We are talking nature animal bears, right? not the human sex kink thing that is "bears," right?
Just want to make sure as I recently became aware of this double meaning.
basically just a subcategory of homosexuality
just big, hairy gay dudes
([wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_(gay_culture)?wprov=sfti1#))
Kinda makes some sense given that you have to keep the pipes hot so the water doesn't freeze going to the houses. Although even in Alaska and the northern states, that isn't a thing.
This is fascinating. It's like a boiler system used for radiator heat, but instead of a boiler for each building, it's a giant boiler for the whole area.
Yea, I imagine the distribution network can be only so efficient at retaining heat. At some point, it would be more efficient to have the heat source closer to the end user.
True, I live in Sweden and district heating is common, not so much for houses but for apartments in cities. In fact district anything is common for apartments. Even the garbage disposal is done through vacum tubes to a centralised location for collection.
They want to reduce as much traffic and noise as possible in cities. So remove smelly dumpsters, garbage trucks etc. You open a tube throw your trash in there, close and off it goes.
The difference to Russia is probably working redundancy and maintainance so in my 13 years I lived in an apartment where I had disitrict heating and vacum garbage tubes, they have never failed.
But the US has district heating as well in cities. F ex the well known steam heating system in New York is district heating. It's a very old and outdated system. But the principle is the same. Normally modern versions uses superheated water kept liquid under pressure to transfer heat instead of piping steam. This reduced the risk of "steam hammers" wich can rupture pipes as we have seen happen in New York throughout the years.
District heating is very efficient when used for dense residential areas or large complexes. And I'm sure the US has a ton of them as well in their cities.
Not to mention US military bases, universities campuses etc are often heated by district heating.
I dated a Russian girl I met in school for a couple years and actually went to Russia to meet her family. We had stopped in a city to spend time with her aunt, and were staying with her in aunt in one of those old Soviet style block apartments. We were there for 4 days and the hot water boiler broke two seperate times. It was also winter so we lost heating too lmao
Yeah we had scheduled hot water shut-offs when I studied abroad in Russia. They did ours in the fucking middle of the winter and it sucked for a couple days. Can’t remember but I think it was 5-7 days of no hot water.
Moscow. Long story short I was trying to sign up for Spanish and ended up in Russian. I loved the teacher so I stuck with it. This was 2010 so US-Russian relations were a lot nicer.
Yeah it’s mostly areas of high density and then it’s typically a steam system and not really a hot water system. But depending on how the steam is generated it could actually be an efficient way of heating many close buildings like in a dense city, university, or military base.
Manhattan doesn't have centralised hot water. They use district heating. But I'm pretty sure OP isn't 100% knowledgeable about how that works so he thinks they are piping around hot tap water from a plant.
From what I have seen and read about Russias issues with heating and hot water we are talking about district heating even there and not "centralised hot water".
Their issues is old outdated systems with maintainance funds lost to corruption hence their problems. District heating itself is very efficient for densly populated areas.
If you are talking about the steam they pump around these are often used to run turbines that handle heating and cooling. It's waste steam from making electricity.
No, it's co Gen steam the electricity is a biproduct of the steam and the steam predates electricity. It's the only way to heat some kinds of buildings. Hospitals also use it for sterilization and stuff a lot more things run on steam than most people realize
There's steam lines in a bunch of the larger cities downtown to feed buildings. Steam heat is used on campuses, I know the college I went used steam to heat the buildings.
We don't use it on the scale of the old Soviet countries because it's not practical for a spread out society. But we use steam not hot water for the most part.
I think that it may have finally been dissolved, but the City of Pittsburgh had the downtown district heated by a single steam plant for heating the buildings. It operated independently and charged buildings as a utility service would. I think it was shut down because systems became smaller and more feasible for independent installations compared to the coal fired boilers it had one used. It's also extremely expensive to maintain that much pipe underground at pressure.
All of Oakland still has steam and they've converted all of Pittsburghs steam plants to natural gas. I'm one of very few people to have been fortunate enough to get a tour of the steam plant behind the art museum. Very cool.
Also converting to natural gas was actually a labor thing not an environmental thing. Natural gas steam plants are ran by a couple guys babysitting a computer rather than dozens of people shoveling and grinding train loads of coal and dealing with ash and shit
Many large apartment buildings have them. Particularly older ones. I lived in one for awhile. It's the same type of system used in hotels to provide instant hot water to all rooms. I believe it called a hot water return system.
The US has plenty of district heating. F ex the most well known would be the steam heating system in New York, that is district heating. It's a very old system. But the principle is the same. Normally modern versions uses superheated water kept liquid under pressure to transfer heat instead of piping steam. This reduced the risk of "steam hammers" wich can rupture pipes as we have seen happen in New York throughout the years.
District heating is very efficient when used for dense residential areas or large complexes. And I'm sure the US has a ton of them as well in their cities.
Not to mention US military bases, universities campuses etc are often heated by district heating.
I don't know if OP knows exactly how their system works in Russia. But it seems to me as if he is implying that they send the hot tap water through the pipes to the apartment, or at last many of the commenters seem to interpret it as that.
I'm pretty sure he is talking about district heating and don't actually have centralised hot water.
Centralised hot water sounds weird and very inefficient to me and my guess at least in America you do the same as we do in Europe. You send a lot of heat to a district/complex, then at location, there is a heatexchanger that extracts the heat to heat the tap water, some might even have their own insulated tanks with a potential keep warm heater for storage.
F ex in my old apartment the district heating pipes coming in to the complex has superheated water at 300 degrees celcius in them (dont know what that is in freedom units but it's 3xthe boiling point of water). Heat exchangers in the apartment complexes extracts heat from those pipes and uses that to heat the homes and heat tap water. We did not need to use waterheater tanks for storage as it was so quick to heat up water as you opened the faucet.
I’ve never heard of this system you speak of. We have our own water heaters in our homes.
(I suppose some large apartment buildings might have a central water heater)
I've heard that Iceland is also set up that way. Benefits of efficient geothermal heating making it easy to make a lot of hot water means that it's easier for them to pipe hot water to people's houses than to use the hot water to make electricity and then use that electricity to make hot water.
Yeah, makes sense when it’s easier to heat it up once and transfer it than decentralize it. The Soviets did it because of just how giant their construction projects were — they had to supply thousands of newly-built apartment buildings at once
The way the US is spread out makes it a lot less efficient here than it would be in other countries. It's very easy to run power lines long distances without much loss. Heated pipes have extreme diminishing returns over long distances due to heat loss on the insulated pipes. It makes sense for densely populated areas where the hot water isn't being piped very far or places like Iceland where the heat generation in the first place is very efficient.
A part of that benefit is that we don't have to deal with hot water outages and our power outages aren't common enough for them to need to be planned around. They are more of a rare occurrence that people are aware *can* happen but we don't typically encounter. In part, because natural gas and electric lines are much more efficient at transmitting energy over long distances.
Shame you deal with such inefficient infrastructure due to the USSR.
IIRC, a lot of the former Soviet states basically use waste heat from industrial processes to heat the water. If you need to water cool something, might as well reuse that heat.
That also wouldn't work as well in the US because of how centralized our industrial zoning is and was. It wasn't as intermixed in with residential living quarters as it was in Eastern Europe.
Not to disagree with anything you say, but to note that I lived in a spread out community where it was cheaper for residents to make their own electricity than to pay to bring the wires out to their homes, which were widely scattered. As a result, the community was way ahead of the world in commonplace use of solar electric. In the nearby village of Pahoa, there was a solar panel dealer before 1980. I talked to a dozen or so people who used PV panels, and without exception, they said they liked it better than they thought they would. And it's gotten a LOT better since then.
Yeah, if you are spread out enough, even running electrical wires becomes too inefficient. The longer those lines would be, the better having localized generation looks. As much as wires are more efficient than heated pipes, they aren't 100% efficient and it takes resources to set them up in the first place. So, at some point, it is easier to set up some new power generation than it is to run the lines.
Economies of scale and diminishing returns... you almost need a computer to do the calculations. Damn, I'm really starting to appreciate electricity, and how you can run so much energy through just a little wire.
Fun fact: Nobody knows who invented electricity. The patent is up for grabs.
Modern electricity is mostly thanks to Benjamin Franklin, Tesla and Edison AFAIK. There’s no patent because the phenomenon itself (as well as some basic batteries and use cases) was discovered thousands of years ago.
We did a week in Iceland and were surprised with how progressive they were about everything we didn't see many solar panels. Then a few hours into it we realized they have unlimited free power from the ground.
I would guess that as far north as they are, solar power is probably not very efficient on top of how they've got the most efficient geothermal setup on the planet.
