Fun pandemic history fact for NY apartment dwellers frustrated by aggressive radiator heat in the winter. The era when steam heat in buildings was new/popular overlapped w/Spanish Flu pandemic, when authorities told everyone to leave their windows open for ventilation. So.... 1/4

The boilers that powered the steam heat systems were built at the time to be able to heat buildings throughout the winter *with all the windows open* Basically, they pump way too much heat. And in the years following the pandemic, larger boilers were part of building code 2/4

Steam heat systems also don't get replaced very often, so the trends of that era have persisted. So this winter, when you open your windows to let out the excess heat from your radiator, that's by design, and what apartment dwellers during the 1919 pandemic were doing as well 3/4

There's a brief mention of this in the NY Times: "both boilers and radiators now had to be much larger because of the need to keep windows open by command of the Board of Health." 4/4 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/realestate/radiators-steam-heat-temperature-control.html