Type of Heat?

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A relative of mine in SF used to live in a the upper floor flat of a building with gas fired gravity heat. She liked the heat except for the fact that mice had decided to start nesting in the ductwork, and it proved to be very difficult to get rid of them without having them stack up like miniature cordwood in the ducting. I wonder if this was a common problem with the old octopus heating systems.
 
We used to call it the haunted house when we were kids and I always wanted to go inside but never got the chance. By the time Mr Lawrence died and left it to the city I think I had moved out west. They had tours before the reno began. It's used as some sort of community center now and a lot of the original fancy work inside is gone. STairways still there. Apparently there was an accidental fire during the reno that did some damage. The amazing thing is that those few old houses surrounding it in the pictures escaped unscathed from the big tornado of 53 where a good part of our downtown all around it was severely damaged or flattened.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34370769@N07/sets/72157619852206319/
 
The thing about gravity furnaces is a) no moving parts (or very few) and b) they can be made to work in power outages easily (as can steam systems). TOH used the ducts in their Brooklyn brownstone project to run new hot water heating lines a few years back.
 
I have neighbors that had a gravity furnace like Launderess shows, and it burned coal. They replaced it with gas in the early 70's, but I remember black smoke pouring out of the chimney when the old one was going. That furnace made their already scary basement even more so.

I'm surprised to hear of gravity furnaces being installed in homes built as late as the 50's. I would have thought that such would have been considered "unmodern" even in the 30's.

I frequently go past a house that has an outbuilding (a shed like structure) that has a chimney. In cold weather, smoke is always coming out, and there is a lot of firewood stacked near the shed. I'm thinking that outbuilding houses a boiler that has pipes connected to the house to heat it.
 
There were alot of gravity coal octopuses converted to oil here and we had one as a kid. Very inefficent and uncomfortable but who cared when oil was real cheap and they didnt want to bother with hassles of coal. My mother just turned the thermosat up. Eventually, we got a new forced hot air oil furnace and what a difference. Good friend from college had the exact same octopus in upstate NY but converted to natural gas, still gravity fed.
 
Fireplace

We have a wood burning fireplace. Other than the maintence required, we love it. If you don't want it, we mainly use space heaters and they are great for saving energy, instead of running a MASSIVE heater which pulls about 10,000 watts. Space heaters pull about 1,500 watts and are great if you are there by yourself and only need one room heated instead of the whole house, that's PURELY wasting power. Heat pumps are HORRIBLE in low temperatures, because they constantly run and barely work. That is my suggestion. If you don't want to use any power, you could use a blanket for on the couch, or in bed. Why heat the whole room if you need to heat just yourself? For in a bathroom, a good choice is a heat lamp. It targets objects, warming them, not the air. It only uses about 500 watts.
STAY WARM!!!
 
I have a big fireplace built around a heatalator insert but I cant feed enough wood into it to even start to warm up in the winter, even with sealed glass doors,so I sealed it totally off. Its good for the looking at in the middle of a rainy summer night, but as far as heat this time of year, up here, its worthless. It would cost 3 to 4 grand to convert it to a gas insert, but I am not spending that right now.
 
A heatalator is a box of steel surrounding the brick firebox thats built around it with inlets for cool air to enter at floor level and outlets at the top. Something like that may work in Georgia, where the climate is much more nicer, but not here where it is below zero right now and my oil boiler is cranking to keep the baseboards radiating.
 
I grew up first with electric baseboard heaters and a wood stove, and later with electric forced air heat and a wood stove. However, I loved it at friends houses who had hot water or steam radiators in each room. Silent, no problems with dry air, no draft or blast of dust from heating ducts, no mess from the wood stove, and even temperature throughout the house. Since installing a boiler and radiators would be cost prohibitive here, I have oil filled electric radiators in each room, and love it. Much less costly than forced air, and it's warmer. I can adjust each rooms temperature separately, and if I come in from outside and it's cold, I go stand next to the radiator for a moment and warm right up.
 
