Ooh. I know this one. Parts of NYC still use a steam heating system that was first designed in the late 1800’s:
Thank you. There’s so many people responding with unhelpful answers.
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I’ve never been called a boomer before, I’m far from it. Let me exchange a free idea and information; you’re a fucking moron.
Sorry to have hurt your millennial feelings.
No feeling hurt here. Quite the opposite. Again, allow me express my “free exchange of information and ideas” and my somewhat amused feelings; You’re a fucking moron!
And you, sir, are an accomplished wordsmith! I mean, “fucking moron” twice? Brilliant! Thank you for you contributions!
Don’t feed the troll, ignore and move on.
Wtf? Bad form, Peter Pan.
You should tell this guy.
Imagine having two keyboards just to put your hands in each of them and, like play 4 keys from each… without moving your arms at all…
Wow that’s neat
No, that’s heat.
Yeet the heat or beat the meat
Yeet the meat not the heat.
It’s not steam. It’s smoke from wood fired pizza ovens for the turtle men that live there. There was a cartoon documentary about them on tv a few years back.
I never thought of them eating artisan pizzas. I always figured they’d get some shitty dominos.
Ew, gross. They live in a sewer, but they’re not animals.
They’re teenagers, taste doesn’t factor in much after cost and availability.
Have you never seen the movie? The only pizza they ate was from Domino’s.
And in every other piece of media, it isn’t?
They wouldn’t do dominos they’d probably get a variation of Rays famous near them
90s dominos also isn’t today’s dominos.
90s Dominos was trash. Even Dominos recognized old Dominos was trash.
Truth. Whatever they did 10-15 years ago made it tolerable. Not great, but tolerable.
I actually liked the crust after the change. It’s not great, but it was better than most other chains.
I delivered for two locations shortly after they fixed the pizza. In both locations, shift leads and managers came up with so many excuses for house pizza. More than any other chain I worked for. I didn’t connect the dots until later. The pizza must have been much worse before.
Product placement in a movie doesn’t count
They seem to have the only people willing to deliver to a drainage hole.
That isn’t steam, it’s smoke. Smoke from the smoked hams we’re having. Mmmm, smoked hams.
Surely you mean smoked clams?
I thought that was from the streets of Albany?
no, there it was the other way round, pay attention
Ah, so it was the streets of Utica.
Steam from the steamed hams we’re having
And you call them that even though they are obviously grilled?
excuse me for a minute
Teenage mutant ninja turtles barbeque
The New York City steam system includes Con Edison’s Steam Operations, a piped steam system which provides steam to large parts of Manhattan. Other smaller systems provide steam to New York University and Columbia University, and many individual buildings in New York City also have their own steam systems. The steam is used to heat and cool buildings and for cleaning and disinfecting. It is the largest such system in the world and has been in operation since 1882.
Wow, that was quite a read, thanks. Amazing technology
Amazing for the 1800s
Whole parts of Eastern Europe still transport Steam for heating.
What you think of is district heating, it (usually) just uses warm/hot water instead of steam.
You are likely correct.
We have these in Lansing MI too! Part of the Satanic Panic back in the 80s involved kids playing D&D down in parts of the steam tunnels under MSU, which, I’m told, is much harder to do now unfortunately
We have these in Lansing MI too! Part of the Satanic Panic back in the 80s involved kids playing D&D down in parts of the steam tunnels under MSU, which, I’m told, is much harder to do now
unfortunatelyvery fortunately since children don’t know how to look out for a superheated steam leak and it was only a matter of time before a child got fucking bisectedFtfy
Wow this makes me realise why so many movies set in New York I watched in the 80’s and 90’s often had steam coming up from the ground.
A new rat pope was elected.
I love how plausible this is
Praise Cheesus
Thank you, much a-brie-ciated.
Hot. Moist. Air.
it’s steam not air
You can’t see steam. It’s not visible to the naked eye.
No it is Moist. Air.
New sewer pope
Old steam heating system. They vent it when they’re working on a section.
Side-note: surprised by all the fellow New Yorkers i’m seeing in this thread. I thought yous were still at the other place.
Yep. Detroit has this, too.
Yeah it’s common enough I figured most knew, but a few years ago I went ice skating at the bryant park rink with someone who refused to walk anywhere near the steam. They thought it was toxic and didn’t accept my explanation, so we had to walk an extra few blocks to get around the steam work. Shrug
I wonder if they could make it more efficient by running at a lower temperature and installing water source heat pumps in buildings. https://youtu.be/abGiNL9IT54
That’s a good idea! My understanding is that the old steam network is slated for decommission and replacement by this program, basically a large distributed geothermal heat pump network that also harvests from major heat producers like data centers and provides both heating and cooling.
It will end the era of the steamy-street Sin City aesthetic but should be many, many times more efficient than the old steam system. Phase-change thermal transfer in HVAC systems is nearing 400% efficiency, so 4 times more efficient than the theoretical limit of direct heating, because it only uses the energy necessary to move heat from one place to another rather than produce it, and it works for both heating and cooling.
Right now I believe they’re piloting the system in NYCHA buildings (public housing) of neighborhoods outside the old steam network, like Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, but supposedly the plan is to expand to the rest of Manhattan.
Edit: corrected coefficient of performance
There’s a lot of things under the streets of New York, many of them cause heat. In order to cool them off the heat is vented outside and the warm moist air meets with the cool dry air and condensates into droplets that we see as steam. Same affect as breathing out on a cold day, you’re not creating steam but it looks that way because the warm moist air from your breath is condensing in the cool dry air.
Could you name one thing that would cause heat under streets? It’s kinda hard to believe tbh
Pipes transferring steam.
Subway brakes.
Ehhhhhhhh
When you take a hot shower where do you think that water is going?
Wouldn’t it cool off in the sewer, though?
Yes but hot water continues to flow in.
And it doesn’t need to stay very hot. It just needs to be warmer than the outside air temperature in order for vapor to form.
The ground and continuous hot water input keeps everything insulated.
But cold water is also continuously flowing in. And as someone said, it perhaps cools down quickly. Is that all and all enough for such a dense vapor cloud to appear as in pic?
More hot water than cold water is flowing in. It’s a simple thermodynamics problem
How so, or do you just wanna sound smart
If it is colder above ground, than the ambient temperature of the ground, IIRC that’s somewhere in the 50° F range, and less humid than the sewers, sure.
Yeah okay maybe. In the winter for sure
It’s from the streamed clams they’re having.
That’s the steam from the melting pot
Believe it or not. Very old infrastructure in the city. Still runs on steam power.
I swear I thought this answer was about as accurate as the one that said “dragons”.
How steampunk for probably the largest city in the world to use steam in this day and age? I love it…
I’m going to have to interject, NYC is the 11th [or 35th] largest city.
11th, OR 35th? Could you explain?
Or 3rd or 76th.
It depends on how you define the city, here’s my source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
That list is from 2018
NYC didn’t grow any more populous since.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/nyregion/nyc-population-decline.html
Doesn’t mean other cities haven’t grown. Especially Chinese tech haven and trade hub cities are blowing up. If New York didn’t grow, it probably dropped several spots.
I don’t know why they include the surrounding areas as part of the city population. The 5 boroughs is roughly 8 million people. If you live in jersey city, you shouldn’t be counted as part of nyc population
I don’t know why they care about population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_by_area clearly land is more important because land votes not people.
There’s a really good explanation here:
