Silly Question

Supply and Demand. Lots of heat pumps in the south. Not so many boilers. But I'm in Charleston South Carolina and wish I had a boiler heating system right now.

Hospitals, Universities, PowerPoint, manufacturing & food production. Mad Dog

Is DC part of the south? Older houses often have boilers. Pre WW2. Newer construction will have air conditioning and it's hard to justify a boiler if you're running ductwork.

Steam is not just overwhelmingly northern, it is overwhelmingly northeast. It exists outside the northeast - you can find posts here from New Meixco and California, but most are from NYC/New England and few more down I-95 to DC.

When you get to the Midwest, steam systems are unicorns, only slightly more common than in the south (and little more common in Chicagoland). You can find a bunch of posts on here from folks in the Midwest (which starts at Rochester, NY) who can’t find good mechanics. When I’ve called a new company and say steam boiler, about half the companies decline and the half that takes it on tend to be the big guys.

Power Point? I have a heat pump here in Charleston SC and I can still use Power Point on this laptop. It is a great program for illustrating your presentation.

I sold boiler jobs to 2 churches in the same month using a Power Point presentation. I wanted to have all the board members present for the presentation. and was able to field all the questions at once. This skipped the 20 question game that a written proposal would have had if I had just mailed it to the church. It was great, I used the same presentation and just tweaked a few slides to customize it to job. The Baptists purchased one large boiler with a combination Gas/Oil burner. The Lutherans took the 2 smaller boiler option. Same presentation, two different outcomes.

Is that the Power Point you are talking about Matt?

LOL 🤣

True. Interesting that it didn't.

I know that Boston, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco at least still have steam as a public utility in their central business districts, and sometimes elsewhere.

In Boston and Philadelphia at least, most of the steam is a byproduct of electricity generation in modern gas turbine cogeneration plants with heat recovery steam generators that replaced the previous generation of steam-only plants.

A few years ago Veolia Energy built a new 18 inch steam main across the Charles River dam to carry cogenerated steam from Cambridge to loads in downtown Boston previously served by steam-only plants. This significantly increased overall thermal efficiency and reduced their carbon footprint. It also greatly reduced excessive temperatures in the Charles River basin caused by the plant's condensers, which were harming marine life.

Power PLANTS......Yes...all older cities and towns are loaded with Steam. Mad Dog

A terrific map. Thanks for posting.

@HeatingHelp Have you seen a map that shows the types of "heating systems" in the fifty states? If so, will you post it here?

I spoke to a utility worker in NYC who was fixing one of the "steam chimneys" that you can see installed on the manholes where one of these apparent leaks is.

He told me that the issue is usually not a leak in the steam system, but rather it's a failure of the storm drain that is allowing storm water runoff or some other leaking water to come into contact with hot steam pipes (rather than an actual steam leak). I found that interesting so I'm sharing it!

if I recall correctly from my time living in Philadelphia, the supply pressure in the district steam system was 250 psig at about 450 degrees Fahrenheit.