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Chronological List of District Heating
Systems in the United States |
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| 1915 Map of Toledo Hot Water System | 1924 Map of Toledo Hot Water System |
Homer T. Yaryan built a low-temperature hot water district heating system in Toledo that began operating in October 1894. This was the first such system in the United States, although a similar system had been installed at the Croydon Lunatic Asylum outside London in 1877. A geothermal hot water system had begun operating in Boise, Idaho in 1892 and was widely reported in the press (including the Toledo Blade) but Yaryan made no known reference to the Boise system, although it may have inspired his Toledo project. Yaryan's system had three separate heating plants that were interconnected and used exhaust steam to heat the water. At its peak it served 1,400 customers. The small steam-engine electric generators at these plants became obsolete and were taken out of service by the 1930s, and the Securities and Exchange Commission required Toledo Edison to divest the hot water system as it had no connection with their electric network.
The initial system was built by the Central Chandelier Company, of which Yaryan was president. The Home Heating and Lighting Company was formed in 1895 to own and operate the system, and it was sold to the Toledo Railways and Light Company in 1907 which was renamed Toledo Edison in 1921.
Yaryan formed a company to install this system in other cities, and about thirty-five systems were built based on his design. More than sixty hot water systems were built using two-pipe distribution systems that he developed, some by competitors who made minor modifications and rebranded them, including William H. Schott and Edward F. Gwynn. Another competitor, Evans-Almirall, employed a single-pipe design that was used in six commercial systems along with a number of institutional customers. The longest-lived Yaryan system in Perry, Iowa shut down in 1981.
Toledo Edison built a steam system in 1930 that operated until 1985.
The hot water system was abandoned in 1954, although three commercial customers were connected to the steam network.
References
1877 "A New Mode of Circulating Hot Water through very Large
Buildings, and a Upon a New Mode of Softening Water, as carried out at the
new lunatic asylum (the third) for the county of
Middlesex, situated on Banstead Downs, in Surrey," by Frederick J.
Bramwell. Read before the Mechanical Science Section of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science meeting at Plymouth in August
1877, but not published in the meeting
transactions.. A summary of the paper can be found in the The
Sanitary Record 7:162 (September 7, 1877).
1892 "Heated
with Hot Water," Toledo Blade, October 5, 1892, Page 3.
Only City Favored Like That In the World.
Boise is to be heated with hot water and in that respect will be the most
remarkable city in the world. About a mile from the city great
volumes of boiling water bush out of several deep artesian wells.
The water possesses no medicinal value and heretofore has been used only
for bathing.
Now a six-inch pipe will be laid from the springs in the town and the hot
water will be conducted into nearly every business block and
residence. The cost of heating with hot water, it is estimated, will
be 50 percent less than with coal.
1893 AN
ORDINANCE to grant to the Central Chandelier Company of Toledo, Ohio,
its successors and assigns, the right to construct, maintain and operate
proper appliances in the streets, alleys and public places in the city
of Toledo, for constructing and vending electricity for sundry purposes,
November 20, 1893, from The Municipal Code of the City of Toledo:
Comprising the General Ordinances and Special Ordinances of General
Interest
SECTION. 1. Be it ordained by the Common Council of the City of Toledo,
That permission and authority is hereby granted to the Central Chandelier
Company, its successors and assigns, to use and occupy such portions of
the avenues, streets, lanes, alleys, public lands, landings, wharves,
squares and public places of the city of Toledo as may be necessary for
the purpose of laying down, maintaining and operating mains and conduits,
and for the purpose of erecting, constructing, maintaining and operating
poles, wires and house connections for the manufacturing, selling and
furnishing electricity (steam or hot water) for heat, light and power
purposes, steam purposes, together with the necessary fixtures, posts,
piers and abutments required for the wires and fittings; provided, Heat,
light, power or hot water.
1894 "The
Exhaust is Used," Toledo Blade, October 16, 1894, Page 3.
Houses heated by means of hot water. Successful test of Mr. Yaryan's
system.
1895 The
Electrical Engineer 25:36 (January 5, 1895)
The Home Heating & Lighting Company, Toledo, O., capital stock
$50,000, has been incorporated to do heating and lighting by electricity,
steam and hot water, etc. J. F. Zahm, Homer Yaryan, and R. W. Smith
are interested.
