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.
Why is there steam coming out of the streets in New York
Submitted 4 days ago by kunegis@feddit.org to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/a89dfc24-0c19-4e46-871a-3a930279f6b2.jpeg
Comments
pacology@lemmy.world 4 days ago
jaybone@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
I never thought of them eating artisan pizzas. I always figured they’d get some shitty dominos.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Ew, gross. They live in a sewer, but they’re not animals.
ieatpwns@lemmy.world 4 days ago
They wouldn’t do dominos they’d probably get a variation of Rays famous near them
Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
They seem to have the only people willing to deliver to a drainage hole.
Kaiserschmarrn@feddit.org 4 days ago
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I love how plausible this is
Agent641@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Praise Cheesus
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 3 days ago
Thank you, much a-brie-ciated.
verdantbanana@lemmy.world 4 days ago
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.
AA5B@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Wow, that was quite a read, thanks. Amazing technology
ieatpwns@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Amazing for the 1800s
jaxxed@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Whole parts of Eastern Europe still transport Steam for heating.
Infynis@midwest.social 4 days ago
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
BoulevardBlvd@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
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~ very 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 bisected
Ftfy
Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk 3 days ago
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.
PillowTalk420@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s just toxic gas bubbling up from the ruins of Old New York that New York is built on top of. The mutants down there are a steampunk society.
Shardikprime@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Steam from the steamed hams we’re having
habitualcynic@lemmy.world 3 days ago
And you call them that even though they are obviously grilled?
kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 3 days ago
excuse me for a minute
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 days ago
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.
DelightfullyDivisive@discuss.online 3 days ago
Yep. Detroit has this, too.
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 days ago
Yeah it’s common enough I figured most knew, but a few years ago I went ice skating at the bryant park rink with this girl who refused to walk anywhere near the steam. She thought they were toxic and didn’t accept my explanation, so we had to walk an extra few blocks to get around the steam work. Shrug
TBi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I wonder if they could make it more efficient by running at a lower temperature and installing water source heat pumps in buildings. youtu.be/abGiNL9IT54
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 days ago
That’s a good idea! My understanding is that the old stream 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 currently as much as 400% 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.
Cocopanda@futurology.today 3 days ago
Believe it or not. Very old infrastructure in the city. Still runs on steam power.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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…
PanArab@lemm.ee 3 days ago
I’m going to have to interject, NYC is the 11th largest city.
RideAgainstTheLizard@slrpnk.net 4 days ago
New sewer pope
TrojanRoomCoffeePot@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Hikermick@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Some big cities originally heated their buildings by producing steam in one one centralized building and delivering it to large buildings thru pipes underground. The steam you see is from leaking pipes in this antiquated infrastructure. It’s a very inefficient method if you ask me. Cities should offer these buildings low interest loans so they can update and be independent but they never take my advice
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Afaik it’s not inefficient if the heating is done via fossil fuels as big furnaces (especially in the past, especially turbo-fan super-fine grind coal ones) are much more efficient than smol ones for individual buildings (even if the buildings are giant).
Hikermick@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s terribly inefficient. The efficiency is lost when the steam that condenses back into hot water is lost and none of it is returned to the boiler to be reheated. Rather than reheating this returning water which normally is at 120-160 degrees Fahrenheit, fresh water is used which in the winter here is around 56 degrees. Aside from this the cold water taken in contains impurities such as dissolved gasses which cause corrosion and dissolved minerals which can cause scaling that acts as an insulator raising the amount of energy needed to heat the water.
Wahots@pawb.social 3 days ago
District level heating is actually pretty efficient, some universities do the same thing on purpose to save on bills. Our relatively young city does it with the downtown skyscrapers for the same reason.
The other nice thing is that when you upgrade the heating system to be less carbon intensive, you can instantly have a ton of buildings all jump instantly to fewer emissions too.
dickalan@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Boy, I sure love it when dip shits act like they’re from Reddit and talk about stuff they know absolutely nothing about, why don’t you shove your foot in your mouth and stop typing
_stranger_@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Why not just have the city mandate the upgrades and then implement them? It’s probably not that big of a problem for everyone involved.
