page_title: Central heating
section_title: Steam
hierarchical_section_title: Central heating / History / Modern central heating systems / Steam
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Thomas Tredgold (1788–1829), English engineer. From the 1838 edition of his work The Steam Engine.
context_page_description: A central heating system provides warmth to the whole interior of a building from one point to multiple rooms. When combined with other systems in order to control the building climate, the whole system may be an HVAC system.
context_section_description: The English writer Hugh Plat proposed a steam-based central heating system for a greenhouse in 1594, although this was an isolated occurrence and was not followed up until the 18th century. Colonel Coke devised a system of pipes that would carry steam around the house from a central boiler, but it was James Watt the Scottish inventor who was the first to build a working system in his house.
  A central boiler supplied high-pressure steam that then distributed the heat within the building through a system of pipes embedded in the columns. He implemented the system on a much larger scale at a textile factory in Manchester. Robertson Buchanan wrote the definitive description of these installations in his treatises published in 1807 and 1815. Thomas Tredgold's work Principles of Warming and Ventilating Public Buildings, delineated the method of the application of hot steam heating to smaller, non-industrial buildings. This method had superseded the hot air systems by the late 19th century.
caption: Thomas Tredgold, a noted engineer and authority on central heating systems in the early 19th century.
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