District Heating

dopey27177

I am a retired employee of the New York City Housing Authority. I started out as a plumbers helper in 1965, worked my way up the ladder to the New York City Licensed Master Plumber for the housing authority and I retired as The supervisor of the plumbing section where I had 12 field foreman and 150 teams of plumbers maintaining 2500 buildings (all piping for fuel both gas and oil domestic water, sewage and waste water removal, roof tanks , surge tanks pumps and compressors, steam and hot water heating etc) in the 5 borrows of New York City with a population of nearly a 250,000 residents in 1991 when the New York City Housing Authority was a crown jewel, even with the scandals that evolved with the issued contracts for new boiler and steam vacuum systems installed.

I had to make a particular housing project operate with quality steam heat and domestic hot water due to major political problems.

This article will be helpful to all contractors involved with District Heating Systems and large commercial projects that are plagued with any problems similar to what is depicted in this article.

Additionally, after my retirement I opened a consulting company and serviced contractors, engineering firms, condominiums, the real estate industry and some factories.

Additionally I wrote a book on steam heating: Steam the Perfect Fluid for Heating and some of the Problems.
The book is available in Dan's Library, Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Dorrance Publishing in Pittsburgh Pa.

I hope you like the article.


Jacob Myron

EBEBRATT-Ed

Thank you. Saved for later reading

John Ruhnke

Awesome!1

I love learning new stuff. I downloaded and am reading it now.

John Ruhnke

So this is some real cool high pressure steam stuff. It explains how to handle the condensate. Awesome stuff.

I served my apprenticeship for a couple years for a outside contractor that had the Pitney Bowes Account. They had a separate building just for these two humongous Boilers. The biggest dam things I ever saw. I was the only one not scared of heights in my crew. I was young and wanted the opportunity to prove my worth. During two weeks every year they shut down the boilers. I climbed around on those pipes 30ft in the air while these older guys who are now all dead would just scream orders at me from below. I would turn this valve screw in and unscrew that pipe. I had no idea what I was doing. But I was important because I just bounced around thirty feet in the air from pipe to pipe and got the job done.

The main had 120psi steam. The boilers I think had even higher pressure maybe 300psi. This was the Stamford main plant and they manufactured postage machines there. Everything was powered by Steam. The main ran around the entire main plant and had many pressure reducing stations. They dropped it down to 10 psi and then even again to a couple psi for heating. They constantly added machines, took out machines. Always moving things around. One line of printers would have 10 workstations. Another newer line of printers had three work stations. So we would go in there take down a couple stations from the old line as it got less popular and then add new stations to the new line as it got more popular. We did the steam and the air lines. All air was 100psi. Steam varied by what the equipment used needed. It was fun.

Then about ten years later I spent about a year working for a big dry cleaner that had these big fire tube boilers. He doubled the size of his space. I moved equipment around and added stuff as he slowly moved in. The boilers had 100psi. You can find pictures of that job on my website. I only wish I had pictures of the Main Plant Boilers at Pitney Bowes. It was a steam guys dream job.

DanHolohan

Jake, there's a walk down Memory Lane in the NY Times this morning.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/nyregion/nycha-heating-boilers.html

retiredguy

Wow, I would be right at home in any of these boiler rooms, with the heat, the sounds, and the guys that take care of these beautiful pieces of steel. If the cities that utilize district steam would spend a little more money for maintenance and the proper equipment, those boilers would perform well for 40 or more years. Water quality in the boilers usually determines their useful life. I once visited Butler Hospital in Butler, Pa. to view their Babcock Wilcox boilers that were at that time about 50+ years old. I asked if they recently had re-tubed those boilers and they said that they were the original tubes. I should have had a camera.

DanHolohan

At NYCHA, I've seen boiler-feed pumps being fed with a hose through the air vent 24/7. That's to cool the hot condensate because so many of the steam traps are not working. They're feeding the boiler with untreated water and wasting the overflow to the sewer. It's crazy.

John Ruhnke

The dead guys at Pitney Bowes were really smart and perfectionists. Nobody fooled around. Everything always had to be in top shape. If Pitney Bowes shut down for two minutes when the lines were rolling every bodies head in our crew would get chopped off. You didn't mess around there. Everything was constantly monitored, two parts on the shelf for every part installed, We had walkie talkies. We were told to never shut them off. Even in the shitter you had to have the dam thing on. Something broke and literally we ran across the plant to fix it cause millions were lost if the workers stood around and watched us. They paid us big bucks to stand around and do nothing until the radio called. Then we were off and running. I felt like a fireman. Literarily Dan if you had a heart attack. and I called an ambulance and then a steam trap blew. They would hold up the ambulance, wave us threw and get us to the steam trap. And then the ambulance could come in and take you to the hospital.

John Ruhnke

Every employee at Pitney Bowes was treated well. Everybody including me were paid well. They were all friendly. I guess the best way to explain it is that everyone from the CEO to the janitor was loyal to the company. They wanted to see Pitney Bowes be successful. They knew that if the steam stopped flowing, the machines then stopped running. Everybody's Christmas bonus was dependent on a profitable year. They all shared in the profits. I really enjoyed working there. It was just that important. The steam main was viewed like a main artery. The boilers were the heart of Pitney Bowes. The city of Stamford depended on support from Pitney Bowes. The money flowed when the steam flowed.

THE STEAM MUST NOT STOP FLOWING!!!!!!!

dopey27177

Dan

It pains me to see how the HA degenerated to a physical dump.
That article you sent me was Breukelen Houses the place that I retrofitted.

The steel tube boilers there were made by BURNHAM. The vacuum system was made by national pump. All the steam traps were new.

The problem with the HA as I see it is no one knows how maintain the plant.

This is evidenced by what happens in Berry Houses on Staten Island. When I was a field foremean I had my office at Berry.

I used to send my Plumbers there to learn the simple parts of plant maintenance. The Boiler room and tank rooms were hospital clean, The Dunham varivac system and at that time 30 years old ran quieter than a Rolls Royce engine. Now the entire plant is more than 50 years old and still running like new.

That says something for people with a work ethic and are also qualified to maintain the plant.

This project always ran at 80% of its fuel allocation with apartment temperatures at about 75 degrees.

Domestic hot water temperatures were 125 degrees out with a return temp. of 115 degrees.

The hiring of 100 caretakers to take care of the plant is a joke. The authority was doing that before I retired, they hired tenants as well and schooled them in house.

The authority should have sent these new bees to all the projects on Staten island to learn from the real heating plant technicians.

If the guys want more stuff like this they can contact me at Dopey27177@aol.com

Thanks for the read from NY times.

Jake

DanHolohan

Amen, Jake. Amen.

John Ruhnke

@DanHolohan @dopey27177

The big problem is political. The politicians fail to develop any type of educational system outside of college. There solution is for everyone to go to college and pay college grads real good money. Everyone else is second string to them. They don't realize that the visual thinkers are the ones the traditional school system ignores. So the visual thinkers go into the trades. They work with there hands and understand how all the equipment works. They see it in there head. But then the politicians ignore them and pay big money to put a verbal thinking college grad in charge of a system he doesn't understand. So now the guy who understands the equipment is paid to take orders from somebody who doesn't. The college grad then fears he might be undermined because he doesn't know as much as the guys under him. He fires anybody that might learn to much and then hires idiots to replace them. He wants order takers, not problem solvers.

BobC

@John Ruhnke You just described the management style of the post office. The managers weren't all college grads but 95% of them refused to listen to men that had deep knowledge when it came to the machines.

Bob