The Future of Steam, Circa 1893

Not to beat a dead horse about my bad memory, but I don’t remember where I originally found the paper “A Look Ahead.” It might have been from the archives of the first place I worked in this industry. I miss the luxury of stepping back in time as I looked thru the multitude of drawers in those two file cabinets. You really don’t know what you have until you don’t.

Giving credit where it’s due, it was written by Hugh J. Barron for the fifth convention of the Master Steam and Hot-Water Fitters Association held in Chicago, 1893 and then reprinted in a magazine (like this one) called, Master Steam Fitter. Hugh looked into the next fifty years, but to set the stage, looked back about 75 years to the beginning of using steam to heat buildings.

The Father of Steam Heating

He went back to who he called “the father of steam heating,” Mr. Perkins of Philadelphia, working in a shop about 1816 to 1820. He had a cast of characters developing the early technology. One was “Blind Hawkins,” who frequently experimented with steam, believing that higher pressure was the way to go, all the way up to 175#. He ended up using musket barrels at one time in place of steel tubes.

Another character was Isiah Lukens, a clock maker that also worked in steam engineering. He always took a summer vacation of from six to eight weeks, with his fishing tackle, on a solitary excursion nobody was privy to. Can you imagine a trip like that today?

This was at a time when steam engineering was in its infancy, before factories, furnaces, railroads or steamships. The first railroad train in the world did not begin to run until 1830. According to the author, these men and other men working together or separately developed the foundation of using steam to heat buildings.

Visions of the Future

He then switched to his view of the future. But let’s consider where he was coming from in 1893. He laments that using steam heated radiators doesn’t achieve a uniform temperature throughout a room, being warmer at the radiator and cooler on the other side of the room. He predicted circulating air heated by steam to achieve a uniform temperature throughout to space.

In 1893, it was a luxury to install a central steam heating system, and the cast iron radiators used in the mansions were big and ugly. He predicted, “In the near future direct radiators will be designed that are poems in art.” I’ll agree with that—radiators now come in every imaginable shape, size and color.

He goes on to predict that globe style valves will rapidly become extinct, replaced by the gate valve. Well, that kinda happened from 1893 to when I started in the industry 40 years ago. But over those last 40 years, the ball valve has replaced the gate valve in almost every application, including actuated ball valves to control the flow of steam or hot water.

Sticking with the piping, he predicts that in general piping, the cast fitting will disappear and be replaced by malleable, steel and wrought fittings. That screwed pipe will be replaced by electric welding. That is still a trend, but press fittings seem to me to be the future of pipe fitting below 2”.

District Heating?

He has a particularly unusual prediction, that central steam generation plants will become much more common and that the exhaust steam from these plants will be saved and used instead of wasted. He envisions a “large central main pipe, say fifteen to twenty feet in diameter” to carry the exhaust to different applications, including steam for heating.

The size pipe seems grandiose, but the late 1800’s was a time of great discoveries and grand plans. He wanted to get rid of brick-set boilers and go-to steel tube boilers that were completely metal. He wanted a distinction between engineering and architecture. Engineers to work with metal. Architects to work with brick.

He did predict the change from coal fired equipment to oil or gas. I think the world is much better for this evolution, but we always need to remember that the roots of steam heating systems are with a coal/manual fired boiler. The switch from manual fire to automatic fire required some modifications to some systems that weren’t always done or done correctly.

He writes about how patent law shouldn’t be applied to steam engineering, especially boiler design, since he thinks “we have passed the age of patents.” This agrees with the views of one of my heroes, Ben Franklin, but patents never went away, thanks to the lawyers that get paid to argue about this detail or that.

Electric Heating?

A shocker to me is his description of a home in Brooklyn that was heating successfully with an electric heating system. A separate circuit was used for the three main functions, heating, cooking, and lighting. Sounds like it used a central hot air furnace as the air handler, with an electric heater in the main.

There also were electric heaters in each of the branch lines, “the idea being to heat the cold air in the main pipe to a certain degree and then superheat it in the separate pipes.” A type of hybrid heat, the main heater worked in the mild temperatures, while the individual heaters worked in the harsh weather.

There was an electric fan in the hot air furnace to constantly move the air around the system. “Even with a winter as vigorous as the last one, not a shovelful of coal has been used in the house during the entire season.” Imagine that over 130 years ago! Wonder why the idea of heating the house with electric took so long to adopt?

Some things he got right, some things he was completely wrong about. Like other changes that were made, it usually is a combination of factors that shape the conclusion. Steam heating isn’t dead, but it sure seems to be more of the exception than the norm.

Patrick Linhardt is a forty-one-year veteran of the wholesale side of the hydronic industry who has been designing and troubleshooting steam and hot water heating systems, pumps and controls on an almost daily basis. An educator and author, he is currently Hydronic Manager at the Corken Steel Products Co.