1895 "Central
Station Hot-Water Heating," Heating and Ventilation 5(3):3
(February 15, 1895)
Yaryan plant in Toledo
1898 "The Yaryan Heating System, Plant No. 2," Abstract of Thesis of Ralph Collamore and Chas O. Cook, The Michigan Technic 11:99-102 (1898)
1899 "Central
Hot Water Heating Plant," by Arthur C. Loomis, Mattoon, Illinois, Annual
Report of the Iowa Society of Engineers and Surveyors 14:198-202
(January 1899)
Yaryan hot water system at Mattoon, Illinois
1900 "Central Station Heating Plants," by C. C. Hammond, Power 20(4):18 (April 1900)
1900 "A
Lesson From Toledo," St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 22, 1900,
Page 4.
When boilers, engines and dynamos are used to produce electric lights, and
when such lights burn in a satisfactory manner and the plant is a
financial success, the average engineer and investor are contented to rest
on their oars. The enterprise is a success.
But a lighting company at Toledo is showing how to utilize coal, steam and
machinery in a way that makes the ordinary lighting plant appear wasteful
by comparison. In every such plant there la an enormous waste of
heat. This heat the Toledo company distributes by pipes during the
winter. In summer the waste steam will be utilized to run an ammonia
condensing plant, which will distribute cold brine in place of hot water.
In both cases the main plant is utilized to the utmost, so that the
electricity produced is looked upon as a by-product.
The perfect central plant or the future is suggested by this experiment.
The time may come when stoves, grates, furnaces and ice boxes in house and
office will disappear. We shall depend on central stations for
light, heat, power, cold, telephone and telegraph facilities and many
other things. The scientific millennium will then be at hand.
1900 "Hot-Water
Heating From a Central Station," by Homer T. Yaryan, Transactions
of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 21:937-960 (May,
1900)
Page 949: During the past two years the system I have described has
been installed, and is now in successful operation in the following cities
and towns : La Porte, Ind. ; Mattoon, Ill. ; La Crosse, Wis. ; Kenosha,
Wis.; Alton, Ill.; Portage, Wis.; Boone, Perry, Ida Grove, Iowa Falls, and
Mason City, Iowa.
1900 "Hot Water Heating from a Central Station" by Homer T. Yaryan, Scientific American Supplement 49(1278supp):20490-20491 (June 1900)
1900 Cassier's
Magazine 18(2):173-174 (June 1900)
It may seem anomalous to speak of electricity as a bye-product, and yet
such it is in the operations of the Toledo Heating and Lighting Company,
at Toledo, Ohio, U. S. A. In the May number of this magazine, in an
article devoted to "Electric Central Stations and Isolated Plants," the
point was made that the commercial salvation of the electric central
station depended, in a great measure, upon a satisfactory distribution of
its large heat product, quite as much, indeed, as upon the disposal of its
relatively small electric product, and that so long as the lion's share of
the station energy was allowed to escape as waste heat, just so long the
station would be unable to compete with the service of the electric
isolated plant in which heat wastes had been reduced to a practical
minimum. It is upon this basis that the Toledo enterprise is being
conducted. According to particulars which have been given of it by Mr. H.
T. Yaryan, one of its engineers, in a paper read during the past month
before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the system, which, by
the way, appears to have been in successful operation for the past five
years, utilizes all its exhaust steam for heating water which subsequently
is circulated through a territory measured by a radius of a mile and a
half from the station, heating dwelling houses and other buildings. The
fuel cost of the electricity, which is generated as an incidental, is
simply that required to make up for the condensation in the engines.
As a matter of additional interest in connection with this it is worth
noting that during the coming summer the company propose installing a
refrigerating plant for domestic use, to distribute cold brine in exactly
the same way that they now distribute hot water, but using a separate set
of mains. An ammonia absorption machine is to be used, operated with the
exhaust steam from the station engines, so that as the demand for heat
ceases, that for cooling purposes begins, thus utilising the exhaust
during the summer months when formerly it went to waste.
1900 "Two Revenues Instead of One: Electricity as By-Product," by A. J. Stahl, La Porte, Ind., Proceedings of the Ohio Electric Light Association 6:27-35 (August 1900)
1900 "Heating
by Exhaust Steam," Boston Evening Transcript, September 29,
1900, Page 21
Hot water system in Toledo, Ohio
1900 "To
Cool Houses in Summer," The Los Angeles Times, September 30,
1900, Page 31.
A Successful Electric Company that Will Introduce a System of Pipes
Distributing Chilled Water.
