The manufacture of steam heating apparatus has come to be a distinct industry, and represents a special branch of engineering. Many manufacturing com; panics, pursue this line of business exclusively. The re sult has been the development of many distinctive features and systems of steam heating, that are very excellent for the purposes intended.
Practice has shown that large plants can be Operated more economically than small ones. Steam may be carried through underground, insulated pipes to great distances with but small loss of heat. This has lead to the sale of exhaust steam, from the engines of manufacturing plants; for heating purposes and the establishment of community heating plants, where the dwellings of a neighborhood are heated from a central heating plant; each subscriber paying for his heat according to the number of square feet of radiating surface his house contains.
In the practice most commonly followed, with small steam heating plants, the steam is generated in a boiler located at any convenient place, but commonly in the base merit. The steam is distributed through insulated pipes to the rooms, where it gives up its heat to cast-iron radiators, and from them it is imparted to the air; partly by radiation but most of the heat is transmitted to the air in direct contact with the radiator surface.
|Category||Engines and Automotive|