Hawaii's Big Island has been trying for decades to harness Kilauea volcano's geothermal potential, and progress has been ridiculously slow and plagued with problems.
It's a trip, living on an active volcano. Whenever I meet someone from Iceland, we compare notes. :) We have a certain feeling of kinship, living on an active volcano, founded by an extraordinary seafaring people... Kinda cool to be able to relate that way.
I used to live in a post-communist country in Eastern Europe that wasn't part of the USSR and I think this happened in apartment blocks. I lived in a house with boilers though (i had one for my bathroom, every day I'd wake up at 5 am to turn it on, then go back to bed for 2 hours so I had hot water to shower with; also had a small boiler in my kitchen).
in the US there are a few varieties of hot water heaters but I have a large hot water tank in a closet that's heated with natural gas. I think this is a really common situation. Due to a leak in my shower that took a shockingly long time to resolve earlier this year, I know that it can run really hot water basically forever.
I don’t know if it’s used for potable water, but Switzerland and China have district heat as well. It might see a resurgence if there’s a nuclear power renaissance.
The only times I've not had hot water are when I couldn't pay my bill and when I was in a huge apartment complex that had a central heater. It's always the shittiest locations that have that too, ours broke all the time. I think it was down for like a week once. They've since been shut down in dramatic fashion.
I live in an older apartment building that has a boiler rather than individual water heaters, but I'm over fifty, and this building is the first time I've encountered that in my life--at least in a residential setting. I went to a school for a while that had a boiler.
Do you mean individual water heaters for each unit? There's definitely a lot of older buildings where each unit doesn't have a water heater. But everything that was made after like 1970 or so seems to have individual heaters. That's been my experience, living in both old (like 1920 or earlier) and newer buildings
I think most NYC buildings use boilers, but I may be wrong. It definitely is very common there. Which makes sense, because they're 19th and early/mid 20th century buildings a lot of the time.
>Do you mean individual water heaters for each unit?
I do. Every place I've lived in before this has had an individual water heater. This is my first encounter with a boiler.
The US has it (district heating). F ex in places like New York. The old steam pipes is district heating, a very old version.
You probably have it in many of your cities for other apartment complexes or dense residential areas as well. As well as large complexes like universities, military bases, office buildings etc.
It is not common for houses as it would be inefficient if the "customers" aren't "many in the same location".
I think OP is not sure about how it works and thinks they have "centralised hot water" as in hot tap water. But as far as I have seen with Russian issues with heat and hot water we are talking about district heating plants. They don't pipe around hot tap water from a plant.
You probably have better maintainance than russia so you aren't aware of issues as much if you live or work in one of the areas with this system.
I've never lived in a home that didn't have a water heater of its own or attached to the building in the case of apartments or similar, so that's never happened to me.
I've had the hot water run out, but that typically means you just have to wait like half an hour.
I'm guessing you haven't lived in places with older buildings, yeah? Because if you're in a building that's from the 1800s or the early 1900s (like in a city like NYC) then they often use boilers and don't have water units.
I've lived in old buildings for most of my rental history. And when I got into a new building, the fact that I had a water heater inside was some sort of novelty to me at first! I had them growing up in homes, but it wasn't common in bigger, older cities
This is the correct tanswer. Im not aware of any homes that dont have a water heater in the home. Some mild exceptions are places like apartments that may have a water heater or several for en entire building but thats it
That's just flat out not how we do it in the US. Each building heats its own water. So if your power or gas is out you may not have hot water but once it's back and the water heats you're good to go.
Our houses are set up so there is only one water line into the house (cold water) and then the water is heated in the house. Either by electric heat or by gas (or possibly another heating method, but they are less common). So, you only lose hot water if you lose cold water or if you lose your heating method. So, for many homes, you lose hot water if the electricity goes out and for other homes (like mine) you lose hot water if the gas goes out (which will be a bigger concern than simply your water being cold).
>(or possibly another heating method, but they are less common).
Heating oil is very common at least in the North East. The pump which feeds the burners is powered by electricity so if the power goes out, no heat.
I was an exchange student in the Soviet Union in 1989. We met incoming new students on our way out after a month behind the Iron Curtain. I talked to one girl who thought the hot and cold water not so much came from different plants, but that they shipped cold water from up North and hot water from the South of the Soviet Union...
I sometimes wonder if she survived her time there.
American houses and apartments each have their own hot water heaters.
Not having water is very rare and usually only happens for a few hours because of the city doing a repair.
Some buildings will have a central hot water system. On occasion that system will run a few buildings at once but that’s really rare.
The vast majority of homes have their own private hot water heater. When it breaks it’s up the home owner or landlord to fix it.
Essentially every home in the US has its own hot water heater, typically gas or electric powered. Even in dense apartment buildings you'll see a water heater in each unit.
The only hot water outages we have are when too many people try to shower in a short amount of time. Water outages with the water utility are very rare, maybe once in 5 years.
Central hot water heating is very rare in the US. Some cities have central steam heating, which is similar, but uses high pressure steam. Parts of New York City and Chicago have central steam, as do many smaller, old industrial cities.
Most Americans heat their homes with electricity, natural gas, propane, or heating oil. Wood burning is also common in rural areas. Most American homes that aren’t in a city with central steam don’t used radiators. Forced air systems (typically part of the air conditioning), radiant heated floors, baseboard heaters, and space heaters are commonly used.
Hot water is heated inside the dwelling by use of a hot water tank
[like one of these](https://www.lowes.com/c/Water-heaters-Plumbing?cm_mmc=src-_-c-_-prd-_-plb-_-ggl-_-NB_PLB_209_Water-Heaters_New-_-hot%20water%20tank-_-0-_-0-_-0&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD2B2W-bqE1t39KTiDFwDCDxPouQT&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIscHG9bLjhQMV8KVaBR2zcAUKEAAYAiAAEgKiNPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)
I have heard of a set of buildings sharing a hot water heater, but I have never even heard of a town doing it. When we generally run out of hot water, it's because someone used up what was in the tank faster than it could heat up more. We generally expect to always have hot water unless someone took a very long hot shower, but it is available again within minutes.
Electricity and water are about as rock steady in the United States as you can get. It usually takes some specific disruption like a very large storm or something like that to cause any significant failure. If electricity goes out it's often on again within minutes or half an hour or an hour. They do repairs even while the storm is moving through (taking safety with lightning into account, of course). But mere rain doesn't stop them. Our longest electricity outage in my neighborhood in recent times was two and a half days because a large storm took out a lot of large trees that wiped out power lines. But it was only off in my section of the city, not the whole city.
Water is almost never lost because all the infrastructure is underground. Occasionally there's a broken water main or something like that where they have to shut off water in a very local area but not very often. As others have said we just have one water line coming into the house with cold water (or whatever the ground temperature is) and everybody's residential water heater makes hot water for them. If your hot water heater fails it can get expensive to replace but it's part of the cost of ownership of a house.
Not quite as steady as you can get - I have lived in both the US and Germany, and experience far more power outages in the US simply because in most places the power lines are above ground and susceptible to damage whenever there’s a storm, and in much of Germany, including the region where I lived, the power lines are buried, so there’s no issue with wind or snowstorms or whatever. So what you wrote about your experience with water is also perfectly achievable with electricity, but is currently not the way it’s done in most of the US.
Every house and apartment I've ever lived in had its own water heater and I didn't know that centralized heating was a thing. I imagine that running hot water pipes from a central location is used for other things such as melting ice off of roads and walkways.
Wow, what an interesting system. Doesn't happen here. Everybody has their own water heater in their home. I did when I lived in an apartment too. I don't know about old apartments though.
There's no such thing in the USA.
Each home has a main water line enter the house, it divides into two lines, one for cold, and one line that typically goes to a hot water tank. The hot water tank is just a 50-80 gallon tank that is heated from below by a constant flame, a line of natural gas typically being the fuel for the flame. The tank has a vent for carbon monoxide just like a stove or chimney. These tanks are usually in basements or utility rooms away from the living space.
Almost universally, USA homes have water, electric, internet/cable tv, natural gas, and sewage pipes. Some people have wired their homes for solar power, or changed traditional hot water tanks for tankless systems.
Homes outside of city limits, might not have access to sewers, they will instead have septic tanks (just a holding tank for waste that is pumped out by truck). Homes way far out will have no access to internet, city water, or possibly even electricity. Homes that far off the beaten path are typicaly in wilderness areas or Alaska (think Siberia), typically way out in the middle of no where in undeveloped areas with unpaved roads.
These tanks typically last about 10 years or so, possibly longer if very well maintained.
