:

http://www.grantonhistory.org/industry/gas_works.htm

I've always wondered how those things worked. They always seemed dangerous, like having an airship parked in the middle of a city.

Walls are stronger than the roof and the gas isn't under particulary large pressures so mostly you'd have a big fireball.

In Amsterdam one of these (and the very old industrial terrain around it) has been repurposed into public spaces.

Concerts/Festivals are frequently held: http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/clubs/photos/2012-04-0...

Gas holder time lapse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZpVojSJ09k&t=66

Oh FFS. I bet these are the same people who are complaining about (much more elegant and beautiful IMO) wind turbines.

These things were elegant engineering when they were doing something valuable, but it's the elegance of something functional - and they're not functional any more. They take up a lot of space that could be used productively. Good riddance.

I have one near my home, I always wondered what that thing was.

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