Steam Vent long ago

hexxman

I manage 60 year old NYC buildings. I asked the original owners and their family members about the vents and they claim that the buildings had one size Hoffman vents through out the entire 50 unit buildings. Why did the "old timers" and engineers do this? We are told today to balance with various size vents. It begs the question what is correct?

Steamhead

Simple. Back then, the buildings likely would have had coal-fired boilers. These boilers were "banked" at night so the fires would not go out, then fired in the early morning, and stayed hot all day. So the steam only came up once a day. Even radiators far away from the boiler would stay hot once the steam reached them.

This also explains why many vintage systems did not have main vents. So what if that furthest apartment took an hour to get heat? Once the rads got hot, they stayed hot all day.

Long Beach Ed

Number 6 oil was 3-cents per gallon. Tenants wore sweaters and cursed the landlord or opened the double hung zone valves.