Mark, heated floors came along in the 50s, at a number of Northern Tier bases.
At Minot, the two ADC hangers had heated floors. Water from the base heating plant was sent through insulated pipes in to the hanger floors.
The buildings were nice to work in, as they stayed pretty warm, as long as the doors were closed.
The hottest floor was in the latrine, it had only one door, and no windows.
On really bad "piles" days, it was the place you would find a numbe f troops sitting, to make the feel better.
It worked.
The hanger floor was also good for that cure, but the latrine was the best.
The hot water also went to large heaters, two on each wall, which had blowers to keep the upper air warm.
The water went through a large radiator, then the blowers sucked air from the floor, through the radiator, and out the blower ducts.
If you opened the hanger doors in cold weather, the heaters were supposed to automatically turn off.
They usually didn't.
If it was cold enough, as it often was in a ND Winter, the blowers would suck super cold air in to the radiator, freezing it up, which caused the hot water to break out of the system, turn to steam and head for the ceiling.
That is when the trouble started.
When the hot steam hit the fire suppression system along the ceiling beams, it caused them to set off, and they sprinklers sprayed lots of water to put out the fire that was detected.
Needless to say, if there were planes in the hanger with canopies open or off, it caused the cockpits to flood.
Anything laying in the open got drenched.
It took time to shut the system down, so lots of water was let loose.
Each heater worked separately, as did the sprinklers.
So, if only one heater went off, only one side of the hanger got wet.
So, this only happens in the Winter.
Guess what the ramp outside the doors is like with all that water hitting the cold, cold, concrete?
Needless to say CES was not happy when this happened, as they had to replace the radiator. That was not a small job.
So, a procedure was set in place for Winter operations.
Anytime, anytime, the doors were to be opened in below freezing weather, each heater was to be manually shut off.
After the doors were closed, we had to wait 15 minutes before we turned the heaters back on.
Now, to add to the hot water system, there was also hot water that ran through the concrete of the runway.
It didn't work very well, and was shut down.
In areas where the hot water was under the surface, it was usually under sidewalks. That made it nice, no shoveling needed.
At Duluth, there were lots of large pipe systems around the base.
In winter the snow could build up and touch the pipes. So, you had to be careful walking, so you didn't run in to one of them.
I don't know if Duluth had heated hanger floors.
Grand Forks had the same set-up that Minot did.
I don't know if there was heat in the SAC nose docks.
I know other bases had the hot water system, but not sure which ones.
I know The Goose did. Most of the pipes there were underground, in tunnels. The tunnels were quite large, maybe 8 feet wide, and 10 feet high. They connected many of the buildings, so you didn't have to go outside to go from a barracks to the chow hall or PX.
Hope that helps.
Jim Too
We just need the stories!
I probably just gave it away!
