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GSMT - Dan Holohan, Author: "The Lost Art of Steam Heating"

The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen
Talks
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this talk3 months2018–2021 score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN recommends it as an informative talk on steam heating whose advice to respect old working systems carries over to software.

Dan Holohan, author of The Lost Art of Steam Heating, talks about the old steam heating systems he learned about from veteran tradesmen. He shares stories and practical lessons on how these systems work, including running steam at low temperatures.

“When you see something that's old and it's been there for a long time and it's working, don't laugh at it.” (HN, 2019)

3 recommendations · 1 citations · Talks

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@userbinator Feb 2019 Recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: How to be productive with big existing code base
"When you see something that's old and it's been there for a long time and it's working, don't laugh at it." (From a not-really-related yet quite interesting talk I watched a while back: [this video] --- also featured on HN at [link] )
Interesting talk with advice to respect old working systems.
@oftenwrong Dec 2020 Recommends
on HN thread Insulation: First the body, then the home (2011)
As I suspected before clicking, that article cites that explanation as being given by steam heating system expert Dan Holohan. He has a talk up on YouTube that I came across a few years ago. It is interesting on a number of levels, and I recommend giving it a watch: [this video]
Interesting talk by steam heating expert Dan Holohan.
@anonu Apr 2021 Recommends
on HN thread Heating Water with Fire (2019)
Tangential topic : There was a post on HN a while back about steam heating. This talk on YouTube was linked. It was really informative: [this video]
Really informative talk on steam heating.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@avhon1 Nov 2018 Cites it
on HN thread The Lost Art of Steam Heating (2017) [video]
> I've sometimes wondered if it would be practical to operate a steam heating system at a partial vacuum so that the condensation/vaporization could occur at a lower temperature He actually talks about exactly this in the video! [this video] "You'll be sending steam up into the building at temperatures, in some cases, as low as 150 degrees" (83 degrees C)
Speaker discusses running steam at low temperatures, answering the vacuum question.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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