The winter use of this system has been so successful that the company now
proposes to introduce a system of pipes to be used in the summer time to
distribute brine chilled down below the freezing point. The company
expects to be able to make all their expenses from the heating and
refrigerating plants, and so have all the proceeds of the electric
lighting as clear profit. The move is an important one, and well worth the
study of managers of electric light stations generally.
1900 "Cost
of Hot Water Heat," Indianapolis Journal, October 1, 1900,
Page 8
Details of proposed Yaryan hot water system for Home Heating and Lighting
Company.
1900 "Statistics on Hot Water and Steam Heating Plants," Municipal Engineering 19(5):412-414 (December 1900)
1901 "Hot
Water Plant," The Bedford Weekly Mail, May 10, 1901, Page 2.
List of 26 hot water systems using Homer T. Yaryan's design. The
plant in Bedford was installed by W.H. Schott
1906 "Homer
Taylor Yaryan," The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography
13:171 (1906)
He also invented a system of hot water heating of houses, offices
buildings, etc., (1893) from central stations. This system was
invented by him in 1894, and has been successfully introduced in some
thirty-five cities by the Toledo Heating & Lighting Co., of which he
is manager.
1908 "Systems
of Central Station Heating," by J.C. Hornung, The Metal Worker,
Plumber and Steam Fitter 70(14):54-56 (October 3, 1908)
Holly System thirty years ago, Yaryan System, Schott Hot Water System
1910 "Toledo Yaryan System," by A. Carle Rogers, Engineering Review 20:58-59 (May 1910)
1910 Memoirs
of Lucas County and the City of Toledo: From the Earliest Historical
Times Down to the Present, Including a Genealogical and Biographical
Record of Representative Families, Volume 2, by Harvey
Scribner
Pages 230-232: Homer T. Yaryan
1913 "Hot Water Heating for Residence Districts," by A.C. Rogers, Proceedings of the National District Heating Association 5:78-101 (May 1913)
1915 "The District Hot Water Heating System of the Toledo Railways & Light Co.," The Bulletin of the National District Heating Association 1(1):3-6 (October 20, 1915)
1915 District
Heating: A Brief Exposition of the Development of District Heating and
Its Position Among Public Utilities, by S. Morgan Bushnell
Pages 286-287:
1923 Toledo
and Lucas County, Ohio, 1623-1923, Volume 1.
Page 574: Hot Water Heating
In 1894 Homer Yaryan and associates incorporated The Home Heating and
Lighting Company, to employ the Yaryan system of heating from a central
station. In 1898 its business was sold to The Toledo Heating and Light
Company, later acquired by The Toledo Gas, Electric and Heating Company,
and finally becoming part of The Toledo Edison Company through absorption
by The Toledo Railways & Light Company in 1907, as noted above.
In 1922, The Toledo Edison Company operated for this part of its business
three plants: On Detroit Avenue, with 4,320 H. P. boiler capacity; Floyd
Street, with 1,750 H. P. capacity, and on Twenty-second Street with 1,850
H. P. capacity. During that year 776 customers were served with 978,680
square feet of radiation. The amount of coal used was 32,659 tons. The
system supplied heat to about one-third of the buildings, principally
residences, within an area of about three square miles.
1924 Central
and District Heating: Possibilities of Application in Canada
Pages 52-54: Toledo Edison Company
The Toledo Edison Company
1928 "Homer
T. Yaryan: An Autobiography," American Chemical Industry:
The World War I period: 1912-1922 2:383-385 (1945)
Reprinted from Hercules Mixer, June 1928
Page 383: My next invention was heating with hot water from a
central station. I built 3 plants in Toledo between the years 1894
and 1896.
1928 Homer Taylor Yaryan (23 Dec 1842 - 18 Sep 1928) Grave
1929 "Report
of Hot Water Committee," Proceedings of the National District
Heating Association 20:245-295 (June 1929)
Pages 246-249 "Our Hot Water System," by F.L. Whitesell, Toledo Edison
Page 290: Metering: A meter consisting of a water meter and a
recording thermometer on both the inlet and outlet so designed as to give
the reading in B. T. U.'s or an equivalent factor. This might be a
delicate and probably an intricate meter, and might not be practical from
a manufacturing or an operating standpoint. But if these difficulties
could be worked out, I am sure the heating companies would be glad to have
such an instrument.
