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Filed under Reviews on January 25, 2008 by Joel Potischman

The Lost Art of Steam Heating

The Lost Art of Steam Heating, by Dan Holohan

Yes, I'm a 21st century software developer, but I'm also the proud owner of a 19th century brownstone with an early 20th century one-pipe steam heating system. This book is awesome. The applicability to software development is an awful lot higher than you'd think. Some similarities:

• Every change you make impacts the entire system, not just the piece you touched.
• The symptom can often be far from the root cause.
• Get it right and everyone's happy. Get it wrong and it's an awful lot more expensive to operate.
• When working on an old system, never automatically think you know better than the guy who built it. Sometimes weird stuff is there for a reason, and you're the newbie who doesn't know what he's doing.
• You can force steam to do just about anything. But the more mechanical parts you add, the more complex and unreliable the system becomes. Build the system the way it wants to work and it will run quietly and reliably for decades.
• Over time, main vents clog with scale and rust, which is a primary cause of uneven heating, boiler short-cycling, and higher fuel bills. Install main vents 15" from the end of the main, after the last riser, and 6"-10" up on a nipple.

Okay, that last one is just applicable to steam heating, but you get my point.

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