Why New York Is Powered By Steam - NYC Revealed 

This is the last episode for this season of NYC Revealed. You can watch all episodes in their entirety on CuriosityStream Thanks SO MUCH for watching!

Glad to see the old' in-house Discovery TV host/voice actor is still getting work in this post-TV world we live in! Way to go dude!

Honestly I’ve lived in NYC my whole life and didn’t realize how big steam was. Of course I’ve seen the smokestacks all over but I never really questioned the origins of the steam or what it’s purpose was other than to be vented into the street lol

True innovating idea to use steam for all those buildings as it can be very versatile. Saves space from needing appliances to create their own heating and any leaks will just leave water.

“NYC is powered by Steam” Gaben will be pleased. 😁

as someone with engineering degrees i love this nyc series well done

I've never realized New York is such a steampunk city.

Although I'm a born and (partly) bred New Yorker, I think what's just as impressive is how industrial London was powered hydrolically (cranes, lifts (elevators) etc) it was all powered by water pressure and gravity.

My cousin and I walked through 59th Street along 5th Avenue, and she avoided the steam and was upset that I lured her to it. She thought that it was dirty smoke. And I had to explain to her that it’s just steam - nothing to worry about as it is water vapor. It smells bad? It just smells like boiling water. That’s it. Completely harmless. We’re literally breathing in a lot of particulate matter coming out of exhaust pipes from cars and it builds up inside our lungs, now that’s harmful. Remember, steam is just water. Just think of it as a free humidifier for the streets. It brings down dust and moisturizes the dry air.

New York City native here I use a steam stacks in order to tell the weather for today. If there's high pressure in the area then the steam will funnel up wards. If there is low pressure then the steam will lazily exit the stock and disperse closer to the ground

I thought this was an April Fools joke. I was like, “damn, you guys put a lot of effort into this”.

10:19 “very clean.. methane” 😂😂

Adsorbtion cooling made it all feasible. The winter demand for heating made the whole system near idle during summer. So however inefficient, the airco demand filled up that hole for the show completely.

And some people think plumbers just snake toilets all day and don’t realize how vast our trade really is.

This is quite interesting-I have seen steam-powered shovels and pile drivers on construction sites in Manhattan as late as the early 1980s. I've seen a steam-powered dredge in the Hudson in the early 1990s. I used to be a boiler inspector in New York State and the vast majority of boilers used for building heat are steam boilers. A hot water boiler is fairly rare. I now live in Toronto, Canada and here the vast majority of heating boilers are hot water systems. Here, steam is mainly used in industry and rarely for building heating. There are central heating plants here that send steam to downtown office buildings and condos but in those buildings the steam goes through heat exchangers where it heats hot water which is what is used for heating. There is also deep-lake cooling where cold water from Lake Ontario, where it is taken in from one mile out and is 34 degrees year round is used for building cooling. The discharge is then sent to the potable water plants. Ajax, Ontario has a central steam heating system as that's where all the munition plants were during WW2 and having boilers in these plants would be quite dangerous. This system is still in use but on a much reduced basis from the 1940s.

Here is an insane idea, build a nuclear power plant underground and pipe the steam that comes out (at least a good chunk of it). You get clean energy and the by-product is steam

plants producing Stem are West 59th street, east 74th Street,east 59th street under 59th street bridge, east river station 14th st,Hudson ave station Brooklyn,Ravenswood station in Queensalso the Woolworth bldg in lower manhattan!!!I worked in all of them! as a Welder and Mechanic!

Great video but please lower the music volume in the audio mix. The music is often overpowering and makes it really difficult to hear dialogue properly.

Plot Twist: That’s the underground steam vents for the underground railway for Thomas and Gang.

The cool thing is that you can actually use this for air conditioning as well. Steamjet air conditioning was fairly common in large buildings in New York, high pressure steam was used to draw a vacuum and this vacuum lowered the pressure inside an aeration chamber that would quickly lower the boiling point a bit and this evaporation happened much quicker which would cool the water and the chilled water was pumped throughout the building through the radiators.

these guys were the first steam punks. good job keeping NY warm and well lit.

