Why Steam Pours From New York City Streets - Cheddar Explains
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ม.ค. 2021
- For over a century, 105 miles of pipes underneath Manhattan's streets have delivered steam to some of the city's oldest and tallest buildings. But once in a while, a pipe explodes - blasting a massive hole into the street and spraying boiling hot steam, water, and asbestos into the air. These catastrophes tend to raise the question: is it time to wean New York off steam?
Sources:
The Bowery Boys Podcast
www.boweryboyshistory.com/bow...
The Lockport Journal
www.lockportjournal.com/news/...
ConEd
web.archive.org/web/200603120...
The New York Times
www.nytimes.com/1977/12/27/ar...
History.com
www.history.com/this-day-in-h...
The Construction History Society
www.jstor.org/stable/41613864...
NY-Engineers
www.ny-engineers.com/blog/loc...
The City of New York
www.nyc.gov/html/gbee/download...
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So basically another story of "we built awesome infrastructure but then kept putting off large-scale maintenance for 100 years and now it's a big issue" an increasingly classic US story
London manages to maintain it's 150-year-old underground railway system, which is FAR bigger than NY's steam heating system, both in volume and mileage of pipes. More than double in each case.
Deferred maintenance is a bitch
Absolutely. Things like putting off painting rust inhibitor on a bridge to save $10,000 then costs $100,000 to replace rusted sections or $1,000,000 to replace. It's absolutely absurd. Plan ahead, do preventive maintenance, it's one of the best investments whether it's your car, your house, your steam plumbing, or your national road infrastructure.
American gov gives absolute zero fuck about the public. Why? Coz it doesnt make them any money in the short run
@@dcarbs2979 yeah and most of the lines on the tube are awful lmao, British transport infrastructure is essentially victorian and its over priced and inefficient
*half a street explodes*
New Yorkers: this raises concern
Some concern*
Mildly inconveniencing, and even milder concern. Mostly sheer disappointment honestly.
I’ve thought it’s a 9/11 scene
That was so fucking funny.
Mild concern but I got a dentist appointment so a after I walk 2 blocks and text my friend I’ll stop thinking about it
I love steam, I get my all my games from there
Same
😐
😐
Funny guy
Love it
long story short: steam is from broken heating pipes.
thx
Dam, i thought it was just me.. TY, funny how people can speak for a long time and say absolutely nothing
Thank u so much bro
I cannot believe this is all about breakages in the system. Are the tall orange tubes not deliberate vents? Or are they only installed in a bit of broken pipe?
Thx
I honestly thought the steam was coming from the underground subway.
Same
Same here
Maybe the underground subway uses steam heating?
@@DavidHenderson1 subways are not heated in the winter, I can confirm. The trains by themselves produce a huge amount of heat, you’ll see grated on the street above to help ventilate it. In the summer it’s like 20 degrees hotter in there 🥵
@@nuggets0717 That makes a lot of sense! Thank you for explaining!
The steam attracts out-of-work musicians, playing solo saxophones under a street light.
Like a moth to a flame?
lord farquad
@@Peter_Riis_DK exactly
Oh, now I don't need to watch the video. Thanks 😊
😹😹💞 that
"This doesn't happen often, but when it does, it raises _concerns_ ."
'Concerns' is such an understatement when such a huge and dangerous steam geyser suddenly appear...
@@ems7623 Emotionally charged language is ok when a vat of steam explodes through the ground and kills a person and injuries about 20 people.
I also like how for the first part of the video they make steam systems look bad and reliable (which could be the case at one point, perhaps not now) and then RIGHT AFTER they say it doesn't happen too often. It is just like saying burglaries are terrible but they don't happen too often.
You are either neutral, against or pro for the subject.
@@gummy5862 And this, right here, is everything wrong with the media. "This issue almost never happens and you can only really point to a single incident in the past twenty years. But by god it's justified to use emotionally charged language and get everyone riled up because one single person died in the past twenty years!"
No, you're wrong.
th-cam.com/video/WF1aLRyOU9k/w-d-xo.html
I was witness to that 2007 steam explosion in Manhattan. I was walking home from the subway station when I saw all this steam rising near the Chrysler Building. I decided to walk over to see what it was. Along the way, I passed many people RUNNING the other way. Many people were crying. I tried to call my roommate to come check it out with me, but the cell phone lines were jammed with what I guess were many other callers. Despite me getting there about 45 minutes after it occurred, I was able to get within about two blocks of the explosion hole due to the extremely slow police response. I ended up standing under the bridge at Park Ave. and E 41st. The hole had swallowed a Tow Truck, and there was a mini school bus nearby.
that is terrifying
Jiminy Crickets!!!
post 9/11 hysteria..
Did anyone past away from that?
