Ventilator blues
By: James Biber
Tags: Ventilation, Tenement, Covid 19, Modern Architecture, Nyc Apartment

The tiny apartment had two windows, 15 stories above the ground, looking directly onto the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond. That made the apartment feel palatial; the view was nearly infinite, and was the an uncanny example of Saul Steinberg’s “View of the World from 9th Avenue”, except for 9th, 10th and 11th avenues.

View of Barcelona rooftop apartment, ready to transform

I have been mesmerized by Christian Schallert’s remarkable transforming apartment since he posted the video tour (somehow labeled “Lego Apartment” which makes almost no sense). His 258sf Barcelona penthouse (technically…it is the top floor) is so ingenious, charming and livable that it made my own similar sized place seem so traditional, so old school, so last century. In our place nothing flipped open/slid out/folded over or pulled down, while everything in Christian’s place moves.

Our apartment was so unbearably hot that I considered asking them to remove the single giant radiator that stretched across the window wall. Instead they just turned it off. Why such a small apt would need such massive amounts of heat baffled me, until now:

in order for residents to keep windows open year round (see Leed’s above) the central heating systems were designed to allow enormous amounts of heat to offset the cold fresh air.

Steam rising from NYC streets is from piping to buildings for heat, even today

Massive cast iron radiators provided copious amounts of heat to apartments, permitting open windows to fight the various deadly diseases. Steam, still supplied by the city (‘waste’ from electrical generating plants, seen rising from manholes and still used by buildings such as the Woolworth Building) saved mechanical space and heated radiators via ‘one-pipe’ systems that any NYC resident who experiences clanking radiators, is overly familiar with. ‘One-pipe’ obviously saved half the piping (of two pipe systems) but was a very clever way to make a simple system work perfectly…until it doesn’t. This was, after all, the very end of the steam age, and using steam was as well understood as electrical power is today.*

All this clanging (is it clanging or clanking?) is generated as a relic of a heating system designed to limit the spread of disease, and we are once again facing the same winter issues, in homes, in outdoor restaurants and every other enclosed space. It all flies in the face of energy efficiency, which has driven design for decades (and well into the future, no doubt); better sealed and insulated buildings use less energy. They also better trap air, if not properly ventilated, than old, leaky buildings. Heat exchangers (called HRV’s for heat recovery ventilation or ERV’s for energy recovery ventilation) help solve that conundrum. They allow stale air to be exhausted and fresh air to be introduced, but move the heat from the warm to the cold air in the process, preserving heating (or cooling); ERV’s also manage humidity.

Our upstate house was originally an early 19th century one room schoolhouse, which was moved to a new site (one nice thing about mortise and tenon construction is how easy it is to disassemble) and then added to incrementally over the next 100 years. After the yearly ritual of installing and removing storm windows we finally renovated and, in the process, discovered the old walls to be entirely empty! With no insulation, or attempt at insulation, the wall cavities were broom clean (but of no use in keeping in heat). That explained our insane heating bills, but new insulation, vapor barriers, windows and sealants meant we needed to consider an HRV. The HVAC subcontractor told us about a client who decided not to bother, thinking it was just an expensive gimmick the contractor was pushing. He burnt some toast one winter, and could still smell it as spring arrived (!) so lived to regret his decision. Hearing that tale we installed an HRV (although right now the smell of latkes seems like it will spend 8 days lingering — a Hanukkah miracle!).

The idea of fresh air as curative and preventative powered modern architecture’s claim to be good for health, in addition to being good for the eyes. Lifting buildings off the ground (eliminating the damp from invading) roof gardens (airy rooftop retreats) wide continuous windows (for optimum ventilation and light) sanitary kitchens and bathrooms were all billed as solutions to the failing health of the populous. This translated to claims of the moral superiority of modern architecture; if it saved lives who was to argue with that? Of course German modern architects tried to sell modern architecture as the only appropriate style for the Third Reich, so moral superiority can be moral relativity.

Paimio Sanitorium, Alvar Aalto, 1932, with stacked terraces for taking the very fresh Finnish air

Ship style terrace for sleeping and breathing the fresh air, Paimio, Finland

Alvar Aalto built the Paimio Sanitorium in 1929–33, every architect’s wet dream of white Nordic modernism, with an entire ‘wing’ of outdoor balconies to ‘take the air’. Like stacked ocean liners decks (an obsession of early modern architects) the balconies are deep enough to catch the winter sun and provide shade in the summer. And Finland gets seriously cold, so this was ventilation that would kill or cure you!

