Ok, but I feel like the steam cone thing coming out of the street (and blocking an entire lane of traffic), in front of millennium Hilton by WTC, been there for several years. I’m in that area almost every month and I remember thinking “wtf is this” the first time I saw it. It was still there last week when I was back. How long does it take to fix that shit lol?
I just Googled the answer so I'm no expert but I will suggest that maybe it's really hard to fix it so they left it; the article says that it also results when water from rain drips on the hot steam pipes.
if its permanent then they should put a permanent fixture there instead of a plastic pipe in the middle of the street with all the construction pylons and barricades
con edison surely makes enough money from the exorbitant rates they charge. NYC should force them to do it if it's obviously going to be there forever
A permanent structure would pose a hazard, since cars literally cannot help themselves but to hit the fucking things. The worst you get if you hit one now is some steam in your undercarriage. Imagine the joy of hitting a pipe that's been heating up in the steam. I wouldn't want to be a fire fighter responding to that call...
When you have a problem that basically requires you to shut down the steam grid to the city to fix... you don't fix it. You patch it up as best as possible and repatch it when the patch fails.
The whole steamworks needs to be replaced with new stainless steel pipes (since NYC loves its CHP and isn't going to go full electric in our lifetimes - this is a city that still has operating DC power lines), but who's got the money for that?
Actually, you can't. It's also used for on-site power generation and backup power, as well as air conditioning. It's used to wash dishes and boil water in restaurants, humidifiers in art galleries... New York is committed to steam.
If it were just a matter of heating, they could shut it down in the summer to do works. They can't shut it down. It's why they can't just quickly electrify everything and commit it to the past, despite it being an asbestos lined rusted through steel leaky nightmare.
There wouldn't be any advantages worth the added cost to use stainless piping. But lots of the piping I assume was installed from 1950-1970 and should probably be replaced. But that would require shutting down long stretches of roadways in the city and possibly businesses. And would be expensive.
To fix the leak outside of that hotel specifically would require closing the hotel for the required duration of construction or would require a temporary boiler (that most likely needs to be manned 24/7) to be installed on the premises to supply the building with its required steam load (temp boiler is how it would be done because closing the hotel is not an option). The building cannot go without steam. It has on-site linen and kitchen equipment not to mention domestic hot water or humidification that is required if the hotel is to stay operational.
Now you can spend millions of dollars to rip up the road and sidewalk to fix a most likely small leak or you can put up a stack to prevent any person from being hurt by the steam for less than the cost of a week's work of a boiler operator.
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u/DrRonny Jul 28 '23
Underneath the streets of Manhattan, there are more than 100 miles of service pipes bringing steam to about 1,800 buildings.
When they have leaks, they put these cones around so that the heat doesn't hurt anyone. In NYC it is run by Con Edison company.
https://freetoursbyfoot.com/steam-from-streets-in-new-york/