The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2018–2021
53:21 · 71K views · Mar 8, 2015
Dan Holohan, author of The Lost Art of Steam Heating, talks about the old steam heating systems he learned about from veteran tradesmen. He shares stories and practical lessons on how these systems work, including running steam at low temperatures.
HN recommends it as an informative talk on steam heating whose advice to respect old working systems carries over to software.
4 comments from Hacker News
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: this video
"When you see something that's old and it's been there for a long time and it's working, don't laugh at it." (From a not-really-related yet quite interesting talk I watched a while back: this video --- also featured on HN at [LINK] )
Tangential topic : There was a post on HN a while back about steam heating. This talk on YouTube was linked. It was really informative: this video
> I've sometimes wondered if it would be practical to operate a steam heating system at a partial vacuum so that the condensation/vaporization could occur at a lower temperature He actually talks about exactly this in the video! this video "You'll be sending steam up into the building at temperatures, in some cases, as low as 150 degrees" (83 degrees C)