Dead Men Tales: Keep An Eye On District Heating

HeatingHelp

Keep An Eye On District Heating

In this episode, Dan Holohan shares how district heating was born, why it’s getting bigger all over the world, and what this means for hydronics.

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Thank you to our sponsor SupplyHouse.com.

dopey27177

Dan You got that right.

What is left out is the economy of scale that becomes most prevalent with district heating provided that competent employees maintain the systems they are responsible for.

See new post on the disasters of ill maintained district heating systems as referenced in the New York City Housing Authority.

Jake

Peter Rozano

Iceland is a very cool place (no pun intended). It's basically a volcanic island where the North American continental plate collides into the European continental plate. In Reykjavik, they pipe Volcanic heated water all through the city, both for heat and domestic use. When I was there, there were a few repair (or maintenance) holes, which was just candy for a heating nerd to look into

DanHolohan

About Iceland:
https://heatinghelp.com/blog/icelandic-heating/

DanHolohan

This is the plant we visited.

DanHolohan

Here's more about the company. My favorite part is the Blue Lagoon. That's quite a place!

https://www.hsorka.is/en/about-us/our-history/

leifjensen

In the early eighties, when I was with Tour & Andersson USA, we sold most of the control valves and reset controllers that went into the substations of two HW district heating systems in Wilmar,MN and Jamestown NY. Most are still there and working. My current company, Paxton Controls, have replaced a few.
Leif Jensen, Bristol RI

adrian123

That steam pipe explosion at 41st and Lexington destroyed my office, we had to move to a different location for months as the place was repaired, and we were on the 12th floor! The southeast corner of the building was a total mess.

TheOldBear

Excellent story. I grew up in a 7-unit building in Boston's historic Back Bay neighborhood which was heated by steam from Boston Edison. The conversion from a coal-fired boiler to district steam in the 1930s meant that the building did not have to employ a man to come in early in the morning to shovel coal to get the building up to a comfortable temperature for the residents. It also freed up rentable space which had been occupied by a large boiler and room-sized coal storage bin.

I remember the district engineer from Boston Edison used visit the building regularly. Because the steam was billed based upon metering the condensate before its discharge into the sewer, a unexpected drop in the volume of condensate would get the immediate attention of the utility -- who would then get the building owner's plumber to come and look for any leaks in the system.

The system also provided domestic hot water by way of a heat exchanger and storage tank. In those days, people were more concerned with convenience than energy efficiency, so the hot water system used a convection loop to make sure that the lady living in the top apartment would gave hot water immediately upon turning on her tap and not have to wait for water to flow through a hundred feet of pipe from the storage tank in the basement.

In 1986, Boston Edison sold its district steam business to Boston Thermal Energy Corp which subsequently became part of Vicinity Energy which operates district steam systems in several U.S. cities. See: https://www.vicinityenergy.us/solutions/district-heating-cooling

Solid_Fuel_Man

When I was a kid, we had family who were stationed at a local air force base. This was a nuclear weapon base built in the Cold war era. It closed down in 1994. 

Over 100 buildings, some 100,000 square feet hangers....were all heated by a coal fired high pressure water district heating system. 

It operated at 300psi, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 degreesF. 

They all had relatively small heat exchangers to separate the superheated water from the "low temperature" water that ran through the building's radiation. All  were heated by normal low pressure 180 degree water. 

Upon closure in 1994, the heat exchangers were removed and boiler rooms built in each building. Oil tanks buried and chimneys built. The 5 story boiler building and the five  100 foot stacks was demolished 10 years ago. 

The neat thing is, a 100,000 square foot building was heated by a 4" schedule 80 line. This is all in northern Maine where we see -40F. 

The stories of guys waving brooms in front of them you find a leak in the boiler building. Wait until you hear or see the bristles get cut off....then you know where the leak is. It was 100% welded schedule 80 steel pipe. Every building had Honeywell pneumatic controls with outdoor reset. 

I still service that Honeywell system, but some is now DDC based. 

DanHolohan

Great stories, guys. Thanks so much for sharing!

Roohollah

As always, it was absolutely amazing to read the history of this phenomenon in the world.As for me , i read and listened eagerly and enjoyed it a lot. Thanks an ocean . Stay safe, loyal student and friend ,Roohollah

jumper

In the good old days manufacturing facilities used steam for diverse purposes. So it was a natural for one plant to sell steam to other factories nearby. TorontoHydro had a monopoly to sell steam but would sign off for most locations. For one thing steam was considered more reliable than electricity. Was it odd that Toronto's municipal government threw up roadblocks? I don't think that there was an active stationary engineers' union.