The Steamboating Forum

We now have five steam boats on an island with a little over 3000 year round residents. 3156 people as of the 2020 census. Steam boats were not on the census questionaire! Unfair!

Mike

I agree with Bart on this one. Keep it simple. After all, how many times a day or even week does one need to blow down. I'm assuming that your system is condensing. I choose not to put lake or stream water in my rather expensive system! I use common 3/4 turn 1/2" water valves just about everywh...

My take would be to just use an ordinary bronze through hull and not worry about the temperature. By the time the steam and spray get to the hull, the temps (and pressure) will have dropped enormously. Also, fiberglass can take a lot of heat. I'm assuming that the blow down valve is at the boiler en...

Thanks to all for your advice and help. As too the problems I was having with the search engine, Simon has most graciously changed the search engine parameters such that it will accept pretty much anything! As to the hot well subject, I find that the various methods seem to converge. And for no part...

I've been struggling with the search function to no avail so I'll just open up a topic. I'm going to build a new hot well (or hotwell if you like). With my failure to be able to search the forum, I'll put it out for discussion. The only consideration that comes to mind for sizing said well would be ...

Great use of existing stuff. I'm impressed!

I've had very good service out of those in-line check valves. I didn't know that they were intended for pneumatic service.

Mike

Dead on. As usual. A consideration, which Fred touched on, is how much attention do you want to pay to your power plant? At first, it seems like that's all steaming is about. On the work bench it's great fun to turn a valve and have this interesting and sometimes complicated mess of machinery react....

There are all sort of technical considerations as to the different designs. Most are valid. For me, my choice was determined by the appearance on the market of a junk hull with essentially new machinery. Cheap. And that included a VFT boiler. In other words, historical reasons. I've had good service...

So Wes. With Lee Mills being about 40 degrees of longitude away from us, did it cause problems? Like all of the water running over to the East side of the lake?

Mike

Thanks to all for the condolences. So far, nothing unexpected has shown up and nothing further that is costing me much. I have a voluminous junk box which helps. My partner is headed for six weeks in Ecuador starting in a week which means that I can devote those weeks to working on the boat and livi...