"One can usually tell...

...if an apartment building has steam or hot water heat. The windows in the apartments on the upper floors are open all the time in the winter..."

Don't the radiators in these apartment buildings have individual thermostatic controllers to adjust heat output for personal comfort?

From my childhood I remember that some apartment buildings on district heat had difficulty keeping the top floors warm as not enough steam or hot water was getting through. The lower floors got all the heat and people on the upper floors had to put up space heaters to keep warm.

My grandmother's ground floor apartment was also on district heat and during visits there I noticed that heat output was reduced from midnight until five or six in the morning to save energy. If you got cold during those hours you had to crank up your electric blanket or put up a space heater.
 
No ...

"Don't the radiators in these apartment buildings have individual thermostatic controllers to adjust heat output for personal comfort?"

Not at all.

That is not how steam heat works. Either the radiators are "on" or they are "off". Trying to adjust the temperature by closing the valve only partway is what leads to that massive clanging of pipes.
 
Well, my experience with hot water radiator heating at one place we lived in SF in the 1960's was that although there was a little chain you could raise or lower to adjust the heat, the darn thing was always on which required keeping the window just above the radiator open almost all the time.
 
TRVs

Thermostatic radiator valves are not the same as the ones that open or close the water or steam line. Rather they act as thermostats in that they will close/shut off the supply of heat once a desired temperature is reached.

Sadly many multi-unit apartment buildings do not use such devices thus types of problems mentioned up-thread. In such situations tenants have no way to regulate heat other than opening or closing windows. Some do so by opening or closing the water/steam valve but soon the fun starts with banging, clanging, water leaking, etc.. not just in their apartment but other in the line as well.

In a building a friend lives in the landlord actually instructed the super to open the valves on apartment radiators, and then take away the knobs so the things cannot be adjusted. This came after complaints from tenants about the aforementioned problems coming from people treating the valve like a thermostat.

As for top floors roasting with lower floors freezing in NYC buildings, that often varies. In some places it is the reverse as the boiler has to be set to run "high" to get the upper floors "warm". This often results in those on the ground and first floors roasting.

http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-thread/136685/Steam-Valve-Radiator-Thermostat-Any-Good
 
 

 

Living on the 19th floor, more often than not we're either quite warm or roasting. Even on the coldest, windiest days we're quite comfortable. Mind you there are no other high rises for blocks, so it can get mighty windy up here. All our radiators have open and shut valves, but I find it far easier to regulate the temperature just by cracking open a window. I must sleep in a very cool room, much to my husbands dismay. Other than the occasional "click", the radiators are quiet. We modified our boilers a couple of years ago from pure oil burners to combo units. They burn natural gas and oil now.  Currently it's 30F outside, 78F inside.
 
In Europe all modern hot water or steam systems have individual thermostatic controls for each radiator. Perhaps the loop systems that deliver the steam/hot water are engineered differently - I don't know, but I do know that individually adjusting the thermostatic valves works without causing problems.

One of my aunts lives in northern Germany. Her condominium is on the 4th floor of an 8 storey apartment block. The building runs hot water central heat and hot water, fuelled by oil, and there are 16 units. She's been in that building since the early seventies and there have been many upgrades, including whole building insulation for all external walls and triple glazed windows to meet latest government standards. Her radiators not only have thermostatic valves, but also measure how much hot water she uses to determine costs for each billing cycle. Heat retention in her unit is optimal and she rarely has to open the valves on her radiators to full. In her bedroom she only opens the valve to low heat, when temps go sub-zero outside and her bathroom radiator only gets a workout when she has a shower or bath. From cold to desired temperature it takes ten minutes for any radiator to warm a room.

Banging and clanking steam pipes, that's memories from my childhood. In most modern European countries apartment buildings have to be maintained and upgraded to strict safety, insulation and energy codes. If you own a condo you can bet that there will be a major upgrade of some sort every ten years.
 