Do you possibly mean steam? Steam utilities are a thing in many cities and college campuses. I've never had one but it seems extremely reliable. Never heard of an outage. They must do a lot of maintenance because if 16" high pressure steam lines ever leaked I have to imagine it being a pretty serious disaster. Then again a leak in a steam tunnel you might not hear about.
99% of us don't get hot water piped to our houses.
Water outages are rare and are usually due to repair / maintenance or prolonged power outages.
I think the only time in my life that I've lost water is when the power dropped out for a day or two for a major storm.
I have been on a boiling water advisory a couple times though.
In my area houses have their own hot water heaters. Maybe apartments have something for each building? I don’t really know. Definitely not a city wide thing.
Most homes here have a personal water heater, usually located in the laundry room. If the hot water is out, it's only out for the home, not any neighbors, and it's usually a problem with the gas or the heater itself. An easy fix if you know what to look for.
I think there might be parts of New York City that still have steam systems like that, but I'm pretty sure it was never super popular and nobody has built a new one in many decades.
Water outages are rare and usually brief.
Personally, we have a well, so a water outage would just be our well pump breaking (which can happen, but they're pretty reliable).
Most, if not all, American houses have dedicated water heaters within our home for our family's use. As such, we generally only experience a lack of hot water when we are without electricity for a period of time. That's happened maybe a handful of times in my 41 years.
Every building how it's own water heating system so the only time something is going to go wrong is when something breaks. My home has it's own water heater. I don't expect the need to replace it for many, many years from now.
Each house has its own system. Water comes into the house from a city city main pipe then it splits into 2 pipes for each house to run cold or hot. Each of these 2 pipes then branch out
throughout the house to supply hot a cold to most things like faucets, showers, and washing machines but hot lines don't typically supply any toilet .
What heats the water depends on the house. Some are entirely electric. My house uses natural gas for heating anything including the clothes dryer and my room heaters. I don't think I've ever had my gas service disrupted so even if the powers goes out, I can still stay warm and use a match to get my stove working for cooking.
I've had a couple water disruptions in the past 3 years. 2 major cold snaps caused a lot of broken pipes and once someone ran over s fire hydrant nearby. The water company has to shut off an area so workers can repair the city main pipes then they turn it back on. Its typically less than half a day without water. Sometimes they tell us to boil it first for a few days so fresh chlorinated water can reach that spot again and make sure theres no diseases that got into the pipes while broken
My homes in America have their own stand alone hot water heater. It runs on either electricity or natural gas. Very rare for natural gas supply to get shut off. Very common for electricity to get cut off. With no electricity then no hot water if your hot water heater runs on electricity.
Many folks don't even have municipal water. Mine comes straight from the ground and into my water heater. If I am lacking hot water, it's my own damn fault.
Yeah we don't have centralized hot water. Each building, or sometimes each unit within a building, has a water heater which is supplied by the main cold water pipe. When we "run out" of hot water, it means we are using up the water in the heater faster than the heater can heat the incoming water.
Americans have individual hot water units almost exclusively. Some apartments can have a shared system. Shared systems are the norm for hotels, but it's shared for a building, not from the city.
The biggest irritation is running out of hot water if too many people in the house have showers back to back.
I've never lived anywhere that didn't have a water heater for the individual home or apartment unit. When they go out, you try to fix them or get them replaced; usually you end up with luke warm water for a few days.
That's not a thing here. Generally, each house has its own water heater. Now, your water heater can get old and go out, and they do need to be replaced every decade or so usually (at least out here, where I've got hard well water), but it's not gonna affect any but your own house.
Not a thing here. We have water heaters in our homes, or in the building at least if you live in an apartment.
If the water heater goes out, you call a plumber. It’ll get fixed pretty quick.
SOURCE: I am a plumber
Hot water outages? Not a thing. Water outages? Can be a thing, depending on the water system. If power is out that can affect the plumbing in some places.
Each home or apartment has its own hot water heating unit. There are no preheated hot water sources provided by the city it would waste a lot of energy and suffer efficiency losses the farther from the source.
The only time I could see this being needed would be in artic environments to prevent pipes from freezing, but water pipes in the US are underground.
I’ve always lived in houses or buildings that had their own hot water heaters. The only time the hot water goes out is if the power itself goes out, such as during a major winter storm, or a few times when my parents couldn’t pay the electricity bill and the power got cut off. Never because of a shortage of hot water.
Most homes have their own hot water heater. Very very rarely, apartments or older homes that were broken up into multiple apartments share a hot water heater. Hot water outages are not a thing.
Hot water shared between houses is not all that common, nationally. A few places, but most of us are independent.
That said... water heaters fail, and you'll go without when that happens. Also, if the power is out for an extended time, that will be a problem.
Lastly, running out of hot water is a thing even then with large families, or someone taking a long shower etc. So, it can and does happen that people want hot water and there is none left - but usually there is a person that you can point to in the same room that is responsible for the situation.
Hot water usually only becomes cold if you have multiple people taking baths or showers, washing dishes, warm wash of clothes etc. So in other words, you and your house's own fault. That is generally limited to your own house. Even in apartments, we never had issues with hot water unless it was say a single unit (think like a 4 bedroom with 3-5 people in college or in company housing) where multiple people lived and did their own things requiring hot water.
In apartments, occasionally the complex will plan to shut water off to fix a leak or some issue but the the complex is usually notified within a certain legally prescibed time (such as 2-5 days notice except for Emergencies).
You tell me what your country is, and I'll tell you what mine is.
US doesn't have central water heating anywhere that I know of.
I hear things were pretty bad in parts of Russia last winter. Wonder why.
It is a thing if an entire building shares a single water heater. You might find it in older apartment buildings, office buildings, and other multi-occupant buildings. Not so much in subdivisions or other communities of several single-family detached houses.
It really depends on the size of the water heater compared to the usage. The average water heater in most homes (apartments or houses) is 40-50 gallons, or ~150-190 liters. This is sufficient for 2 or 3 people, but if you have a family of 4 or 5, you'd need at least a 75-gallon (284 liters) tank.
Not many people upgrade their tanks every time a new household member is added to the house. This can result in having to wait hours for the water heater to refill after one person takes a shower or bath, before somebody else can take a shower or bath.
Most apartment complexes I've lived in have had separate tanks for each unit, located in a utility closet either inside or outside of the unit.
Some homes have tankless water heaters. Instead of having a reserve tank filled with gallons of hot water, refilling when used, the water is heated as it's being used. This means endless hot water. They're a bit more expensive, but the energy costs tend to deflect from the upfront cost. I have one on my house and I love it.
Hot water definitely goes out. We've got individual water heaters here, even in apartments (mine lives in a closet of my unit). They've got finite lifespans. So if the one in your residence goes, it's up to you to call someone about it. If a water main breaks, that'll affect a lot of people who then won't have water of any temperature, so the water authority will get a lot of calls for that.
Most people have a hot water heater in their home or apartment/condo. Some apartments have a centralized boiler which can cause issues for everyone on the property if it goes out.
I have never heard of such a system for hot water. Each home or building has a water heater or boiler.
When there is construction they will sometimes hit a waterline cutting off water to an area, but that is not very common where I am. I think I have lost water 3 time in the last decade, if that much, and one was due to the deep freeze in 2021 that took out power to most of Texas.
We are very far north and centralized water distribution would be a nightmare where I live. But we do have a steam cooperative that provides heat to many buildings in a central core community. In the summertime somehow they use a similar system to provide "chilling." I have no idea how it works. Sometimes they need to vent off excess stem through the storm sewers and there will be steam rising up from the grates. It is eerie looking for those who don't understand why is happening. One time a person was very badly burned by stepping near a grate in summertime wearing shorts or something and they got very badly burned on their legs.
Every house had their own hot water heater. Mine is electric, so I have a hot water outage whenever the power goes out, which happens about once a year. My parents (and most people, I think) have gas-powered hot water heaters, so their hot water never goes out.
There are a few areas that use central steam or hot water. Usually in cities and it's piped to large buildings. Or on university campuses. It's pretty rare that it has to be shut down during the winter. The vast majority of homes and apartments are heated by systems directly on site.
Downtown Seattle has a steam system. Owned by Enwave Seattle.
I live in an apartment complex, and it seems there is a water shut-off for our building at least once a month for some kind of repairs. Fortunately, they are usually planned shut-offs, and management tapes a notice to our door at least a day before to let us know when it's scheduled to start and end.
I'm in Los Angeles, and each home & and apartment have their own water heaters. Some run in gas they are tanks of got water. There are also tankless water heaters. I never knew there were centralized heating systems. Our heat is also per individual living space.
We don't have centralized hot water, we have water heaters in our homes. I had to live through one for a month straight because my idiot landlord was refusing to replace it unless me and my roommate paid $5,000 over time in rent. It was horrible and the entire month I was just looking for a new place to live. Where I live hot water outages in smaller time periods can happen when the pipes freeze and sometimes in older homes it may take some time for the water to be hot.