You guys do really great videos. Nice one!

Does anyone happen to know the song that starts playing at 4:15? That funky, upbeat, Acid Jazz sound makes me want to get down on the dance floor.

Out of all the times I went to New York I’m surprised I never noticed all the steam

I used to work on pressure reduction stations in the buildings, and the heat exchangers. The noises they make are frightening if you don’t know what’s normal and what isn’t. Some of the heat exchangers look like huge submarines.

Never been this early in a Cheddar video before.

What's the cost per month to heat and cool vs Electric ?

In coordination with the city Could certain areas attach devices to the steam lines with mini turbine type generators and run some additional electrical power for small areas or some modified version of this?

Hmm informative video but I can't help but feel like this video sounds like one of those they show you when you join the company.

Why do I feel like I already watched this video? Even though it just came out, dejavu

New York is truly an amazing city. I've had the fortune of visiting it quite a few times throughout my life. I love this series/partnership.

I wonder if they return condensate back to the steam plants. That would affect overall system efficiency.

Is this the "How It's Made" voice??

Detroit also has a steam system serving the downtown area. 2nd City Detroit had a review called “Detroit…Steam Cleaning While You Walk” in 1994.

So can you turn salt water into fresh water with some adjustments?

Super interesting glad I clicked

Makes me proud to work at Con Edison and support its mission.

Thanks Gabe

When I visited NYC for the first time last summer, I was really confused as about these Pipes and the steam that was coming out of it. You can even see my reaction in my first NYC video. After thinking about i guessed correctly that it was about heating, but only this video gave me the answer as to why they release steam on the street

1:56 that laugh 😂

thought you guys already did a video on this.

Wow! Blown away by this. Had no idea about this. Thank you. Great video.

That music was so bangin

huh, I thought those things were for redirecting hot air away from the street level so it doesn't block ppl and cars' views. I didn't know it was steam, I thought it was just really hot air that just looked like that because of the cold air (I've only seen them in the winter).

Sometimes that steam leaks into other conduits underground and cooks the wires inside. Copper and fiber optic lines dont play nice with steam

"Why is there smoke coming out of your city, New York?" "That isn't smoke. That's steam, steam from the steam power we're having. Mmmm steam power!"

Very interesting. What I find very interesting is the fact that the steam is clean. If it wasn't, then the steam pipes and end-applications would corrode from the inside. And that would get very, very expensive to maintain. So what do they do with the steam after the energy is released and it returns to water form? That would be very pure water. Do they just flush it down the storm drains? Do they send it back to the steam plant? It seems such as waste to have distilled water only to throw it away. It would seem to me that it would be far more efficient to have a closed loop system with a pure coolant, like how a nuclear reactor works. They would have to introduce new pure water to compensate for leakage loss and steam cleaning applications.

The mixing of music vs. voiceover is really weird, especially around 06:03 to 06:26. Why turn up the music so loud at 06:16? I had to listen to it a couple of times, and when I still couldn't hear what the Con Edison-guy is saying, I was saved by the auto-generated captions. Also, I find it so strange that New York is touting how clean and efficient it is to use steam for everything, but it's generated through burning gas... And the steam stacks that release all of that steam throughout the city seems so incredibly wasteful to me. The city in Europe that I live in uses hot water for heating and hot water, but it's not generated with any fossil fuels, and we don't dump it on the sidewalks (but we do have some heated sidewalks during the wintertime).

I used to wonder about steam in some movies about Newyork

How much asbestos gets into the pipes from the asbestos insulation, and how much asbestos is distributed from the vents and steam pipe bursts that are so common in NY?

Does the water get re-used or is it all boiled off and released?