@@jokomo2833 a few people from what I remember, but all from heart attacks. Even the people right next to the blast got out safely, but everyone who evacuated from the nearby office towers were covered in mud-ish dust
"...New York didn't have buildings taller than a few feet."
People were so much shorter then.
I came here to say the same thing. I’m glad I didn’t have to scroll down at all to find this.
@@HangTimeDeluxe he was obviously referring to height. The average height of a human back then was 3 inches
@@nou3905 jesus, thats like 20 meters in metric!
what is this a city for ants. the buildings have to be at least.....three times bigger than this
@Thomas Berger or, get this, i know how crazy it may sound, but bear with me - i dont give a flying fuck about your opinion about the joke :)
trust me, in educated part of the world this kind of jokes are funny. the bad part is we are laughing at imperial system.
It’s all those underground meth labs scattered around the city.
I wish
@@jimboonie9885 and I appear.
😘
@@Krystalmyth 😳
Mr. White and Pinkman is cooking. You bet.
You're goddamn right
It is great to see Steam being supported a lot in New York, Valve sure must be proud.
Can't wait for the next summer sale.
clever
I used to think it was just some form of construction ventilation. NY’s underground is such a complex system, I had no idea what it could be.
Theres probably a secret city under lol
When I was a kid, someone told me that those steam pipes were chimneys from underground houses. When I asked why there were houses underground, I was told that New York City was expanding so fast that there was no time to demolish old buildings, so they would just build new ones on top of the old ones.
Lol, that's pretty funny.
Loooooooool
That has happened before. I believe San Francisco, was built on top of an old city. There’s even tunnels that can take you there. It doesn’t explain how the buried home still have active chimneys.
@@williammills5597 I doubt that's true. If it literally were built on top of an old city like in the animated tv series Futurama the sewers being Old New York then it would probably all collapse. And those steam pipes aren't chimneys as explained by the video.
That literally just corrasant from Star Wars
I always thought from movies that its hot sewage water which is steaming in cold new york weather.
I live here and I always avoid those steaming manholes, in my head it's poop vapor.
Ayeeee Mr slav yeah same lol
Detroit has steam coming out of the streets too and sometimes that's what it smells like.
Yeah man! Thought the same ....
Was about to say that
"up until then new york didn't have buildings taller than a few feet" I know he meant stories but I like to imagine just a bunch of 4-foot buildings littering the landscape of new york.
always thought the steam was from hot sewage flowing through underground pipes
I thought it was coming from hell! 🥴
That likely wasn't sanitary
It smells like it though
I asked my uncle (who's lived there for 40 years) what the orange chimneys were, and he said he didn't have a clue and he didn't really care haha
True new yorker !
thats the spirit!
I’d get a new uncle.
@@albertbatfinder5240 Not cool man
Now you can educate your uncle 😀
I'm amazed at the amount of fragile systems in place that run the world
Lol perfect systems are super expensive and I’m poor so I’m in the fragile camp!
I mean most things are j auctioned off to whoever can do it the cheapest.
Every system needs schedule maintenance.... Even if they are maintenance-free, it doesn't mean they don't need it after 10-20yrs.
In 1984, there was a movie about nuclear war that was made in the UK called Threads. At the beginning of the movie the narrator made a statement similar to what you said about how fragile our systems are. The statement went like this: In an urban society, everything connects. Each person's needs are fed by the skills of many others. Our lives are woven together in a fabric. But the connections that make society strong, also make it vulnerable.
It’s not just this that’s fragile, New York’s storm drains are also the sewers, so if there’s too much rain, raw sewage goes into the rivers
Just for comparisson:
The "Fernwärme-Netz" of Berlin, Germany, which is pretty much the same has a length of 1250 miles. 12 times the length of the one in NY and it doesn´t leak everywhere :D
Your comparison doesn’t make any sense, the only thing comparable is the system they use are similar. NYC is much denser, the system is older and pressures required for the city are different.
@@ASiggeris the comparison doesn't make "any sense"? Are you sure that you aren't throwing around such statements a little easily? But hey, it's the internet and that's how people act on the internet :)
The fact the let it rot for such a long time is an argument for what exactly? And what does dense even mean in your statement? What different does it make for anything?
I was just trying to put into perspective that the system isn't particularly big and that the problems they have aren't normal
@@stefan514 You are once again talking in circles. That’s like saying the sun rises all over the world, so you should be able to grow the same crops from one location the same as another. My argument was never that they let it “rot” for longer, that’s your argument.
There are so many variables in why a system ends up failing, but you ignore any of it. Your take on the problem is best suited for a simpleton, mission accomplished.
@@ASiggeris The problem is, that NYC still relys on steam. The system in Berlin uses hot water, which doesn't work with high pressures. The city where I live has a "Fernwärmenetz" as well and I can't remember any accident or any leaking steamstack in the streets.