1943 Securities
and Exchange Commission Decisions and Reports 14:41-42
8. Toledo Edison conducts, corporately, heating operations in the city of
Toledo. Two types of service are rendered: a steam heating (provided
through facilities physically connected with generating properties) and a
hot water heating service. Exhaust steam is provided from the boilers in
an operating generating plant and the provision of steam makes it possible
to keep boilers in a ready condition for electric service. This evidence
satisfies us that the steam heating business is retainable.27
(2) The steam heating operations of The Toledo Edison Company are
reasonably incidental or economically necessary or appropriate to the
electric operations of the Ohio companies.
However, the same is not true of the hot water operations, which form a
unit not connected with and distinct from the steam and electric
properties. The hot water heating system was acquired in the course of
growth of the company in connection with the acquisition of small electric
generators and noncondensing steam engines. Although the old equipment has
been abandoned for electric purposes, the boilers are still operated to
provide hot water heat. There is thus a complete operational separation
between the hot water heating and the electric systems. Since there is no
other evidence of relationship between the hot water and electric
operations, we must find the former to be nonretainable.28
(3) The hot water heating system of The Toledo Edison Company, are not
reasonably incidental or economically necessary or appropriate to any of
the local utility operations of Power & Light, and may not be
retained.
28 It may be noted that Toledo Edison contemplates "at rather an early
period the entire disappearance" of this service.
railroad business of The Ohio Public Service Company, the bus operations
of The Alliance Public Service Company and the hot water heating system of
The Toledo Edison Company, are not reasonably incidental or economically
necessary or appropriate to any of the local utility operations of Power
& Light, and may not be retained.
1950 "Expansion
of the Toledo Edison Company Steam-Distribution System," Proceedings
of the National District Heating Association 41:298-308 (May 1950)
In 1930 The Toledo Edison Company decided to develop a District Steam
System in the downtown area of Toledo, Ohio, for a possible load of
500,000 lb per hr at 150 psi in an area of approximately 32 blocks.
In 1946 the L & K Company, a department store in the center of the
business district, decided to discontinue supplying steam to 90 customers
covering six blocks. They negotiated with The Toledo Edison Company to
take over their steam customers and steam distribution system.
1953 "Notice,"
Toledo Blade, September 7, 1953, Page 31.
Notice is hereby given that the Toledo Edison Company has filed with the
Ohio Public Utilities Commission an application for the abandonment and
withdrawal of hot water heating service from its service area.
The above notice refers to what was commonly called the Yaryan hot water
heating system in the Old West End of Toledo which was used for space
heating of buildings.
1954 "Plaza
Added to Edison Heating System," Toledo Blade, June 24,
1954, Page 14.
Toledo Museum of Art, Plaza Hotel and Pinkerton Tobacco Company added to
new steam line, replacing hot water service.
Edison's heating service, which was started in 1894, served at its peak in
1921 more than 1,400 buildings in the city using more than 50 miles of
pipe.
1965 "Fires
Going Out at Toledo Edison Heating Plant," Toledo Blade,
January 3, 1965, Page 1.
Last 3 customers to get own boilers. Toledo Museum of Art, Plaza
Hotel, Pinkerton Tobacco Company.
Last of the residential customers were cut off more than 20 years ago.
2008 "Cradle
of ideas that failed to last," Toledo Blade, June 27, 2008
The idea of central heat lasted even longer, about 90 years.
For nearly half a century, nearly 800 homes and businesses in the Old West
End section of the city were heated by hot water sent from a plant through
underground pipes, and for 20 more years the service was continued for a
select few customers such as the Toledo Museum of Art and the former Plaza
Hotel.
And for 55 years, Toledo Edison Co. and predecessors provided centrally
produced live steam for heating hundreds of downtown buildings, including
stores, offices, hotels, and theaters.
It began in 1894 when an entrepreneur, Homer Yaryan, produced hot water
from surplus steam he bought from electric-generating plants. His service,
which eventually became part of Toledo Edison, suffered from escalating
costs and deterioration of pipes and valves.
Hot-water service to homes was discontinued in the early 1940s, and the
business customers were shut off in 1965.
The downtown steam plant evolved from a riverfront electricity-generating
plant built in 1896. The plant, which later became part of Toledo Edison,
started piping steam to downtown buildings in 1930. But by the 1970s, the
power company was showing losses, having difficulty raising its steam
rates, and losing customers who preferred other heating systems.
Edison closed the steam plant in 1985.
Yaryan
Heating System photographs from Toledo Edison
© 2024-2025 Morris A. Pierce