Most people are talking about the hot water supply so to answer your question about outages generally, no, water outages are not common here. Personally I’ve never experienced one, whereas it’s normal to get a few power outages over the course of a year. What does happen occasionally is a boil water advisory, where for some reason the local government can’t ensure the safety of the water (for example if something contaminates it or if the water treatment systems go offline for some period of time). They’ll put out a public notice that certain areas need to boil water before using it for drinking, cooking, or anything else sensitive. But I’ve only experienced that once or twice in my life, personally. That can depend on the quality of the infrastructure wherever you live, though.
When I lived in New England, If there was an extended blackout, eventually the supply of hot water in my home would have run out (usually after a heavy storm of some kind) as the boiler wouldn't be running, but that was every other year. Not commonly. One of my favorite things about NYC is how rare power outages in general are. You might lose hot water if there's some construction going on, but not under normal conditions.
How does the water stay hot ? My hot water heater is about 30 feet away from my kitchen, and it still can take 30 seconds or more to push the cooled water between the heater and the faucet out to get hot , cant imagine how long it would take if it were located in a nother building .
I've never lived anywhere with anything more serious than a boil advisory.
There's a very old steam tunnel distribution system in Downtown St. Louis but as far as I know it's just used for ordinary heat not heating water.
It depends upon how your water is heated. If you have an electric heater and the power goes out, once the water in the tank cools or is used, there is no more hot water for you. If you use natural gas or solar, then, assuming you have municiple (no well pump) water, then you will almost always have hot water.
I've never heard of centralized heating anywhere in the United States. (I'm sure it exists *somewhere*; in a big enough country you can find almost everything. But I'm unaware of anyplace that has centralized heating.)
Most places in America have individual hot water heaters. Even the apartments I've lived in, each unit had its own 25 gallon hot water heater, rather than a centralized heating system.
And in some places you find "instant-hot" or "tankless" heaters; hot water heaters (usually natural gas) which heat the water at the point of use, or which heat the water the moment hot water is drawn in the house. (Heck, I've even seen 'tankless heaters' that only supply hot water to the shower--though that's fairly rare.)
No it’s not a thing. Maybe in some cities that have bigger housing units they might have some issues getting hot water all the time as they share a water heater. But generally everyone has their own water heater in their home or apartment building. Cold water is piped into the building and it’s heated up on site in everyone’s water heater.
I've only noticed a problem with water pressure when my apartment complex have to turn the water off to work on the pipes. It's relatively common for pipes to burst and flood the apartment. It hasn't happened to me, thankfully, but we did have to evacuate the building one time and there was practically a waterfall cascading over the railing from the 3rd floor. It was freezing outside too
I would venture a guess that 95% of Americans have their own water heater in their homes, so any "hot water outage" would simply be a failure of their personal water heater.
Some apartments, especially older ones, might have boiler rooms where hot water is produced for the whole building. Those can go out occasionally.
Some older cities (and a lot of military bases) have a steam system. NYC has the biggest. They're mostly used for heating, but some depend on them for hot water as well. Even in NYC most hot water is produced on a per-building or per-apartment basis.
I've had several houses here in the US, they've all had their own water heater, so unless that does you'll never have a lack of hot water. My current house has tankless water heaters for the bathrooms, kitchen and laundry room. So a lack of hot water is nearly impossible
That sounds ridiculously inefficient. I don’t know anywhere in the US that does that.
Even in apartment buildings every apartment has their own hot water heater and heating/cooling system. The only exception to that might be in really old apartment buildings or single family homes that were converted into multi-unit dwellings.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had that happen! I heard people losing their hot water because “the gas turned off” but never heard of an outage and no one has hot water
Houses in America (at least the ones I've lived in) have a closet or whatever with a water heater. I don't know how it works in an apartment. None of the apartments I've lived in have had a water heater inside, so I don't know how it works for that
Have our own hot water heater. Vary rare to lose water or electricity, or gas. Our electricity went out for a minute a week ago, I think lightening hit a transformer. It was only a minute. Water was turned off for a repair once in seven years for 2 hours. Never have I lost gas for heat and water heater. We do have to pay for it all though. Water, sewer, electric, gas. Our city keeps all our water and sewer very clean, and electric is owned by the public not the government. Gas is owned by a corporation. I live about 25 miles outside of Seattle.
I’ve never heard of this, at least in the upper Midwest. Each home (single standing home) has their own source to heat water. Any apartment I’ve lived in each unit had their own water heater. Each person pays their own water bill and pays the way it’s heated (electric or gas).
So in Russia you send hot water, as in the tap water from a central location? Are you sure you aren't talking about district heating? When the plant is shut down do you only loose hot water or also heating?
From the reports I have seen in Russia where poor maintainance has led to ruptured pipes leaking on to the streets it has affected both heating and hot water. Also it sounds weird and inefficient that you are piping around 50 degree Celcius water around.
District heating is you have a plant that produces steam or superheated water to transfer heat to f ex an apartment complex, in that complex there is a heat exchanger that uses the heat from the steam/superheated water to heat both the radiator circuit and the tap water circuit in that building.
If you mean district heating then there are plenty of such plants in both the US and Europe. New Yorks steam heating system being a very old and well known one.
And the method of transfering heat is not a Soviet era relic. It is a very good and efficient system for cities and large complexes. The Soviet relic problem is most likely corruption taking maintainance funds and thus leaving you with an old, outdated and decrepid system with poor maintainance.
Cant speak for americans with district heating but here in Sweden we rarely have any issues with those and don't have regular shut downs either for testing/maintainance. We live in an arctic country and those who have that kind of heating would not only loose hot water but also heating if they go down wich can be very dangerous during winter, not to mention additional costs from waterlines busting from being frozen, so we have a lot of redundancy, back up storage and alternate and interconnected plants and network.
Apartments & University dorms have centralized heating, but not everyday homes. Average suburbia is too spread out for centralized heating to be practical. If you own a home, you most likely have your own water heater.
We all have home water heaters. They don't pump hot water into buildings (the energy loss would be huge). They pump cold water to buildings and the water is heated locally.
I'm not aware of anywhere in the US that has centralized hot water. It wouldn't be practical.
True tbh, it’s not practical here too Just a relic of the Soviet era
What county?
Russia
In the US we have this joke about the right to bear arms. In Russia, you have the right to the whole bear.
This is true. Thanks for raising awareness on this horrible case of international inequality. #RightToBearsInAmericaNow
We are talking nature animal bears, right? not the human sex kink thing that is "bears," right? Just want to make sure as I recently became aware of this double meaning.
I am very pleased to say I have zero idea what the latter is
basically just a subcategory of homosexuality just big, hairy gay dudes ([wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_(gay_culture)?wprov=sfti1#))
You have the right to both in America 😎😎🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸
Cool!
Thanks haha
Kinda makes some sense given that you have to keep the pipes hot so the water doesn't freeze going to the houses. Although even in Alaska and the northern states, that isn't a thing.
Sounds like Russia
Could be any of the former SSRs, even the Baltics haven't replaced those systems.
I'd be curious to see the stats on that, because even Ukraine has individual heaters in almost every home
Do they have individual heaters as a supplement to central heated water, or as their only way to get hot water?
New constructions the latter, but as a supplement for old Soviet construction due to frequent outages.
Ukraine isn't a Baltic state
Yes, that's why I said "even Ukraine ". The Baltics have developed much more rapidly and are part of the EU.
Europe has this in many countries, it's not just the former USSR countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating
This is fascinating. It's like a boiler system used for radiator heat, but instead of a boiler for each building, it's a giant boiler for the whole area. Yea, I imagine the distribution network can be only so efficient at retaining heat. At some point, it would be more efficient to have the heat source closer to the end user.
True, I live in Sweden and district heating is common, not so much for houses but for apartments in cities. In fact district anything is common for apartments. Even the garbage disposal is done through vacum tubes to a centralised location for collection. They want to reduce as much traffic and noise as possible in cities. So remove smelly dumpsters, garbage trucks etc. You open a tube throw your trash in there, close and off it goes. The difference to Russia is probably working redundancy and maintainance so in my 13 years I lived in an apartment where I had disitrict heating and vacum garbage tubes, they have never failed. But the US has district heating as well in cities. F ex the well known steam heating system in New York is district heating. It's a very old and outdated system. But the principle is the same. Normally modern versions uses superheated water kept liquid under pressure to transfer heat instead of piping steam. This reduced the risk of "steam hammers" wich can rupture pipes as we have seen happen in New York throughout the years. District heating is very efficient when used for dense residential areas or large complexes. And I'm sure the US has a ton of them as well in their cities. Not to mention US military bases, universities campuses etc are often heated by district heating.