@@Faulpelz55 so then it’s not “pretty much the same” as was previously claimed lol
My first winter in New York I saw these plumes of steam escaping from manholes and tall pipes downtown, it made beautiful and eerie views in cold weather but nobody seemed to notice, just me the newcomer. I had a Cuban friend who always said "the steam", speaking of heating the rooms even if the heating was electrical.
Lol NYC is like a student putting off all their work till right when it’s due
Edit: This video was recommended to me 7 months later so here I am again
That's basically the city in a nutshell, and it's both worrisome and endearing all at once
That’s basically our species lmao
And then saying “The Dog Ate My Homework.”
"Hey, they dont blow up thaaaat often. No worries, never spend any money before you are sure you can spend the most possible amounts" - NYC utilities manager
Like me right now
"what do you think"
I donno, I'm not a steam engineer.
It's a cool thing to learn about though
@Bruno Follmann I see what you did here
Looks like volcanic activity to me
Uhm, one option would for the gov to invest in solar panels and battery technology so the prices come down then get rid of steam, gas and petrol.
@@fbelard yea stop mining crude to mine lithium, nice. The future is hydrogen
@@superniko20 Hydrogen is the present, the future is not invented yet and America lives in the past.
The guy is like the popular girl from cheer squad giving a presentation in high school
Sssooo yyheahhh💁🏼♂️ boilersssss💅🏼
Guy?
So.. yeah, *snaps fingers*
@@yesbutwhy9501 the inventor maybe
He is such a pansy
That's actually brilliant. If we could improve the water traps, then I think everywhere should use that. And even when the pipes do fail, I would never notice because here in SLC Utah, it's never ending road construction anyway.
lol "raises concerns"
Wow you're here! I'm subbed to you!
@@deckarddwizardd1909 so he’s dom to you?
@@mido6480 lmao
They don’t give af
something to maybe look into 😁
'The explosion killed 1 person and injured 18 more'
the music: ya like jazz?
People hearing trumpet: “is this jazz?”
Do you like Phil Collins?
I thought the same 😄
😂😂😂
George Michael enters chat 🎷
Neat presentation on NYC's steam system. Our engineering firm was NYC's expert on the cause of the 2007 steam explosion. As reported elsewhere and based on our observations, it was caused by supersonic steam propelling a large slug of water below Lexington Ave. hitting an elbow on the east side of the street. This is similar to the mild water hammer caused within radiators. What is not widely known is that these steam traps failed because of an injection of a sealant to minimize leaks from the various original pipe joints. I was at the laboratory that opened up the original steam traps and I have the pictures of the sealant clogging the traps ability to operate. The sealant injection work was done by a private contractor engaged by Con Edison. What is interesting about this 100 year old steam system is that it has relatively mild interior pipe corrosion given its age, largely because of the lack of oxygen within the high pressure steam system. Also, much of the steam from the various street vents is caused by below surface rainwater heated by the high pressure steam pipe which in some cases has lost its insulation.
Very interesting. BTW, when I got a job with NYC's Con Edison in 1975, I found out that they were not only the world's largest electrical utility, but that they were also the world's largest steam utility!
*shows tens of meters long geyser of hot steam*
Cheddar: "it raises concern".
ahaha “raises”
That's not a concern no more, that's a hazard baby
@@cryingwater yeah, I think I’d be fuckin’ terrified if I was in NEW YORK CITY and heard a loud boom followed by a bunch of steam outside my window on the 6th floor.
Yeah, stream pipes makes sense back in the 1800s but they should have replaced the system or at least done a large scale maintenance a long time ago
@@junct yeah in the 1960s
Can't believe it literally shaped NYC
LITERALLY
@@cheddar hi
lol
@@cheddar literally
@@cheddar notice me senpai
I discovered this channel last week after searching "stampede". TH-cam suggested the video "How Human stampedes Really Happen " and I have been hooked to the channel since then. The videos are so well done and every time I watch one I leave more educated and super entertained. Amazing.
Now I am interested in human stampedes.
I learn so many interesting things watching this channel... Thank you
Nah, man, it's those ninja turtles that need to stay warm, being reptiles and all that.
This is the real answer
yup
Calabunga dude
Interesting. So, New Yorkers are not rude, they are steamed.
Nope, they are pretty rude. I drove a truck through NYC and people there are some of the most vile people ever
Steamed hams? Nope, those are upstate
@@TKUA11 we are rude to people who deserve it.
@@mrbrainbob5320 exactly, only to those who deserve it, all in all most of us are nice really
Probably sounded better in your head.
Awesome video! Very informational and interesting!!