A properly maintained steam heating system

Should be whisper quiet except for the occasional hiss of steam. Banging, clanging and so forth are indications of water in the steam lines that needs to be dealt with. This is why many landlords take away the adjusting knob leaving the steam line "open".

When persons use that aforementioned knob as a "thermostat", that is partially closing it to control heat it causes water to build up in the steam line. Next time steam comes up that riser it meets water and then the fun begins. Was at a friends house where the banging was so forceful thought it was going to blow the radiator apart and take much of the floor as well.

In general multi-unit apartment buildings in NYC often are the biggest wasters of heating energy, especially rental units an in particular housing estates. Walk up and down any given street on even very cold days or nights and you'll see windows wide open. If these persons had to pay for heating directly one assumes such nonsense would stop. Then again maybe it has....

More and more you are hearing not the typical NYC complaint from tenants during cold weather, that there isn't any heat, just that landlords are keeping within the limits set by law. For many 68 degrees during the day and 55 degrees at night just does not cut it. *LOL* Even 71 during the day is chilly to people one knows. When they complained to the landlord the response was to purchase warmer clothing and or a space heater.

http://www.tenant.net/Court/Howcourt/heat.html
 
Well ...

"Walk up and down any given street on even very cold days or nights and you'll see windows wide open. If these persons had to pay for heating directly one assumes such nonsense would stop."

Either the heat is ON, or it's OFF. It's not like the heat, like electricity or water, is necessarily being "wasted".
 
Am sorry opening windows to "cool" an over heated apartment is indeed a vast "waste" of energy. Those that own their own homes and or otherwise pay directly for heat would simply turn off the thing instead of leaving it on and opening a window. When you run your AC in summer do you keep it cranked down to near freezing indoor temps, then open a window to make it warmer?
 
Open windows

Back when I owned apartment houses, it would p*** me off when I saw a window open when driving by. Every apartment had its own thermostat and heat was included (bad idea) but certain tenants would crank the heat up and open the windows. I responded by cranking up their rent. Too bad, so sad, you're paying for it now. Never would I be a landlord again, not worth the hassle.
 
You're missing the point ...

Either the steam is on, or it's off.

It would be on whether the windows were open or closed.

Heat from steam is not metered like water or electricity. People opening their windows in the winter to let out excess heat are not forcing the system to produce MORE heat; it's EXCESS heat.

To be sure, it's an imprecise heating system. But no one is "wasting" heat by opening their windows.
 
People opening their windows in the winter to let out...

You must be kidding!

I understand that most of the heating is done via steam in NY (Which in my eyes is anachronistic) but that steam must be generated somewhere so releasing heat in the atmosphere means that more energy has to be supplied to the buildings and more steam has to be produced somewhere else, most probably with fossil fuels...
 
Not necessarily...

Building A needs X amount of steam in its pipes to warm ALL apartments up to at least 68 degrees.

Unfortuntely, X amount of steam, just to bring the temperature in the top floor apartments up to 68 degrees, quite often makes the bottom floors a (relatively) sweltering 78 degrees.

The bottom floors thereby need to release that excess heat to get their temperatures down to a comfortable 68 degrees.

Releasing that excess heat, however, has absolutely no bearing on how warm the apartments get on the upper level. The steam is in the pipes, not in the rooms. Releasing the overheated air on the bottom floors will not affect how much steam needs to be produced to adequately heat the top floors.

The upper floor apartments are heated by the steam in their radiators, not by the heated air from the lower apartments.
 
And ...

"I understand that most of the heating is done via steam in NY (Which in my eyes is anachronistic) ..."

Do you have a better solution?
 
