New York Trivia, useless facts and things that drive me up the wall.....[I stayed in New York for 4 months at the end of 1999 and start of 2000 working at the Natural History Museum]
La Guardia/JFK Airport: Dating back to an agreement when JFK was constructed, domestic flights to/from cities further west than Denver, have to fly into JFK. Thus, you won't find direct flights from any California cities into La Guardia. This sucks! I don't really rate Newark much better - the cab ride is always about $50.
Subway conductors giving the finger: I have seen this in action myself on a C train. When the train stops in a station, the conductor extends his index finger, and with a quick, small motion, seems to point at the ceiling. This is a safety practice imported from Japan. They're pointing up at a board above the platform that tells them they've stopped at the correct place. According to the MTA, "the thinking is that it forces them to take an extra second, and in that second, they can look up, check they can see the board, and point to it, before they open the doors". In 1996 there were 43 incidents of doors being opened on the wrong side, or while the front or back cars were still in tunnels.
How to figure out a cross street from a street number on 5th avenue: you drop the last digit of the street number, then divide that by 2, then...
the number you end up with is the closest East/West street number. Amazing!
One thing my engineer colleagues and I are trying to figure out is how these steam radiators work. New York is famous for its steam distribution system - a very forward thinking ConEdison (the local power company) realized a long while back that they could sell off the heat generated in the process of generating power, for heating buildings. Giant steam pipes run underneath the streets of Manhattan. Sometimes you see chimneys on the street with steam coming out of them - ducting it away from streetworkers who could otherwise be harmed by the high temperatures.
The deal is that these radiators have an inlet pipe, and a control valve, but no outlet. Just a thermostatic vent-valve thing, which closes once it's up to temperature. Where does the water go that condenses inside? I was lucky enough to get an answer from my friend Paul de Koninck who is one of the architects on the AMNH project. He furnished the following very complete information:
Most older steam heat systems are "single-pipe" systems. Steam rises in the pipe, and chases the air out of the radiator through the little air valve that hangs off the end of the radiator, almost at the top, on the end opposite the inlet valve. The inlet valve is the bigger valve that you can operate by hand to turn the radiator off. When the radiator is filled with steam, the air valve closes, and no more steam comes in because, with the air valve closed the pressure in the radiator rises until it is equal to the incoming steam pressure. This prevents the steam from escaping out of the air valve, too. The steam warms the cast iron radiator, loses its heat, and then condenses into water. The water flows downhill, back down the same pipe that the steam came up. The pipes are all sloped downhill, all the way back to the boiler.
If the steam condenses before the air valve closes (it's not often a well-balanced system), the returning water "collides" with the steam coming up the pipe, you'll hear the familiar clanging sound that is associated with steam heat coming on. That can often be cured by adjusting the air valve or replacing it. That can also happen if the radiator is sloped away from the inlet valve, which is often caused by rotting or damaged floors. Don't shut the inlet valve part way. Those valves should be full on, or full off.
There are also two-pipe systems, a later luxury that was used with several variations, including a vacuum pump that pulled on the outlet side to encourage the sluggish cooling steam to return to the boiler. Two-pipe systems are usually both comfortable and economical to operate, if kept in good repair.
Steam heat and boilers were often sized for catastrophically cold weather, using pessimistic rules of thumb, for buildings with little or no insulation and single-pane glass. This was typically done by plumbers whose main interest was in ordering materials and getting on with the installation, before using a plumbing engineer became common. This was also encouraged by the various tables and recommendations circulated by the boiler and radiator manufacturers. At least nobody complained that the y were cold on 0 degree (Fahrenheit) days. Often, in "ordinary" winter weather, the systems were dramatically oversized, resulting in short "on" cycles followed by long "off" cycles, and allowing long periods of low indoor temperature followed by brief periods of unbearable heat. . New Yorkers know how to deal with that: just turn off most of the radiators in your apartment, and rely on the bare steam riser pipes to keep your place warm and cozy.
Thanks Paul for that.
My rant about nightly noise in New York City. I really wonder how much sleep people really get here. There are people going about their jobs at 2am in the streets making so much noise I don't know how you could expect to sleep through it. In the little sidestreet where my hotel is located, we have garbage trucks outside at any time between 2 and 6am. The other morning, there was an oil delivery from a big tanker at 5am. Now you'd have thought that to get a load of oil from a tanker into a hole in the sidewalk down a hosepipe, gravity would do just fine. Actually for whatever reason the engine of the truck is cranked to maximum RPM for about 20 minutes as the oil is pumped. Talking of garbage, you see the most amazing things thrown out in the streets. Today I picked up a working CD player off the street, which admittedly was a bit dinged in, in the front, but works just fine!Don't forget to try my New York Trivia Quiz .
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