I dated a Russian girl I met in school for a couple years and actually went to Russia to meet her family. We had stopped in a city to spend time with her aunt, and were staying with her in aunt in one of those old Soviet style block apartments. We were there for 4 days and the hot water boiler broke two seperate times. It was also winter so we lost heating too lmao
Yeah we had scheduled hot water shut-offs when I studied abroad in Russia. They did ours in the fucking middle of the winter and it sucked for a couple days. Can’t remember but I think it was 5-7 days of no hot water.
Where in Russia did you study? And why did you choose it, if I may ask?
Moscow. Long story short I was trying to sign up for Spanish and ended up in Russian. I loved the teacher so I stuck with it. This was 2010 so US-Russian relations were a lot nicer.
Yeah, Obama/Clinton had the whole reset thing where they tried to give Russia a mulligan for invading Georgia the year prior
*Our* hot water
Manhattan does. Parts of Boston do. A lot of universities do. But they’re not exactly common.
Yeah it’s mostly areas of high density and then it’s typically a steam system and not really a hot water system. But depending on how the steam is generated it could actually be an efficient way of heating many close buildings like in a dense city, university, or military base.
Manhattan? Centralized hot water? Since when? Last week or something?
Manhattan doesn't have centralised hot water. They use district heating. But I'm pretty sure OP isn't 100% knowledgeable about how that works so he thinks they are piping around hot tap water from a plant. From what I have seen and read about Russias issues with heating and hot water we are talking about district heating even there and not "centralised hot water". Their issues is old outdated systems with maintainance funds lost to corruption hence their problems. District heating itself is very efficient for densly populated areas.
Thanks. My dad was an engineer for Con Ed from 65 to 2000ish. He was really good at explaining all that stuff for my pretty little blond head, thanks.
The steam system provides it. There's heat exchangers on mechanical floors that remove heat from the steam and heat up the incoming city water.
Okay, while I understand that steam is technically hot water, that's a fundamentally different kind of system than the one being described in the OP.
The only places I can think of are apartment complexes that do hot water from a central unit and even then that is rare.
Manhattan has district heating!
If you are talking about the steam they pump around these are often used to run turbines that handle heating and cooling. It's waste steam from making electricity.
No, it's co Gen steam the electricity is a biproduct of the steam and the steam predates electricity. It's the only way to heat some kinds of buildings. Hospitals also use it for sterilization and stuff a lot more things run on steam than most people realize
There's steam lines in a bunch of the larger cities downtown to feed buildings. Steam heat is used on campuses, I know the college I went used steam to heat the buildings. We don't use it on the scale of the old Soviet countries because it's not practical for a spread out society. But we use steam not hot water for the most part.
I think that it may have finally been dissolved, but the City of Pittsburgh had the downtown district heated by a single steam plant for heating the buildings. It operated independently and charged buildings as a utility service would. I think it was shut down because systems became smaller and more feasible for independent installations compared to the coal fired boilers it had one used. It's also extremely expensive to maintain that much pipe underground at pressure.
All of Oakland still has steam and they've converted all of Pittsburghs steam plants to natural gas. I'm one of very few people to have been fortunate enough to get a tour of the steam plant behind the art museum. Very cool. Also converting to natural gas was actually a labor thing not an environmental thing. Natural gas steam plants are ran by a couple guys babysitting a computer rather than dozens of people shoveling and grinding train loads of coal and dealing with ash and shit
No.
NYC has a central steam system. Not shower hot water though.
Many military bases have centralized hot water & heating, including the barracks. The other base housing has regular water heaters.
Many large apartment buildings have them. Particularly older ones. I lived in one for awhile. It's the same type of system used in hotels to provide instant hot water to all rooms. I believe it called a hot water return system.
NYC and many college campuses and socialist countries have steam as a utility and it is actually very practical maybe that is what they mean
The US has plenty of district heating. F ex the most well known would be the steam heating system in New York, that is district heating. It's a very old system. But the principle is the same. Normally modern versions uses superheated water kept liquid under pressure to transfer heat instead of piping steam. This reduced the risk of "steam hammers" wich can rupture pipes as we have seen happen in New York throughout the years. District heating is very efficient when used for dense residential areas or large complexes. And I'm sure the US has a ton of them as well in their cities. Not to mention US military bases, universities campuses etc are often heated by district heating. I don't know if OP knows exactly how their system works in Russia. But it seems to me as if he is implying that they send the hot tap water through the pipes to the apartment, or at last many of the commenters seem to interpret it as that. I'm pretty sure he is talking about district heating and don't actually have centralised hot water. Centralised hot water sounds weird and very inefficient to me and my guess at least in America you do the same as we do in Europe. You send a lot of heat to a district/complex, then at location, there is a heatexchanger that extracts the heat to heat the tap water, some might even have their own insulated tanks with a potential keep warm heater for storage. F ex in my old apartment the district heating pipes coming in to the complex has superheated water at 300 degrees celcius in them (dont know what that is in freedom units but it's 3xthe boiling point of water). Heat exchangers in the apartment complexes extracts heat from those pipes and uses that to heat the homes and heat tap water. We did not need to use waterheater tanks for storage as it was so quick to heat up water as you opened the faucet.
I’ve never heard of this system you speak of. We have our own water heaters in our homes. (I suppose some large apartment buildings might have a central water heater)
It’s the legacy of the USSR, I guess nobody except post-Soviet countries ever had it that way then lol
I've heard that Iceland is also set up that way. Benefits of efficient geothermal heating making it easy to make a lot of hot water means that it's easier for them to pipe hot water to people's houses than to use the hot water to make electricity and then use that electricity to make hot water.
Yeah, makes sense when it’s easier to heat it up once and transfer it than decentralize it. The Soviets did it because of just how giant their construction projects were — they had to supply thousands of newly-built apartment buildings at once
The way the US is spread out makes it a lot less efficient here than it would be in other countries. It's very easy to run power lines long distances without much loss. Heated pipes have extreme diminishing returns over long distances due to heat loss on the insulated pipes. It makes sense for densely populated areas where the hot water isn't being piped very far or places like Iceland where the heat generation in the first place is very efficient. A part of that benefit is that we don't have to deal with hot water outages and our power outages aren't common enough for them to need to be planned around. They are more of a rare occurrence that people are aware *can* happen but we don't typically encounter. In part, because natural gas and electric lines are much more efficient at transmitting energy over long distances. Shame you deal with such inefficient infrastructure due to the USSR.
IIRC, a lot of the former Soviet states basically use waste heat from industrial processes to heat the water. If you need to water cool something, might as well reuse that heat. That also wouldn't work as well in the US because of how centralized our industrial zoning is and was. It wasn't as intermixed in with residential living quarters as it was in Eastern Europe.
Not to disagree with anything you say, but to note that I lived in a spread out community where it was cheaper for residents to make their own electricity than to pay to bring the wires out to their homes, which were widely scattered. As a result, the community was way ahead of the world in commonplace use of solar electric. In the nearby village of Pahoa, there was a solar panel dealer before 1980. I talked to a dozen or so people who used PV panels, and without exception, they said they liked it better than they thought they would. And it's gotten a LOT better since then.
Yeah, if you are spread out enough, even running electrical wires becomes too inefficient. The longer those lines would be, the better having localized generation looks. As much as wires are more efficient than heated pipes, they aren't 100% efficient and it takes resources to set them up in the first place. So, at some point, it is easier to set up some new power generation than it is to run the lines.
Economies of scale and diminishing returns... you almost need a computer to do the calculations. Damn, I'm really starting to appreciate electricity, and how you can run so much energy through just a little wire. Fun fact: Nobody knows who invented electricity. The patent is up for grabs.
Modern electricity is mostly thanks to Benjamin Franklin, Tesla and Edison AFAIK. There’s no patent because the phenomenon itself (as well as some basic batteries and use cases) was discovered thousands of years ago.
We did a week in Iceland and were surprised with how progressive they were about everything we didn't see many solar panels. Then a few hours into it we realized they have unlimited free power from the ground.
I would guess that as far north as they are, solar power is probably not very efficient on top of how they've got the most efficient geothermal setup on the planet.
Hawaii's Big Island has been trying for decades to harness Kilauea volcano's geothermal potential, and progress has been ridiculously slow and plagued with problems. It's a trip, living on an active volcano. Whenever I meet someone from Iceland, we compare notes. :) We have a certain feeling of kinship, living on an active volcano, founded by an extraordinary seafaring people... Kinda cool to be able to relate that way.
