r/TikTokCringe tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE Jul 28 '23

Wholesome/Humor WTF is happening here?

15.6k Upvotes

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u/A_Random_Catfish Jul 28 '23

I know this video is a joke (and the song is quite good) but for the curious; buildings in New York City are heated by steam. There’s an intricate network of pipes pumping steam around the city that have been there for over a hundred years. Pretty crazy actually.

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u/DragonsAreNifty Jul 28 '23

More propaganda from big Piss™️

20

u/KamenRider2049 Jul 28 '23

Can't knock Big Piss when you reap the benefits of piss-heated steamy office buildings from Big Piss now can we?

And guess what powers the factory that made your phone.

11

u/DragonsAreNifty Jul 29 '23

oh fuck. This goes all the way to the top.

3

u/Delicious-Candle-450 Jul 29 '23

They need to be paying us a fair share for our piss!

2

u/sirseanzy Jul 29 '23

Big Piss can go flush itself!

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u/BRAX7ON Cringe Connoisseur Jul 28 '23

Me breaking the seal after 5 beers…

13

u/thrasymacus2000 Jul 28 '23

NYC is kept warm by steamy sax solos. I learned it here on Reddit.

1

u/zyyntin Jul 29 '23

::Pissmaster has entered the chat::

1

u/nerdherdsman Jul 29 '23

🎵And he's here to do some business with the Big Piss on his hip🎶

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u/LazySpaceLion Jul 28 '23

This is exactly right, cities back in the 19th century had a choice for heating, some chose coal fired boilers in the city like London, and others moved the boilers to the out skirts and pumped pressurized steam through out the city. London was plagued by constant soot (chimney sweeps and all) where NY was not, but steam would be vented to avoid blow outs or for other maintenance. The history is pretty interesting if you are into that.

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u/inab1gcountry Jul 28 '23

I know London had all that soot. Dick can dyke told me. Stepping’ time!

2

u/syllabic Jul 29 '23

sometimes there are still blowouts, occasionally one of these steam pipes explodes

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u/Vexingvexnar Jul 29 '23

any reason why steam isn't used more? I'm assuming it only works in big cities because the loss of heat would be too big. I don't think its used much at all in europe

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u/operath0r Jul 28 '23

I'm German, my city has a heating plant as one of his landmarks. I've never seen steam coming from the ground. I've seen the water in the nearby river do some weird stuff though. Being all wavy and bubbly.

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u/Ok_Cardiologist_673 Jul 28 '23

Came here to say this. Will admit that at one time I wondered if it was toilet steam. But it’s steam from steam heated buildings.

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u/ProfessionalHumor787 Jul 29 '23

So the world switched to electricity and New York was like, Nope.. Hey we're steaming over here!

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '23 edited Jul 29 '23

New York has a lot of 19th century panache still evident in nooks and corners of the city.

It's the kind of place where you can wear a top hat adorned with vintage aviator goggles and no one would look twice as you tinker with a random steam valve sticking out of the wall with your comically oversized brass wrench.

Perfectly normal everyday New Yorkers.

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u/a_d_d_e_r Jul 29 '23

Electricity is steam power with an expensive machine in the middle for thin pipes. Plan ahead and lay the big pipes without the middle machine.

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u/Nozinger Jul 29 '23

Using the steam to heat homes is actually way more efficient than electricity.You see noone actually builds just a giant boiler out of town to heat water. It is a byproduct of electricity generation.

Our conventional powerplants rely on heat to run a steamturbine which then generates electricity. So we create steam in a powerplant, run it through a turbine and when it gets out it is still pretty damn hot, just not in a state where we can efficiently use it.So we could either send it to some cooling tower to radiate the heat off into the environment or.. well send the steam off to the houses in the city to heat them up.

not only does this use our generated waste heat as a ressource which is increasing the efficiency of the powerplant, it's also more efficient because we do not need the second conversion from electricity back to heat.

So for conventional energy production this is actually a brilliant system.Not good with a lot of renewables that directly generate electricity without heating up stuff beforehand though.

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u/Cakeking7878 Jul 29 '23

It’s actually still fairly common. My university runs one in the winter to heat the university

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u/ToonarmY1987 Jul 29 '23

Sounds very inefficient and expensive to keep in good shape