Them Ninja Turtles having a BIG session in the sewers
Nyc is just ripping the fattest vape the world had ever seen
the build is probably 0.000001 ohms
lmao
Probably just all the crackheads in the sewers smoking a rock at the same time
vape nation
ayyyyy
I'm just a simple guy from a tropical country who have a hard time to relate with the need of "heating buildings"
I feel you. My city is literally on the equator.
@@jpaulo_ap mine is near too. I'm from Philipenis
I m from New Delhi, India . It freezes to 5C in winter. Still we hve no heating for buildings here.
Living near the Australian Pilbara here. Never seen a ‘radiator’ in any place but the front of a car.
I live in Berlin Witth no Steam but -10 grad Celsius
It would be interesting to find out, why you see so many scaffolds built over sidewalks in NYC and why they stay so long. Maybe this would be a worthy topic for a video by Cheddar?!
Louis Rossman explained it a bit in one of his videos. Something about New York laws that require any renovation above ground level to have scaffolding in place to protect pedestrians from falling debris. The reason there's so much is because the same landowners can have their property in a constant state of renos. I think something to do with Local Laww 11 and building inspections, cheaper to leave it up forever then to setup and tear down every five years or so.
“Digging ditches and laying pipes”. Me
Manythanks
Having never lived in a city, I literally never even knew steam was a utility in some places.
i live in a city and i thought that was never used
It is just for large building owners I think. Normal people don't get a steam bill as far as I know.
Having lived in 3 cities, I literally never even knew steam was a utility in some places.
I live in a huge city and have never heard of this.
The city I live in uses this as a heating source. My flat is heated - among other things - by heat generated by a few production plants, solar farms and some biomass and natural gas. It's really popular here as it is a cheap source of heat. Oh and my warm water comes from there too.
Kind of cool to think about. I heat my floor with excess hear from a steel plant and shower using the same water.
Local 38 San Francisco Pipefitter here. We just finished up a unit on the history of steam in the US in school. Well done! Imma share this with my Union Brothers.
Do you fix belt buckles also?
@@JonJon-du9ne nah, Gamer by hobby, Craftsman by career. But i know a few guys that dabble in leather working and metal fabrication. Don't know about belt buckles though...
@@ericleef1319 lol dig that my guy.
have they let you into the underground tunnels in Northleach yet that were used for speakeasies?
@@rednola9892 Man,....."Northbeach?" I wish. as far as I know (hearsay) Those spaces are used for limited storage and mostly empty and sealed off to the public and most guys don't even knows it exists. most of them are on "Private property" anyways. My Grandad told us they sealed /filled in alot of them in the 70s and 80s. he used to live in Northbeach before he passed.
I looked it up to save people nearly 10 minutes. It’s used to heat and humidity buildings around the city and to steam clean dishes at restaurants. The humidity is for art museums and you can guess why it heats buildings. Sometimes they burst but it’s rare, and for the most part it’s integral to the city and likely wont be replaced any time soon.
Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.
As much as I appreciate steam, I have to consider the cost and liability trap set by the utility company. I would not jump on the bandwagon without some solid numbers to look at first.
Year 2347: _New York makes plans to start using electricity_
The electricity would be gas powered anyways...lol Solar is not sustainable to power a large city.
@@rednola9892 Really big, dense cities, should go modern nuclear unless their regional surroundingsand climate is good for hydro.
Current day modern tech and emerging nuclear actually has very managable waste profiles, and less full-cycle carbon footprint than even solar, wind and _some_ hydro solutions.
Clean, renewable energy need to be substantial and growing parts of our energy supply. But the various types, combinations and scale need to be adapted for the regional conditions. But even so, there is no chance in hell we'll get to where we need to be, in the timeframe of a bed we've made for ourselves, unless nuclear is the core stem of our energy supply. Especially for really densely populated areas. Evolution and efficiency of clean renewables, the resources and industries, the scale of deployment - it just doesn't stand a chance of getting us there.
@@pr0xZen well not everyone has 100+ amp service to fully tap into it. So you'd still need the steam distribution systems in the short term .
On the contrary . I'd enforce strict building standards and promote energy efficient upgrade and further subsidize mini splits . This will reduce the energy loaf instead of keep trying to decrease cost of fuel . Which promoted bad building practices because it doesn't pay to build smart if emery is cheap. Vicious cycle.
Engineering question: Can the force of the steam be used to power miniature turbines unto itself?
Steam heating is really efficient! In future, we will use renewable sources to generate steam. It's better than a gas boiler in every building.
3:13 "before the 1860's New York didn't have buildings taller than a few feet" - Well maybe at least 8 to 10 feet tall I hope.
Nope, 3 feet. People were crawling in there.
@@TheWorldEnd2 🤣🤣
People were much shorter in the past
@@TheWorldEnd2 also flinging poo
@@FurryTheWhiteFox ah yes, pardon me. Can't forget the poo flinging
So how does steam usage get charged? Is it a fixed rate or is there a meter installed at every steam connected building?
