Heating Museum → Old Steam Help Topics

Take a stroll through HVAC history in our Heating Museum. This section of our website preserves history and answers that so-important question: What the heck is that thing? Whenever you run across anything unusual, chances are you’ll find the old literature about it right here.

Recent Articles in Heating Museum → Old Steam

Vapor Heating: The Richardson System

The Richardson System of vapor heating was popular in the 1910s and 1920s. It's very simple, and you must run it at very low pressure (less than 1 psig) on a vaporstat. T...

Published on 06/16/2014 3:33 PM
Posted in Heating Museum
Sarco Return Traps

Sarco made a boiler-return trap that was widely used back in the day. Here is their literature on the product, as well as the accessories that went with it. Thanks to Pat...

Published on 06/16/2014 3:27 PM
Posted in Heating Museum
Six Kinds of Steam Heat

"Six Kinds of Steam Heat" subtitled, "Six ways to recapture the residential heating market," is an interesting article from the May, 1941 edition of Plumbing & Heating Bu...

Published on 06/16/2014 3:25 PM
Posted in Heating Museum
Skidmore Vacuum Pump

Special thanks to Tim Parbs for sharing this literature from the Skidmore Corporation about their heating products. Tim writes, "One of our customers has an old Skidmore ...

Published on 06/16/2014 3:20 PM
Posted in Heating Museum
Steam-Quality Measurement

This article about steam heating is from an 1871 edition of Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine. Note the highly critical comments regarding those who tended the boilers.

Published on 06/16/2014 3:14 PM
Posted in Heating Museum
Steam Traps (1905)

Thanks to historian, Bernard Nagengast, for sharing this circa-1905 article from American Electrician magazine, which does a great job of explaining the steam traps, and ...

Published on 06/16/2014 3:12 PM
Posted in Heating Museum
The Big Fault in One-Pipe Heating

In 1935, John W. Schulz, writing in Fuel Oil Journal, makes a brilliant case for looking more closely at steam systems designed with coal in mind when the time comes to s...

Published on 06/16/2014 3:10 PM
Posted in Heating Museum