NY Times

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

Today's paper has a photo with some radiators in the background and I'm trying to figure out what kind of system it is. There are two pipe connections, what looks like a TRV on one of the pipes and a steam vent on the radiator. The steam vent is on the same side of the radiator as the pipe connections. Comments?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/arts/television/real-world-homecoming-cast.html?searchResultPosition=1

Steamhead

2-pipe air-vent, with both pipe connections on the same end of the rads. Rads themselves look like they might be Bundys or similar.

Unless the returns from the rads go into wet return lines, which would prevent steam from backfeeding into the rads from other rads, those TRVs are wrong.

Jamie Hall

That picture looks to me as though it is staged... not sure I would trust any of it.

retiredguy

I think that @Jamie Hall is right about the staging. The part that bothers me is that when I look closely at the picture I see that the people staring at the paranoid me as if I can answer all their questions.

bucksnort

retiredguy said:

I think that @Jamie Hall is right about the staging. The part that bothers me is that when I look closely at the picture I see that the people staring at the paranoid me as if I can answer all their questions.

Kinda looks spooky. Like the next thing you would be thinking is why are they putting barbeque sauce on me and stuffing me in the oven. The one in the green looks hungry.

DanHolohan

That’s a Reed radiator, so it would now be a two-pipe, air-vent system. 

ratio

Which matches the observed installation. My guess is that the room really is heated via steam, as the odds of getting radiators piped in correctly on a movie set are pretty low.

DanHolohan

The building is at 565 Broadway in Soho. Lots of these systems in that part of Manhattan.

ratio

Beautiful. I wish we built stuff that pretty nowadays.