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May 6

District heating

For those who has lived in the countries (outside of the former USSR) with district heating. Do heating companies stop providing hot water for the entire district for a definite period in every summer (say, a fortnight or a month) for "maintenance"?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've had district heating in Germany, and no, there were never any service interruptions longer than an hour or so - and these extremely rarely, too. In Germany, the heat source is usually "always on", i.e. district heating uses process heat from a factory, or heat from a waste incinerator or from an electrical power plant. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:29, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In ~~Soviet~~ Russia they say they either replace old steel pipelines (which obviously rust) or "check boilers" at the thermal power stations (which is usually one per district in big cities or only one for a whole small town/settlement, so when they are "checking" the entire town may be cut off from hot water). I wonder then how in other countries heating companies (or whatever they may be called) manage to do maintenance without cutoff.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 10:59, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Never heard of it during half a century in Sweden. Just a guess: Designed the flows to be reroutable. Star Lord - 星王 (talk) 14:38, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]