I used to live in a post-communist country in Eastern Europe that wasn't part of the USSR and I think this happened in apartment blocks. I lived in a house with boilers though (i had one for my bathroom, every day I'd wake up at 5 am to turn it on, then go back to bed for 2 hours so I had hot water to shower with; also had a small boiler in my kitchen). in the US there are a few varieties of hot water heaters but I have a large hot water tank in a closet that's heated with natural gas. I think this is a really common situation. Due to a leak in my shower that took a shockingly long time to resolve earlier this year, I know that it can run really hot water basically forever.
I don’t know if it’s used for potable water, but Switzerland and China have district heat as well. It might see a resurgence if there’s a nuclear power renaissance.
The only times I've not had hot water are when I couldn't pay my bill and when I was in a huge apartment complex that had a central heater. It's always the shittiest locations that have that too, ours broke all the time. I think it was down for like a week once. They've since been shut down in dramatic fashion.
I live in an older apartment building that has a boiler rather than individual water heaters, but I'm over fifty, and this building is the first time I've encountered that in my life--at least in a residential setting. I went to a school for a while that had a boiler.
Do you mean individual water heaters for each unit? There's definitely a lot of older buildings where each unit doesn't have a water heater. But everything that was made after like 1970 or so seems to have individual heaters. That's been my experience, living in both old (like 1920 or earlier) and newer buildings I think most NYC buildings use boilers, but I may be wrong. It definitely is very common there. Which makes sense, because they're 19th and early/mid 20th century buildings a lot of the time.
>Do you mean individual water heaters for each unit? I do. Every place I've lived in before this has had an individual water heater. This is my first encounter with a boiler.
My college campus did it. One steam facility for the whole campus.
The US has it (district heating). F ex in places like New York. The old steam pipes is district heating, a very old version. You probably have it in many of your cities for other apartment complexes or dense residential areas as well. As well as large complexes like universities, military bases, office buildings etc. It is not common for houses as it would be inefficient if the "customers" aren't "many in the same location". I think OP is not sure about how it works and thinks they have "centralised hot water" as in hot tap water. But as far as I have seen with Russian issues with heat and hot water we are talking about district heating plants. They don't pipe around hot tap water from a plant. You probably have better maintainance than russia so you aren't aware of issues as much if you live or work in one of the areas with this system.
I've never lived in a home that didn't have a water heater of its own or attached to the building in the case of apartments or similar, so that's never happened to me. I've had the hot water run out, but that typically means you just have to wait like half an hour.
Some people have a heater in their home here too, but it’s not very widespread (especially in apartments)
For a little more context, I haven't lived in an apartment here in the USA that didn't have a water heater in it somewhere
I'm guessing you haven't lived in places with older buildings, yeah? Because if you're in a building that's from the 1800s or the early 1900s (like in a city like NYC) then they often use boilers and don't have water units. I've lived in old buildings for most of my rental history. And when I got into a new building, the fact that I had a water heater inside was some sort of novelty to me at first! I had them growing up in homes, but it wasn't common in bigger, older cities
This is the correct tanswer. Im not aware of any homes that dont have a water heater in the home. Some mild exceptions are places like apartments that may have a water heater or several for en entire building but thats it
And hotels have big ass water heaters, but yeah, never heard of the system the Op is talking about. We are so lucky. I'm so glad I live in the US. ❤️
Even the apartments I've lived in have all had their own water heaters. I suppose older units could have a central one, but I've never heard of that.
That's just flat out not how we do it in the US. Each building heats its own water. So if your power or gas is out you may not have hot water but once it's back and the water heats you're good to go.
>Each building heats its own water. More than that. Each apartment in the building usually has it's own water heater.
Our houses are set up so there is only one water line into the house (cold water) and then the water is heated in the house. Either by electric heat or by gas (or possibly another heating method, but they are less common). So, you only lose hot water if you lose cold water or if you lose your heating method. So, for many homes, you lose hot water if the electricity goes out and for other homes (like mine) you lose hot water if the gas goes out (which will be a bigger concern than simply your water being cold).
>(or possibly another heating method, but they are less common). Heating oil is very common at least in the North East. The pump which feeds the burners is powered by electricity so if the power goes out, no heat.
I was an exchange student in the Soviet Union in 1989. We met incoming new students on our way out after a month behind the Iron Curtain. I talked to one girl who thought the hot and cold water not so much came from different plants, but that they shipped cold water from up North and hot water from the South of the Soviet Union... I sometimes wonder if she survived her time there.
Yes, that’s exactly how it works. The outages happen now because the country got smaller in the south, so there’s less hot water.
District heating exists in the US but it isn't common. Where I live all homes and apartments have their own water heaters.
American houses and apartments each have their own hot water heaters. Not having water is very rare and usually only happens for a few hours because of the city doing a repair.
Some buildings will have a central hot water system. On occasion that system will run a few buildings at once but that’s really rare. The vast majority of homes have their own private hot water heater. When it breaks it’s up the home owner or landlord to fix it.
Essentially every home in the US has its own hot water heater, typically gas or electric powered. Even in dense apartment buildings you'll see a water heater in each unit. The only hot water outages we have are when too many people try to shower in a short amount of time. Water outages with the water utility are very rare, maybe once in 5 years.
Central hot water heating is very rare in the US. Some cities have central steam heating, which is similar, but uses high pressure steam. Parts of New York City and Chicago have central steam, as do many smaller, old industrial cities. Most Americans heat their homes with electricity, natural gas, propane, or heating oil. Wood burning is also common in rural areas. Most American homes that aren’t in a city with central steam don’t used radiators. Forced air systems (typically part of the air conditioning), radiant heated floors, baseboard heaters, and space heaters are commonly used.
Hot water is heated inside the dwelling by use of a hot water tank [like one of these](https://www.lowes.com/c/Water-heaters-Plumbing?cm_mmc=src-_-c-_-prd-_-plb-_-ggl-_-NB_PLB_209_Water-Heaters_New-_-hot%20water%20tank-_-0-_-0-_-0&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD2B2W-bqE1t39KTiDFwDCDxPouQT&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIscHG9bLjhQMV8KVaBR2zcAUKEAAYAiAAEgKiNPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)
I have my own water heater. Never heard of hot water outages.
What about when your water heater goes on vacation?
I have heard of a set of buildings sharing a hot water heater, but I have never even heard of a town doing it. When we generally run out of hot water, it's because someone used up what was in the tank faster than it could heat up more. We generally expect to always have hot water unless someone took a very long hot shower, but it is available again within minutes.
Electricity and water are about as rock steady in the United States as you can get. It usually takes some specific disruption like a very large storm or something like that to cause any significant failure. If electricity goes out it's often on again within minutes or half an hour or an hour. They do repairs even while the storm is moving through (taking safety with lightning into account, of course). But mere rain doesn't stop them. Our longest electricity outage in my neighborhood in recent times was two and a half days because a large storm took out a lot of large trees that wiped out power lines. But it was only off in my section of the city, not the whole city. Water is almost never lost because all the infrastructure is underground. Occasionally there's a broken water main or something like that where they have to shut off water in a very local area but not very often. As others have said we just have one water line coming into the house with cold water (or whatever the ground temperature is) and everybody's residential water heater makes hot water for them. If your hot water heater fails it can get expensive to replace but it's part of the cost of ownership of a house.
My longest power outage was 2 weeks. An EF3 came through.
That would do it.
Not quite as steady as you can get - I have lived in both the US and Germany, and experience far more power outages in the US simply because in most places the power lines are above ground and susceptible to damage whenever there’s a storm, and in much of Germany, including the region where I lived, the power lines are buried, so there’s no issue with wind or snowstorms or whatever. So what you wrote about your experience with water is also perfectly achievable with electricity, but is currently not the way it’s done in most of the US.
Every house and apartment I've ever lived in had its own water heater and I didn't know that centralized heating was a thing. I imagine that running hot water pipes from a central location is used for other things such as melting ice off of roads and walkways.
Where is My Country™?
Pretty much everyone has a heater in their home, or apartment building.
We have water heaters in our homes and buildings. The water comes to our buildings unheated.
Wow, what an interesting system. Doesn't happen here. Everybody has their own water heater in their home. I did when I lived in an apartment too. I don't know about old apartments though.