Sometimes I wondered about this, very insightful.
I never imagined that New York steam was used to heat buildings.
I thought it was just the steam from the air conditioning of the subway.
Also cools the buildings in the Summer.
Subway stations have no AC. Do you mean the actual trains? Also AC wouldn't create steam.
air conditioned subway😂 must be on some SoHo vibes
Clearly never been to NYC if you think the subway stations are air conditioned 😂 One can only wish.
just found a person dumb enough to think that air conditioning creates steam lmao
It's an efficient system, it just needs a solid overhaul
It’s an outdated technology and have been surpassed by pressurized hot water in pipes. It’s cheaper and much more environmentally friendly.
Yup, just Gota shake down overtaxed citizens after a year long lockdown and you’ve got the funds for it
@@martinrotvig cheaper in maintenance?
@@martinrotvig is hot water as efficient with highrises as steam is? Wouldn't it require more infrastructure on the buildings themselves, defeating the purpose of steam in the first place?
@@skiingcrocodile2153 it requires less maintenance and the risk of failure is much lower. So yes the construction is more expensive, but in the long run it’s much cheaper.
First time I went to NY in the winter, just saw steam vents everywhere and wanted to know why there was so much of it
Just found you guys. I like the content! I subscribed!
7:29 it's amazing how ridiculous it looks nowadays, only 13 years later. seeing people using actual cameras to take pictures instead of their phones
@Aniah Rose it’s really not. A lot of us young people have never owned a dedicated camera
"For those in the know." I've been wondering this since I was a kid and somehow always assumed it was just because the sewage system sucked.
When a kid I always thought it was the colder environment or something like that.
Same I thought it was from the sewers because the city was so dense
Thanks for sharing
A Great Educational Video , Very Nice 👍
This is way in a region of New York they call hamburgers "Steamed hams."
🤣🤣🤣
Not in Utica though.
It’s more of an Albany expression.
And they call it steamed hams despite the fact that they are obviouslt grilled?
@@CB0408 Seymour! The house is on fire!
I've always wondered this!!! They always look so temporary. I'm surprised they didn't make them look nicer
Yeah, I think I've always assumed they were there for some sort of construction work, every time some movie or tv series would have shots of those orange/yellow tubes.
Hi visibility for safety reasons considering most of them are in the middle of busy streets.
@@petitio_principii ya same!
Well they are temporary, when the leak gets too bad it has to be repaired.
There is so much going on in a city that most people have absolutely no idea. From water, to wastewater, to gas systems, and steam. And Steam is a very big part of the infrastructure and very necessary to heat and maintain all those nice offices and apartments everyone works in with no idea how it all works and what it takes to maintain it. Next time you see a facilities engineer or a construction worker, you should thank them for all they do, because without them, well, you’d be really cold with no water or lights.
Bruh when she said Lockport ny I got so excited that’s where I’m from rn damnnn that’s crazy!!
Learn something new everyday. As a Brit, I just assumed the stream was somehow coming from restraunt kitchens somehow.
typical brit
@@monkemode8128 how is that a typical Brit comment. Elaborate.
@@markrice23 not knowing things
@@monkemode8128 lol that made me laugh. Nah it’s gucci I didn’t know too much of it either to this extent. And I live in New York lol
@@odynith9356 I didn't know either i'm just making jokes lol
It's amazing how steam has revolutionized heating.
It's a damn shame that they don't maintain the system.
th-cam.com/video/WF1aLRyOU9k/w-d-xo.html
Wow, I’ve never given those orange and white steam stacks a second thought, as a kid I just sort of assumed it had something to do with the subway or the rest of the underground world under NYC. Very cool to know!
Always reminds me of TMNT , being from London I found it fascinating
Over a 1000 dollars a month to live in that city and they literally have steam heating
only 1000?
@@threeco2350 i meant 1k per month
1000k? Where???
You a clearly live in Kansas or something 1k a month is dirt cheap
@@ivanravenski what job do you have that 1k has no meaning?
I always thought of it as vapor emanating from steaming piles of shit from the gutters.
Decomposing urine and trash
Hell is just a feet under
That’s a common thought
Well, in a way it’s true since a lot of the pipes are old and disgusting, pretty sure they lack maintenance
It would stink like... shit.
We have a district steam system in Baltimore, too. Sometimes you'll see these steam vents on city streets. Better to be venting the steam when there's a leak rather than have the heat build up in the manhole and "cook" adjacent utility cables. I was working for BG&E back when they owned the steam system and was a field inspector covering main extensions for the last two new buildings which wanted steam service. During demolition work in one part of downtown the debris buried a steam manhole. In time, one of the expansion joints started leaking and the resulting buildup of heat cooked telephone cables in a manhole right beside it. BG&E eventually sold the steam system to a company who had purchased other similar systems that were marginally profitable. As far as I know the system still exists.