Hikermick@lemmy.world 3 days ago
If it were that simple everyone would have done it by now. This method of heating your building is very expensive. Long story short, I’m in the HVAC business and two of my customers have made themselves independent. One was a private property management company that gutted an empty building and was successful, the other is a federal building that hired a private company to convert over and got screwed.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s the steam from the melting pot
pwalshj@lemmy.world 4 days ago
The tubes are there to raise minor steam leaks above street level so they don’t hinder visibility.
Another interesting underground quirk we have is our pneumatic tube mail system.
FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe 4 days ago
Wait those pneumatic tube things are real?? I always thought it was like 1960s sci-fi. Like what they thought the future would be like
exasperation@lemm.ee 4 days ago
It was the fastest way to get original physical documents from one side/floor of the building to another.
When I was a kid that was the standard way that banking drive throughs worked, too. You’d drive up to the multi-lane drive through, each station would have a pneumatic tube for handing off cash or checks or receipts between the car and the teller in the window. It pretty much ended when ATMs could start handling cash and checks.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Those things used to be on every single bank drive-up teller booth in the 80’s and 90’s.
grue@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Haha Roosevelt Island trash system go pshew
Bezier@suppo.fi 4 days ago
I like the term “clogged mail”
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 3 days ago
There’s a really good explanation here:
Notorious_handholder@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You know how when rocks take off in Florida there’s lots of smoke?
Yeah there’s a tunnel that goes from Florida to New York that the smoke goes through to help heat up the New York streets. So anytime you see smoke in New York it’s cause a rocket was recently shot up in Florida.
TechnologyInfrastructure is incredible!schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
That isn’t steam, it’s smoke. Smoke from the smoked hams we’re having. Mmmm, smoked hams.
son_named_bort@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I thought that was from the streets of Albany?
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
no, there it was the other way round, pay attention
samus12345@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Surely you mean smoked clams?
h3mlocke@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Hot. Moist. Air.
supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world 2 days ago
it’s steam not air
h3mlocke@lemm.ee 2 days ago
No it is Moist. Air.
Dearth@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You can’t see steam. It’s not visible to the naked eye.
Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world 4 days ago
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.
dysprosium@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Could you name one thing that would cause heat under streets? It’s kinda hard to believe tbh
Coreidan@lemmy.world 4 days ago
When you take a hot shower where do you think that water is going?
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Teenage mutant ninja turtles barbeque
daggermoon@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Volcano under the city
Hupf@feddit.org 1 day ago
It’s from the streamed clams they’re having.
Rosscameron@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Ah yes, the classic New York fog machine. Turns out it’s not for dramatic effect—just the city’s 19th-century steam system still doing its thing. Who needs modern infrastructure when you’ve got built-in Gotham vibes?
MehBlah@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Hundred plus year old infrastructure.
Cornpop@lemmy.world 2 days ago
They use a lot of steam for heating still
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The CHUDs are having a BBQ. Guess the markets closed for the day.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think it’s important, at this point, to differentiate between NYC CHUDs, and your common racist shitbag chud. NYC CHUDs are many things, but not racist dickbags.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’m just referencing the movie, but if you think that there not racists in NYC, you haven’t talk to enough New Yorkers.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s not smoke. It’s a space station.
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s no moon, it’s… oh, wait… shit.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Wrong answers only:
VinesNFluff@pawb.social 4 days ago
From the Steamed Clams we’re having. Mmmmmmm, Steamed Clams!
Agent641@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Illegal underground gay saunas
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
german techno beats intensify
Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
Rat farts.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 3 days ago
They smoking dope down there
Gerudo@lemm.ee 4 days ago
They outlawed chem trails so they had to change tactics.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It’s the ancient horrors beyond description, that are buried underneath the city, that are having indigestion.
udon@lemmy.world 2 days ago
yo mama’s farts
leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
It’s where they store the chemtrails before putting them in planes.
dhork@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Ooh. I know this one. Parts of NYC still use a steam heating system that was first designed in the late 1800’s:
en.m.wikipedia.org/…/New_York_City_steam_system
Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Thank you. There’s so many people responding with unhelpful answers.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 3 days ago
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You should tell this guy.
youtube.com/shorts/_MAXlkWLpfM
rothaine@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Wow that’s neat
MrPoletki@feddit.uk 3 days ago
No, that’s heat.