Can't get enough of narrator's voice

It would be cool if they could utilise the 'residual' or 'surplus' steam to heat up a large tropical glasshouse

How does Con Edison know what to charge ? Unlike electricity where a meter is used what do you use to measure how much steam is used ?

Didn’t you upload this already?

they should retrofit nuclear reactors into the cogenerating plants, free steam from the cooling system

Is it adequately protected from toxic chemicals or other materials being introduced? ב''ה

Ima let anyone outside of nyc watching this. Nyc housing heat works off this steam and in the winter it's amazing but dangerous for dry skin lol

Guys, the music is too loud in some parts.

Next do Chicago's Chilled water line

How do you get cooling from steam?

soundtrack at @4:04?

Just as interesting as when you released this same video last year

I was hoping there would be more discussion about the efficiency of cogeneration

Why steam and not hot water? Do you superheat it? I've never heard of steam being used for district heating before.

I'm surprised to see that only half of the steam plants generate electricity before the steam goes to customers. Might as well take advantage of the high pressure steam

pounds and gallons... nice video but I didn't understand anything 😂

I think the percentage of new york city that is getting that steam is well under 5% of the city and probably less then 1% of people live in buildings heated by central steam ( New York City is much more than just the island of Manhattan which has less then 25% of the population after all ) . Its a hard thing to say the city is powered by it given how few people and buildings are actually heated by central steam

I remember the stacks never was there it was just coming from the ground 😏👌🏽

Are these the same buildings our Dept of Energy wants to heat with heat pumps?

how does the steam-based air conditioning work on a thermo-mechanical level?

Wow I never thought I'd be in a steamy internet video

Wasn't there a game or a movie where the city had steam pipes everywhere?

Do Manhattaners have a steam bill then?

Just subscribed to you guys, just seen this on TV about the steam is UNBELIEVABLE amazing😱

Why not electric heaters

I love steam. Milwaukee's east side from Marquette University to Lake Michigan is on a steam grid. There is nothing better than radiant heat on a cold midwestern day.

Milwaukee uses steam too

Poor guy in the green hat couldn’t get a word in! Lol

Just a note to production: audio is terrible, the music drowns out the dialog.

"Why New York Is Powered By Steam" Welp, time to put on my top hat with brass goggles OVER the brim. It'll go nicely with my pocket watch that has extra gears on the OUTSIDE for some reason.

Can/do some buildings take supplied steam and generate electricity on-site?

I wanna see those steam machines get powered by renewable energy

New York City really seems like one of the coolest and most unique cities in the world, I hope to visit it one day.

Sure, burning natural gas is better than coal, but the steam produced that way still isn't "sustainable" anyway. Power2Heat with renewable energy, geothermal... That's sustainable.

I know that since I watched Bone Collector:)

Those tubes are only used in the winter when it's cold to keep the steam clouds above the traffic. In the warmer months it's not a problem and the tubes are removed.

@11:05 - That man needs to clean up his Windows Desktop.

Hol F... S...!!! When I saw those things in TV I always thought it was some sort of sewage cleaning. The outlets look all like they are temporary "construction work" after all! Well, they are, right? Looking at you, date.

I love to photograph those steam pipes and the steam itself creates a very atmospheric vibes on nyc

A lot of cities in Europe use steam power, especially in old soviet countries.

The temp of this SuperheatedSteam is 0ver 700 degrees!

As a boiler operator steam is not going away anytime time soon and is going to be here for a long...long time. It's the heat source that needs to change and the answer is nuclear ☢️

0:42 BOSTON

Wonderful video. Amazing how many people, including locals, don't know what's going on.

First! I love that Basically everything in New York is powered by steam.

"When you maintain... you have to maintain it"? Oh, boy, was that some "DEEP" commentary!

1:50 SEN4 handstyle

How can burning gas for steam to heat buildings be sustainable? Steam can never be sustainably produced, you always have to burn something to get it. Carbon capture seems like an afterthought...

I wonder if they can apply this in the coldest city on the planet?!. YAKUTIA in Russia