Indianapolis also has steam all over and they also use the pipes to direct it up but it still flows out of the manhole covers and sidewalks.
That’s also why they started installing manhole covers that are latched so they just raise up an inch or so to allow steam to escape rather than blowing up high in the air.
Most cities: Centralized heating with hot water
New York: S T E A M B O I
The problem of an early adopter. :-)
The district heating system of New York was very early fully developed when other cities were not even thinking about a system like this. So when this cities built their own systems, they used the next, better generations of heat networks.
If you would only need to change some streets, New York would had already changed it's system. But to change all the pipes in so many streets and buildings is very expensive. So they have always delayed it and only repaired where it was really necessary. Now the old system is nearly completly broken...
@@red.aries1444 it was completely broken 40 years ago.
Nowdays it's killing people.
Steam system is more effective compared to plain water. Also, the skyscrapers. The pressure of water to reach the top of building is quite big.
Meanwhile maintainance for steam is more complex.
@@kaunomedis7926 it's not more efficient, steam takes more space, requires more energy to produce and wastes more of water and stored energy and kills more humans. Compared to that, couple of extra pumps per building is nothing.
Narrator: "Do we really need steam?"
Peter Gabriel: "Stand Back"
HOW DARE YOU BUTCHER THE NAME OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR
@@KingSlimjeezy lol
Pass me a Sledgehammer
Haveagoodday.Betterexperience
Very fascinating
Fascinating story.
I stepped on a manhole cover that was over the steam pipes, wearing thin soled shoes. It was many years ago but I still remember the pain.
i'n just picturing walking down the street then the guy in front of me just screaming for 2 seconds as his foot hits the ground
That's one way to file a complaint and get compensation from the city haha
I had no idea that such an "old" technology was still used today!
not old....its a growing concept, its also the most efficient idea, Saudia Arabia took this idea and applied to chilled water, instead of steam they are selling cold water for AC purposes
It's Green and efficient because electric power plants produce a lot of steam as a byproduct that would otherwise be wasted into atmosphere
Steam is used in even larger scale power generation today such as coal and nuclear. Both heat water and turn a steam turbine to generate electricity
@@dominusjack12 District heating is not an old-fashioned idea. However, it is that steam is used. It would be much more practical and economical to transfer heat in the form of hot water.
@@TuomasLevoniemi Like it's done in most systems.
"The steam you see on the streets is the condensation that results from cooler water, like rain, falling through manhole covers coming into contact with the hot pipes."
Is the answer most people were after.
Many cities around the world started to build heathing system infrastructures run by hot water, instead of steam.
The advantages are you need less energy and less maintenance. Along with less dangerous accidents occurring if something goes wrong. Some infrastructure even provide cool water during summer to cool the buildings, so you can use the same infrastructure for more than one purpose.
Disadvange is you need additional pumps to make water flow along the infrastructure and to reach the top of tall buildings.
Often the water to run these systems is heathed by waste-to-energy plants. Which can be used even to make steam, anyway.
I lived with steam heat in my Brooklyn building for 7+ years. If a maintenance guy didn't come by every year or so to "tune" the pipes, each night all of us would be serenaded by SUPER LOUD clanking in the pipes, caused by smaller water-hammers in the building. It sounded like an angry ghost banging on the pipes! I don't miss those days at all.
My husband’s grandparents’ Brooklyn apartment was always 80 degrees in the winter as the steam heat was not regulated. Had to open windows to reduce the temperature.
Well glad u got out of that hell hole
That may not be on the city steam loop, though. It may just be a boiler in your building. I lived in a house that was steam and later converted to hot water and heated by a natural gas boiler. It also made noise if air got into the pipes.
The water hammers can be loud and at time frightening; but when they are small, it is comforting to hear the steam come up on a cold morning while still in bed. The steam heat in old residential buildings was designed to provide so much heat, that one could open a window to let in fresh air. Those large radiators are now being replaced with smaller ones.
@@barbaraturk5373 that's how my elementary school and highschool in Toronto was haha. Hundred year old infrastructure has its setbacks vs. wifi/voice and phone controlled thermostats of today
The pipes on our old apartment cracked once and the steam was pouring out. The steam was so thick we couldn't even see anything. Our entire building had to evacuate. I thought it was so cool back then because nothing really exciting happens in NYC (except that one time we got an earthquake for like 2 minutes), but now that I think about it, we were lucky the pipes didn't exploded o.o
" nothing really exciting happens in NYC"
dafuq is wrong with you ?
@@OooohReally If you have lived in NYC for over 20 years, it's actually a pretty boring place for us normal folks. Honestly, any place gets less exciting after a while.