Around the same time in the US, Richard Neutra built the ur-elegant Lovell Health House in LA for a vegan doctor & naturopath (and health advocate) recognized by most from LA Confidential as Pierce Morehouse Patchett’s (David Strathairn’s) home. At a showing of the film to architects, as the cops crash through the Lovell House glass doors to find Patchett dead in an Eileen Gray chair in the living room, there was a loud gasp from the audience; defiling the iconic building was infinitely more disturbing than Strathairn’s quite good death scene! [IRL David Strathairn lived nearby in our little upstate town, around the bend from his friend John Sayles. Both have moved, but like James Cagney’s house (and the Lovell House), also in our small town, the houses will always be known by their most famous occupants names.]

Lovell Health House, Los Angeles, Richard Neutra, 1929 embracing the west coast health movement

Rooftop room at Kaufman house in Palm Springs, Richard Neutra, 1946

Sleeping porches were a big thing in California in the first quarter of the last century, as the disease/ventilation connection was codified. Architects as varied as Greene & Greene, Bernard Maybeck, Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra made more than a style out of sleeping porches; they were part of the healthy ethic of their work. Fear of tuberculosis and the sheer pleasure of sleeping outside (yet inside) shaped their houses for decades. The Pasadena and LA climate had not yet become a lush paradise; it was an arid world, perfect for warding off evil miasmic spirits. Schindler had ‘sleeping baskets’ on the roof his Kings Road LA house (one for the Schindlers and one for the Neutras who lived with them at the house for 5 years). Neutra later included perhaps the most elegant (that word again, but he had his moments) outdoor room atop his Kaufman House in Palm Springs. The Craftsman style work in Pasadena and Oakland/Berkeley (by Greene and Greene and Maybeck) often included screened porches for sleeping.

This idea has been revived by a few clever architects, including some where the bed rolls out to the porch (and back again) on rails. Christian Schallert’s bed is technically outside (stored under the terrace) but something like a bed also furnishes the roof terrace. It’s not glamping, but what we all might do given the chance.

But now it’s getting cold. And wet. Temperatures that will feel balmy in a few months feel frigid now; we need to harden, as they say with plants getting time outdoors. Ken Ilgunas, which must be an anagram for something appropriate, experimented with just how cold he could leave his Nebraska home and remain functional. Spoiler alert: it’s 45˚, and no thanks. But we can acclimate. Shackleton and his crew, in their unbelievable saga of being trapped in the Antarctic, got so used to the extreme cold that when they slept inside the boat and the temperature rose above freezing they had to peel off layers it was so unbearably warm. But they were people unlike anyone alive today.

For us snowflakes, the idea of suffering the cold to dispel the pandemic seems so, well, extreme. Massive radiators, outdoor fireplaces and heat lamps will help, but we need to get used to spending lots of time outside all year round. If Man’s Own Breath is His Greatest Enemy, then we may need more than Ventilator Blues to get by (though it will help).

So throw open the windows, crank up the heat and get ready to expel the ‘vitiated air’, along with the most dangerous man in the world and the virus that has reminded us all of our connections, to the history of plagues and the perseverance of science.

*One-pipe steam systems work this way:

Steam is pushed up a vertical pipe to multi-sectioned radiators (which are a modular system allowing larger or smaller configurations to precisely respond to heating needs). You can’t push steam into a sealed system, so there are, on every radiator, steam vents (those silver bullet shaped hissing items, also called air vents) that let air out so the steam can fill the radiator. They are thermostatic; when the steam reaches the valve they close, trapping the steam in the radiator. The steam gives up its heat to the radiator and as it cools it condenses as water in the bottom of the radiator. These radiators are supposed to be tipped toward the pipe to allow this condensed water to run back down the same pipe that pushed the steam up in the first place. Genius!

A two-pipe system has an inlet and an outlet, required for hot water systems to circulate the water, but steam can work perfectly with just one pipe. And because steam was the medium du jour (carrying much more heat, and piped directly from the street) one-pipe systems made technological sense. The problems occur when they are not properly maintained (air valves that are not working, radiators that don’t pitch toward the pipe, on/off valves that leak, uninsulated supply pipes) and the steam going in fights the water leaving, keeping us up at night. It can happen anywhere in the system and vibrate the entire plumbing tree, so just fixing your radiator is not the complete solution.