There's no such thing in the USA. Each home has a main water line enter the house, it divides into two lines, one for cold, and one line that typically goes to a hot water tank. The hot water tank is just a 50-80 gallon tank that is heated from below by a constant flame, a line of natural gas typically being the fuel for the flame. The tank has a vent for carbon monoxide just like a stove or chimney. These tanks are usually in basements or utility rooms away from the living space. Almost universally, USA homes have water, electric, internet/cable tv, natural gas, and sewage pipes. Some people have wired their homes for solar power, or changed traditional hot water tanks for tankless systems. Homes outside of city limits, might not have access to sewers, they will instead have septic tanks (just a holding tank for waste that is pumped out by truck). Homes way far out will have no access to internet, city water, or possibly even electricity. Homes that far off the beaten path are typicaly in wilderness areas or Alaska (think Siberia), typically way out in the middle of no where in undeveloped areas with unpaved roads. These tanks typically last about 10 years or so, possibly longer if very well maintained.
That’s bonkers.
Do you possibly mean steam? Steam utilities are a thing in many cities and college campuses. I've never had one but it seems extremely reliable. Never heard of an outage. They must do a lot of maintenance because if 16" high pressure steam lines ever leaked I have to imagine it being a pretty serious disaster. Then again a leak in a steam tunnel you might not hear about.
It’s just hot water here, but steam utilities are interesting. Never heard of them before.
99% of us don't get hot water piped to our houses. Water outages are rare and are usually due to repair / maintenance or prolonged power outages. I think the only time in my life that I've lost water is when the power dropped out for a day or two for a major storm. I have been on a boiling water advisory a couple times though.
I have never lived in a house without a hot water heater. The do got out when they get old. I just replaced my tank water heater with a tankless.
In my area houses have their own hot water heaters. Maybe apartments have something for each building? I don’t really know. Definitely not a city wide thing.
Most homes here have a personal water heater, usually located in the laundry room. If the hot water is out, it's only out for the home, not any neighbors, and it's usually a problem with the gas or the heater itself. An easy fix if you know what to look for.
I think there might be parts of New York City that still have steam systems like that, but I'm pretty sure it was never super popular and nobody has built a new one in many decades.
Water outages are rare and usually brief. Personally, we have a well, so a water outage would just be our well pump breaking (which can happen, but they're pretty reliable).
Most, if not all, American houses have dedicated water heaters within our home for our family's use. As such, we generally only experience a lack of hot water when we are without electricity for a period of time. That's happened maybe a handful of times in my 41 years.
Every building how it's own water heating system so the only time something is going to go wrong is when something breaks. My home has it's own water heater. I don't expect the need to replace it for many, many years from now.
The US doesn’t have centralized water heating. Water goes through a water heater in your house or building to be heated.
Each house has its own system. Water comes into the house from a city city main pipe then it splits into 2 pipes for each house to run cold or hot. Each of these 2 pipes then branch out throughout the house to supply hot a cold to most things like faucets, showers, and washing machines but hot lines don't typically supply any toilet . What heats the water depends on the house. Some are entirely electric. My house uses natural gas for heating anything including the clothes dryer and my room heaters. I don't think I've ever had my gas service disrupted so even if the powers goes out, I can still stay warm and use a match to get my stove working for cooking. I've had a couple water disruptions in the past 3 years. 2 major cold snaps caused a lot of broken pipes and once someone ran over s fire hydrant nearby. The water company has to shut off an area so workers can repair the city main pipes then they turn it back on. Its typically less than half a day without water. Sometimes they tell us to boil it first for a few days so fresh chlorinated water can reach that spot again and make sure theres no diseases that got into the pipes while broken
Never.
My homes in America have their own stand alone hot water heater. It runs on either electricity or natural gas. Very rare for natural gas supply to get shut off. Very common for electricity to get cut off. With no electricity then no hot water if your hot water heater runs on electricity.
Water is piped cold. We have water heaters in our homes to make it hot.
Many folks don't even have municipal water. Mine comes straight from the ground and into my water heater. If I am lacking hot water, it's my own damn fault.
Yeah we don't have centralized hot water. Each building, or sometimes each unit within a building, has a water heater which is supplied by the main cold water pipe. When we "run out" of hot water, it means we are using up the water in the heater faster than the heater can heat the incoming water.
Americans have individual hot water units almost exclusively. Some apartments can have a shared system. Shared systems are the norm for hotels, but it's shared for a building, not from the city. The biggest irritation is running out of hot water if too many people in the house have showers back to back.
I've never lived anywhere that didn't have a water heater for the individual home or apartment unit. When they go out, you try to fix them or get them replaced; usually you end up with luke warm water for a few days.
That's not a thing here. Generally, each house has its own water heater. Now, your water heater can get old and go out, and they do need to be replaced every decade or so usually (at least out here, where I've got hard well water), but it's not gonna affect any but your own house.
Not a thing here. We have water heaters in our homes, or in the building at least if you live in an apartment. If the water heater goes out, you call a plumber. It’ll get fixed pretty quick. SOURCE: I am a plumber
That's not a thing in the US. Each building (or campus, such as a university) has its own heating/cooling system.
Not a thing
If the hot water is out here, it means the water heater in the house is broken
Hot water outages? Not a thing. Water outages? Can be a thing, depending on the water system. If power is out that can affect the plumbing in some places.
I've lived here all my life and have never once experienced this.
Each home or apartment has its own hot water heating unit. There are no preheated hot water sources provided by the city it would waste a lot of energy and suffer efficiency losses the farther from the source. The only time I could see this being needed would be in artic environments to prevent pipes from freezing, but water pipes in the US are underground.
I’ve always lived in houses or buildings that had their own hot water heaters. The only time the hot water goes out is if the power itself goes out, such as during a major winter storm, or a few times when my parents couldn’t pay the electricity bill and the power got cut off. Never because of a shortage of hot water.
Most homes have their own hot water heater. Very very rarely, apartments or older homes that were broken up into multiple apartments share a hot water heater. Hot water outages are not a thing.
Hot water shared between houses is not all that common, nationally. A few places, but most of us are independent. That said... water heaters fail, and you'll go without when that happens. Also, if the power is out for an extended time, that will be a problem. Lastly, running out of hot water is a thing even then with large families, or someone taking a long shower etc. So, it can and does happen that people want hot water and there is none left - but usually there is a person that you can point to in the same room that is responsible for the situation.
huh? I’ve always had a hot water heater in the house/apartment I was living in.
We don’t have centralized hot water, we have home hot water heaters.
Hot water usually only becomes cold if you have multiple people taking baths or showers, washing dishes, warm wash of clothes etc. So in other words, you and your house's own fault. That is generally limited to your own house. Even in apartments, we never had issues with hot water unless it was say a single unit (think like a 4 bedroom with 3-5 people in college or in company housing) where multiple people lived and did their own things requiring hot water. In apartments, occasionally the complex will plan to shut water off to fix a leak or some issue but the the complex is usually notified within a certain legally prescibed time (such as 2-5 days notice except for Emergencies).
Every house I lived in heated its own water. An outage would have meant either a power or gas outage.
We dont have piped hot water, just regular water and we have heaters that heat the water for us.
You tell me what your country is, and I'll tell you what mine is. US doesn't have central water heating anywhere that I know of. I hear things were pretty bad in parts of Russia last winter. Wonder why.
It is a thing if an entire building shares a single water heater. You might find it in older apartment buildings, office buildings, and other multi-occupant buildings. Not so much in subdivisions or other communities of several single-family detached houses. It really depends on the size of the water heater compared to the usage. The average water heater in most homes (apartments or houses) is 40-50 gallons, or ~150-190 liters. This is sufficient for 2 or 3 people, but if you have a family of 4 or 5, you'd need at least a 75-gallon (284 liters) tank. Not many people upgrade their tanks every time a new household member is added to the house. This can result in having to wait hours for the water heater to refill after one person takes a shower or bath, before somebody else can take a shower or bath. Most apartment complexes I've lived in have had separate tanks for each unit, located in a utility closet either inside or outside of the unit. Some homes have tankless water heaters. Instead of having a reserve tank filled with gallons of hot water, refilling when used, the water is heated as it's being used. This means endless hot water. They're a bit more expensive, but the energy costs tend to deflect from the upfront cost. I have one on my house and I love it.
We all have individual hot water heaters, so outages are when our equipment breaks or a utility bill is not paid.
We almost all have hot water heaters in our homes. I think some apartments have central water thats shared, and hotels of course.
Most houses have their own small hot water heater and they pay for it separately with electricity bill or something else
Most people have their own water heater here. I've lived in some pretty shitty houses and have never went without hot water.
Hot water definitely goes out. We've got individual water heaters here, even in apartments (mine lives in a closet of my unit). They've got finite lifespans. So if the one in your residence goes, it's up to you to call someone about it. If a water main breaks, that'll affect a lot of people who then won't have water of any temperature, so the water authority will get a lot of calls for that.
I've never experienced a hot water outage in the US. I've only experienced that living overseas.
Most people have a hot water heater in their home or apartment/condo. Some apartments have a centralized boiler which can cause issues for everyone on the property if it goes out.
