CENTRAL HEATING PLANT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 110, 10 April 1931, Page 9

CENTRAL HEATING PLANT.

Winnipeg, Canada.—Within a few years a chimney on a Winnipeg house will be but an ornamental feature and the furnace a relic of an uninformed past, if the vision of the city’s heating engineers becomes a reality. The municipal central heating plant, tested and found highly efficient and economical in the business section, is about to be extended to a larger residential area and civic authorities believe it is not improbable that eventually the individual heating system will be a rarity. Instead, residences and business structures will be linked up by underground steam pipes with central plants, heat will bo regulated by thermostatic control as is desired in each building, the smoke nuisance will be abolished, the fire hazard will be reduced and all this achieved at a considerable saving in fuel bills.

Winnipeg built its central heating plant in 1925, as a municipal enterprise—the first in Canada —and it serves now more than 200 buildings. Recently the ratepayers approved the expenditure of 450,600 dollars on an extension of the plant, and already plans are being considered for spending au additional million dollars to carry the steam lines into the suburbs. It is said central heating saves from 12 to 40 per cent, on fuel bills and to the householder means the elimination of dirt, ashes and general unpleasantness. The scheme has been so successful that private capital is ready to step into the Winnipeg field if the municipality should so permit. The present plant is operated with lignite coal mined in Western Canada, and its use has reduced the importation of United States coal by 50,000 tons ( a year already. It is proposed to develop steam by electricity as soon as power is available from a new 7,000,000 dollar development scheme at Slavo Falls, Manitoba, and then still further economies will be possible. The outcome of this interesting municipal experiment is being studied with great interest by other Canadian cities.