9 11
@@cocazerow6580 I understand it's hard for some people to sympathize with others because they have never experienced certain events personally, but as someone who witnessed the tragedy in person at a young age, I couldn't help but wonder if you still have some decency left as a human being in that hollow brain of yours. I sincerely hope you are just trolling and I do wish that you can find something else to do other than dancing on our graves of sorrow.
* didn't explode. 'Nothing really exciting happens in NYC' - really? That's a surprise.
I wonder if there's a way to keep the steam, but improve it so that it's safer. Maybe at those bends where the water hammers may hit, there could be some sort of material added which would help soften the impact and reinforce the pipes in some way.
Why not install specially designed water traps at every bend.
In Scandinavia we call this system "Fjernvarme", (Remote Heating or District heating). The benefits of this is that houses get heated; but even more so, you can use anything as heating material as fuel: gas, oil, biomass, garbage, etc.
on my first day in New York as a tourist I saw one of these steaming pipes nearby the airport. I was afraid something was going on. And until today it baffled me why they are pretty much everywhere
I used to think it’s pollution :0
I remember being so shocked realising the man hole covers actually steam. I thought it was just movie effects
I knew it was a real thing, but I always imagined it was just natural steam formed from the temperature difference above and below.
It would probably cost too much for NYC to modernize and renovate the steam infrastructure it has, but that seems to be the only solution that would keep steam a viable option for the future
I love steam grates during an icy Michigan winter.
it’s steam from the steamed clams we’re having! mmmm, steamed clams
I thought we were having steamed hams
@@erick-pj4yv It's a regional dialect
Its an Albany Expression
Aurora Borealis
Bestexperience
"up until like 1860 new York didn't have any buildings taller than a few feet"... If few < 10, then the buildings arent larger than 3m/1 story tall🤔
People were smaller back then
people were a lot smaller back in the day
😅🤣
@@cheddar They literally were. You can tell from antique clothes.
its depends on what feet you use to measure.
my feet? your feet? shaq feet? duck feet?
I’ve been in the cogen plant and Ive worked there and trust me nothing is better than city steam.
Steam heating is a great idea and in my opinion should be kept in use. Although maintenance is expensive, it's better for the environment and leaves a smaller ecological footprint. Also it can be converted into solar energy heating for cheaper and more reliable maintenance.
I live on the other side of the pond but these videos about NYC are really interesting (the wooden water towers one comes to mind).
Then research why 9-11 had infrastructure impacts on NYC. How it affected the underground works of the city and caused major flooding and damage. It's interesting to know, because it generates more insight on how the city is built.
They have a video about that
I'm an engineer for heating Systems in Germany. We Change lots of Steam Systems to warm water systems due to its Higher efficincy. They should do the Same in NYC because district heating is much more Environmently friendly than a gasheating in every building. We have district heating system Not only in large cities Like Berlin or Hamburg but also in cities like Flensburg and smaller.
Btw the description of the Central heating Stations is wrong. In the First step they make Steam under high pressure, than they expand the Steam through a turbine producing electricity and after that they send the remaining heat as steam to the buildings.
I'm sorry but the way you Capitalise random Words and don't use periods undermines your points
The water would be heated with gas, and then lose energy as it's piped around. How is that more efficient than bringing the fuel to the place where the heat is needed?
@@pXnTilde Usually by using the residual ("free") heat from electricity generation that would otherwise be lost to the enviroment right away through cooling towers or rivers.
Next (and going a bit of topic) due to the square-cube law, it is much more effictive to store heat in large central tanks until it is needed. Also, in a pipe network, it is much simpler to replace or retrofit a few large contributor of heat to a different fuele source, rather then replacing a lot of small gas, oil, coal or what else boilers. And by using the large tanks, you could actually save a lot of green intermittend energy efficiently as heat, when there is a surplus of electricity.
@@derradfahrer5029 What? We're not talking about electricity. OP said piping around miles of hot water is more efficient than piping around a few hundred feet of forced air or water. There's no "storing" involved. The surface area of the pipes is magnitudes larger with a centralized heating facility. Natural gas is piped directly to the building with 0 energy loss, then the air or water is heated in the building. The entire system would need to be retrofitted for water. Piping water is much different than piping steam.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but your explanation is incongruent with my statement.
@@pXnTilde I think we have to be careful what we are talking about.
OP said that district heating is more environmentally friendly than gas heating for every individual home/building. He did not specify that the district heating is done with gas or that the fuel at these central systems is used exclusively for heating purposes. Heat for piping to homes is most often just the waste/bi-product from the process for which the fuel was original intended.
However in that case where there is a central plant just for making heat then, yes, I'd also venture a guess and say that it might be more effective to burn the fuel lokally. On the other hand, even modern efficient condensing boilers still loose about 5% to 10% through the exhaust vent. That could very well add up.