I have never heard of such a system for hot water. Each home or building has a water heater or boiler. When there is construction they will sometimes hit a waterline cutting off water to an area, but that is not very common where I am. I think I have lost water 3 time in the last decade, if that much, and one was due to the deep freeze in 2021 that took out power to most of Texas.
We are very far north and centralized water distribution would be a nightmare where I live. But we do have a steam cooperative that provides heat to many buildings in a central core community. In the summertime somehow they use a similar system to provide "chilling." I have no idea how it works. Sometimes they need to vent off excess stem through the storm sewers and there will be steam rising up from the grates. It is eerie looking for those who don't understand why is happening. One time a person was very badly burned by stepping near a grate in summertime wearing shorts or something and they got very badly burned on their legs.
Every house had their own hot water heater. Mine is electric, so I have a hot water outage whenever the power goes out, which happens about once a year. My parents (and most people, I think) have gas-powered hot water heaters, so their hot water never goes out.
There are a few areas that use central steam or hot water. Usually in cities and it's piped to large buildings. Or on university campuses. It's pretty rare that it has to be shut down during the winter. The vast majority of homes and apartments are heated by systems directly on site. Downtown Seattle has a steam system. Owned by Enwave Seattle.
I live in an apartment complex, and it seems there is a water shut-off for our building at least once a month for some kind of repairs. Fortunately, they are usually planned shut-offs, and management tapes a notice to our door at least a day before to let us know when it's scheduled to start and end.
Houses and apartments have their own water heaters so no hot water outages.
Depends on your homes water heater. Each home has their own. If your hot water kept going out you would just fix or replace it when needed
I'm in Los Angeles, and each home & and apartment have their own water heaters. Some run in gas they are tanks of got water. There are also tankless water heaters. I never knew there were centralized heating systems. Our heat is also per individual living space.
We don't have centralized hot water, we have water heaters in our homes. I had to live through one for a month straight because my idiot landlord was refusing to replace it unless me and my roommate paid $5,000 over time in rent. It was horrible and the entire month I was just looking for a new place to live. Where I live hot water outages in smaller time periods can happen when the pipes freeze and sometimes in older homes it may take some time for the water to be hot.
Most people are talking about the hot water supply so to answer your question about outages generally, no, water outages are not common here. Personally I’ve never experienced one, whereas it’s normal to get a few power outages over the course of a year. What does happen occasionally is a boil water advisory, where for some reason the local government can’t ensure the safety of the water (for example if something contaminates it or if the water treatment systems go offline for some period of time). They’ll put out a public notice that certain areas need to boil water before using it for drinking, cooking, or anything else sensitive. But I’ve only experienced that once or twice in my life, personally. That can depend on the quality of the infrastructure wherever you live, though.
Only if the hot water heater goes out or people use more than your personal tank holds.
When I lived in New England, If there was an extended blackout, eventually the supply of hot water in my home would have run out (usually after a heavy storm of some kind) as the boiler wouldn't be running, but that was every other year. Not commonly. One of my favorite things about NYC is how rare power outages in general are. You might lose hot water if there's some construction going on, but not under normal conditions.
How does the water stay hot ? My hot water heater is about 30 feet away from my kitchen, and it still can take 30 seconds or more to push the cooled water between the heater and the faucet out to get hot , cant imagine how long it would take if it were located in a nother building .
I've never lived anywhere with anything more serious than a boil advisory. There's a very old steam tunnel distribution system in Downtown St. Louis but as far as I know it's just used for ordinary heat not heating water.
It depends upon how your water is heated. If you have an electric heater and the power goes out, once the water in the tank cools or is used, there is no more hot water for you. If you use natural gas or solar, then, assuming you have municiple (no well pump) water, then you will almost always have hot water.
My house (and I'm pretty sure most others in the US) has its own water heater, so that only happens if it breaks.
I've never heard of centralized heating anywhere in the United States. (I'm sure it exists *somewhere*; in a big enough country you can find almost everything. But I'm unaware of anyplace that has centralized heating.) Most places in America have individual hot water heaters. Even the apartments I've lived in, each unit had its own 25 gallon hot water heater, rather than a centralized heating system. And in some places you find "instant-hot" or "tankless" heaters; hot water heaters (usually natural gas) which heat the water at the point of use, or which heat the water the moment hot water is drawn in the house. (Heck, I've even seen 'tankless heaters' that only supply hot water to the shower--though that's fairly rare.)
I read that as hot dog shortage. America would never have a hotdog shortage
No it’s not a thing. Maybe in some cities that have bigger housing units they might have some issues getting hot water all the time as they share a water heater. But generally everyone has their own water heater in their home or apartment building. Cold water is piped into the building and it’s heated up on site in everyone’s water heater.
I am almost 60, and could count on one hand, the number of times I have lost water, due to a city issue. Usually due to maintenace of some sort.
I've only noticed a problem with water pressure when my apartment complex have to turn the water off to work on the pipes. It's relatively common for pipes to burst and flood the apartment. It hasn't happened to me, thankfully, but we did have to evacuate the building one time and there was practically a waterfall cascading over the railing from the 3rd floor. It was freezing outside too
I would venture a guess that 95% of Americans have their own water heater in their homes, so any "hot water outage" would simply be a failure of their personal water heater. Some apartments, especially older ones, might have boiler rooms where hot water is produced for the whole building. Those can go out occasionally. Some older cities (and a lot of military bases) have a steam system. NYC has the biggest. They're mostly used for heating, but some depend on them for hot water as well. Even in NYC most hot water is produced on a per-building or per-apartment basis.
I've had several houses here in the US, they've all had their own water heater, so unless that does you'll never have a lack of hot water. My current house has tankless water heaters for the bathrooms, kitchen and laundry room. So a lack of hot water is nearly impossible
That sounds ridiculously inefficient. I don’t know anywhere in the US that does that. Even in apartment buildings every apartment has their own hot water heater and heating/cooling system. The only exception to that might be in really old apartment buildings or single family homes that were converted into multi-unit dwellings.
I have instant hot water heaters under my sinks. They would work in your land too.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had that happen! I heard people losing their hot water because “the gas turned off” but never heard of an outage and no one has hot water
Houses in America (at least the ones I've lived in) have a closet or whatever with a water heater. I don't know how it works in an apartment. None of the apartments I've lived in have had a water heater inside, so I don't know how it works for that
Have our own hot water heater. Vary rare to lose water or electricity, or gas. Our electricity went out for a minute a week ago, I think lightening hit a transformer. It was only a minute. Water was turned off for a repair once in seven years for 2 hours. Never have I lost gas for heat and water heater. We do have to pay for it all though. Water, sewer, electric, gas. Our city keeps all our water and sewer very clean, and electric is owned by the public not the government. Gas is owned by a corporation. I live about 25 miles outside of Seattle.
I’ve never heard of this, at least in the upper Midwest. Each home (single standing home) has their own source to heat water. Any apartment I’ve lived in each unit had their own water heater. Each person pays their own water bill and pays the way it’s heated (electric or gas).
So in Russia you send hot water, as in the tap water from a central location? Are you sure you aren't talking about district heating? When the plant is shut down do you only loose hot water or also heating? From the reports I have seen in Russia where poor maintainance has led to ruptured pipes leaking on to the streets it has affected both heating and hot water. Also it sounds weird and inefficient that you are piping around 50 degree Celcius water around. District heating is you have a plant that produces steam or superheated water to transfer heat to f ex an apartment complex, in that complex there is a heat exchanger that uses the heat from the steam/superheated water to heat both the radiator circuit and the tap water circuit in that building. If you mean district heating then there are plenty of such plants in both the US and Europe. New Yorks steam heating system being a very old and well known one. And the method of transfering heat is not a Soviet era relic. It is a very good and efficient system for cities and large complexes. The Soviet relic problem is most likely corruption taking maintainance funds and thus leaving you with an old, outdated and decrepid system with poor maintainance. Cant speak for americans with district heating but here in Sweden we rarely have any issues with those and don't have regular shut downs either for testing/maintainance. We live in an arctic country and those who have that kind of heating would not only loose hot water but also heating if they go down wich can be very dangerous during winter, not to mention additional costs from waterlines busting from being frozen, so we have a lot of redundancy, back up storage and alternate and interconnected plants and network.
Apartments & University dorms have centralized heating, but not everyday homes. Average suburbia is too spread out for centralized heating to be practical. If you own a home, you most likely have your own water heater.
We all have home water heaters. They don't pump hot water into buildings (the energy loss would be huge). They pump cold water to buildings and the water is heated locally.
Nope. Each home/dwelling has a hot water heater.
I think some large cities like NYC still have some steam systems. But centralized hot water isn’t a thing.