Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

We had a problem with this in older Chicago apartments, usually 2 flats and quads. These buildings usually had radiator heat fired by a common boiler in the basement and city mandated turn-on dates and minimum daily/nightly temperatures.

In theory each radiator has a regulator valve that allows you to moderate the amount of steam flowing through it. In reality these valves are all painted over/corroded/never worked in the first place, and all radiators run at full blast. It was not uncommon to see apartments with open windows in January to help regulate the heat produced by the radiator. Tenants didn't care because they didn't pay for the gas directly, although it was obviously built into the rents, and the land lords never wanted to spend the money to upgrade these old buildings, since the excessive usage of gas was built into everyone's rent and the upgrades were not.

Then again, given the age of those windows there probably was very little difference between them being open and closed anyways.

This problem was fixed when I moved into a new construction apartment which had a minisplit to heat/cool the living space. Until I found out that mini-splits have the same issue heating as ACs occasionally have in very hot summers; they can't provide any heat once the ambient temperature gets colder than the exterior coils (since it's literally an AC running backwards). That was a bad surprise.

There was an article the other day that basically said these steam boilers became popular during the 1918 flu pandemic, and they thought increased air circulation would help people not catch the flu (turns out they were right). So the boilers were tuned to run extra hot, as they were intended to be run with the windows open!

Found it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/the-curio...

As I suspected before clicking, that article cites that explanation as being given by steam heating system expert Dan Holohan. He has a talk up on YouTube that I came across a few years ago. It is interesting on a number of levels, and I recommend giving it a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQB0KK2rxcw

> It was not uncommon to see apartments with open windows in January to help regulate the heat produced by the radiator.

Known as the Brooklyn Thermostat.

These days I have the same problem because the downtown Brooklyn PTACs all have the thermostat sensor right next to the window.

This blew my mind more than anything else when we moved to New York.

I live that way right now in a 1950s building in NYC. The heaters only have two settings: off and thermonuclear. And the controls are centralized, ie there's no thermostat in my home. So, yeah, we control the temp by opening the windows sometimes. All that being said, living in an apartment building is automatically far more efficient than a house. We don't need to insulate three of our walls because they directly abut other heated residences and not open air. We have one big boiler for 120 or so residents.

Given a similar level of insulation, yes. But I wouldn’t discount how efficient modern homes can be compared to older apartment blocks.

My 1980s home went through 99 therms of gas last month in Idaho, and that’s with us hand washing dishes (broken dishwasher) using gas hot water. After fixing the dishwasher and replacing some caulk that had failed, I think we’ll probably go through 75-80 therms per month, fewer if I went with tankless hot water. You would be very hard pressed to go through that few therms in an older apartment, especially when you’re literally heating the outside.

Newer apartment buildings absolutely crush that figure though, for all the reasons you listed. The only advantage that individual homes have over taller apartment buildings energy wise is that you can pack more solar panels on top of shorter buildings.

I spent a winter in Moscow many moons ago, they had 2 sets of windows creating with a significant corridor in between them. Where I was, heating was centrally controlled by the city so if it got hot, open the first window. Still hot? Open the second for extra fresh air. Quite a good system I thought and awfully romantic for me: watching the snow fall through open windows with the heating on full blast.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com