The times I lived in apartments-Wash DC area-the apartments had individual HVAC units-gas heat like in a regular home.BUT!!!!I lived on an upper floor-some of the ederly tenants and others would crank up their heat-In my studio apt the temps were going up to almost like 80 degrees like in January.So---I would turn on the AC-that would make it more comfortable-but thought that would be hard on the AC compressor.So--I threw open the windows-esp when sleeping I HATE it HOT while sleeping.And to--not burning energy while trying to use the AC.Glad I no longer live in apartments-those nasty "heat wars"some folks since they don't pay for the heat directly-CRANK IT UP so their place is like the tropics-but makes neighboring apartments the same thing.So I would be dumping some of their heat that goes into my room.The building engineer told me some tenants crank their thermostats ALL THE WAY UP in winter.I turned mine up in the summer-liked it cooler than some people.
 
Do you have a better solution?

Hot water radiators or better underfloor heating, heaven in comparison, plus MUCH more energy efficient as they can be used with local condensing boiler (or several smaller one in chain, even more efficient!), even in large dwellings (see my condo, with 100 apartments where we have a 800 kW boiler water+heating with underfloor heating, mind that the underfloor heating was installed in 1955 and boilers upgraded in the early 2000s! So it's all but a hi-tech solution)

All dwellings equipped with local energy metering and thermostat so you can decide when, where and how much heat your home.
A system equipped with underfloor heating with water at 32/35°C has a generator efficiency of around 108% over the PCI of methane (heat of combustion plus heat in the fumes) compared steam heating that at best can attain values in the 75% range.
Of course this has more importance where energy prices are hugely more expensive than the US but it helps to conserve and such an arrangement (underfloor heating) gives much more comfort than steam powered radiators.

"The steam is in the pipes, not in the rooms. Releasing the overheated air on the bottom floors will not affect how much steam needs to be produced to adequately heat the top floors."

Reading this makes me think you don't know the basics of thermodynamics nor how heat transfer works, let me explain: that overheated air that you're releasing out the winds is heated by the radiators that work by cooling the incoming steam, so you need in turn more steam to replenish that in the radiators as soon as it starts cooling ad drains in the pipes. Hence you waste a lot of energy in the process.
 
OK ...

"Hot water radiators or better underfloor heating" ... "All dwellings equipped with local energy metering and thermostat so you can decide when, where and how much heat your home"

Sounds great!

So when will you be cutting me that $5 million check to pay for these upgrades to my building?

******

"Reading this makes me think you don't know the basics of thermodynamics nor how heat transfer works, let me explain: that overheated air that you're releasing out the winds is heated by the radiators that work by cooling the incoming steam, so you need in turn more steam to replenish that in the radiators as soon as it starts cooling ad drains in the pipes. Hence you waste a lot of energy in the process."

Reading your response makes me think you've never run a Manhattan apartment building, like I currently do.

Let ME explain: in a masonry building, overheated air does not transfer between floors efficiently. In fact, it barely transfers at all -- most of it escaping through the walls, which are not (and should not) be insulated (for reasons I've explained at length in another thread).

In fact, if we DID rely on overheated air on the lower floors heating the upper floors, the lower floors would need to absolutely roast at 100+ degrees just to get the temperature up into the low 60s on the upper floors. That's why radiators are installed throughout. But again, steam heating being not terribly efficient, it still requires overheating some floors just to adequately heat others.

It's an imperfect system. But it's more cost-effective for us (and most other prewar apartment buildings) than any alternatives currently out there.
 
You can run the whole Manhattan if you like, that doesn't change the basic laws of physics nor touch me the littlest and trust me that I know how HVAC works ;)

Now, 5 millions sounds a tad expensive, how big is the building, how many flats?

Also, if the lower apartments literally roast, given the current situation the easiest way go is to simply undersize the current radiator system: if in a room there are 8 elements in each radiator, putting a radiator with only 5 elements (just to say it) would decrease the heat emitted in that by around 40% and thus lower the temperature to a comfortable level. Radiators are dirt cheap here (and even in the US as I've seen) so even changing them all sure is a cost bearable by everyone.
 

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