Boiler House

The boiler house at Waterfall Sanatorium is a smaller utility building set back from the wards, housing the boilers that supplied steam heating, hot water, and laundry steam to the entire complex. The building is brick, with a tiled roof and a tall metal flue rising from one side. Inside, the original cast-iron boilers stand in a line, painted matt black, with their fire-doors and pressure gauges still in place. Asbestos-clad steam pipes run from the boilers up the wall and out to the rest of the site. The floor is concrete, blackened from years of coal dust.

Tuberculosis sanatoria of the 1909 generation depended on a serious utility infrastructure: hot water for laundering bedding daily, steam for sterilising medical instruments, and central heating for the few rooms that needed it. The boiler house at Waterfall ran continuously through the entire operating life of the facility, fed first by coal, later by oil, and supplied with water from the local catchment. After the wards closed, the boilers were shut down and bled. The fittings have not been removed, partly because the building is heritage-listed and partly because the cast iron weighs more than it would cost to scrap. The boilers in this photograph are still where they were last fired.