I wondered why it's always so foggy in 80s films set in New York, now I know
I was struck by the question at the end, "What do you think?" It's amusing in as much as it could be interpreted as asking for an opinion informed mostly by the content of the video.
It can also be interpreted as "please comment because it boosts the algorithm".
You say steam, I say district heating systems.
The latter being common across the world, working much the same on a distribution/network level, but differing in technology and heat sources.
Heat pumps could easily replace these systems, as could the medium used in pipes to transfer that heat.
Yes, district heating systems are common across the world. But they normally don't use steam, but (pressurized) water between 80C and 130C.
Spike20101000 The steam is used for so much more than just heating though. It runs aircon in summer. It used to power machinery in some buildings. You can't do that with hot water. As for heat pumps- yes, they are great, but the load they would place on the electrical system would be enormous and necessitate a massive upgrade programme, then there is the issue of the size of the units required to heat a very large building. And where would you extract the heat from? Underground you would have to drill through hundreds of feet of rock, avoiding critical city infrastructure- that's if you can even find a spot to drill which in itself is unlikely on most of Manhattan.
@@spencerwilton5831 Yes and no to the load on the grid. It all depends on where you're located. Heat pumps lose efficiency the farther north/cold you go. Same as the farther/hotter you go. My parents had one installed in Toronto. It blew ice cold air most of the time in the winter. It was fine as an a/c in the summer but as for heat? it sucked donkey balls.
The thing about large central "systems" whether it be electrical, or energy, is that they lose efficiency over time. For eg: the 'grid" where I live is extremely fragile and power goes out when a leaf falls on a wire, when a dog pees against a pole, when it rains, snows, sunny, cloudy, or just because the day of the week has a Y in it. It costs a LOT to maintain the system and we pay some of, if not THE highest rates for electricity in North America. It's so bad, that I went offline (due to a dispute over billing) and ran a gas powered generator for 9 months. Now I had to be careful about usage, I couldn't run the TV and fridge when the hot water heater was on, and I couldn't cook when the TV was on etc but it cost me about the same to run a small gennie as it was to pay the supplier who ran huge central generating stations 200 miles away. .
To give you an idea of cost: My house had a wood/electric furnace. It was 27 kw. (27,000 watts). Our total cost per kwh was about 32 cents. So 8.64 per hour. The theory was: you loaded it up with wood in the morning, when the fire died out, it kicked onto electric. I was "told" when I bought the house that they ran all electric one year and it cost them $2100 for the year (family of 3, young wife, new baby, 2 showers every day, plus laundry once a week) I thought, me? single guy? I can handle that.
The first month I ran out of wood I ran all electric. It cost me $900 in ONE month!!! I had 7 rooms on the main floor and 2nd story. It was far cheaper to run a 1200 watt space heater in each room than the electric furnace.
A heat pump uses, on average, about 15,000 watts. Far more efficient than my electric furnace.
Holy... New York is actually more impressive than I thought!
less so actually. cool? sure. but not impressive
Uhh...
reminder that I’m from Puerto Rico.
@@Gabito04 They'll never understand that what's normal for a first world country is amazing to us plebs lmao
NY was cutting edge...100 years ago...
Wow I always wondered! UAE has a similar principle , but they pump cold water from a central location to cool buildings, also cool!
i don't know why but the illustration of a chimney on top of the Empire State Building looks dope
Very informative and interesting because as a kid I always thought all that steam was coming from the vast subway network under the city!
I’m so glad I don’t have a steam heated apt anymore! Early morning clanging pipes, hissing radiators, and if you brush past a pipe in a tshirt it’s next level arm burns for you!
Ha , as a young boy , about 8 , I woke up very cold and ran over to the radiator in my underwear with a blanket and hopped up on it , expecting it to be warm , but not scalding hot , as it was SO cold in the room , turns out I burned my little ass so bad I had a scab on it for weeks as it healed lol , I didn’t do that again
Me too....goes from freezing cold to nuclear hot then freezing cold. Hard to control the temperature with steam radiators. In my building the boiler wasn't able to supply everyone with heat at the same time. So it was like a sine wave: go from blazing hot to cold to hot to cold to hot. It was brutal. You'd open the valve all the way because you were freezing, then at 3 am BAMN BANG BOOM nuclear heat and you're roast.
I love steam heating. No dry air.
@@muskokamike127 the radiators work a little too good in my building.
@@b3at2 but even the steam heated radiators dry out the air in your unit. The only way they wouldn't is if they were leaking.
My place with steam radiators was just as dry as a forced air unit I rented. A properly set up forced air furnace should have a water source connected to it to control the humidity level.
That’s steam, from the steam clams we’re having
It just looks really cool