The San Francisco Standard
Summary
Walking around Downtown San Francisco, you’ve probably seen clouds of steam rising up from manholes and gusting along city streets. By City Hall, you might have seen homeless people camping nearby to stay warm—but where is the steam coming from, and what is its actual purpose?
Steam has been an integral part of the city’s infrastructure since around seven years after the 1906 earthquake—a period when the city massively overhauled its infrastructure after earthquake damage. Steam heats some of its most important buildings from City Hall to the public library and health department, according to Mike Eurkus who manages the majority of San Francisco’s steam heating network for Cordia Energy—a third-party company hired by the city.
Cordia runs a two-square-mile district heating system for the city: The system takes groundwater from beneath Powell BART Station and pipes it for filtration and treatment before heating it at two boilers at 460 Jessie St. (behind the new Ikea) and 1 Meacham Place (at Hyde and Post streets).
The boilers, fueled by either natural gas or diesel fuel, create steam, which then travels along a 71,540-foot distribution network to about 180 different buildings, providing heat for more than 37 million square feet of office space in the Tenderloin, Union Square, the Financial District and parts of SoMa.
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