Others with more experience will no doubt have something to say but I think you are guessing way on the large side. I suspect that you would get by just fine with a couple of gallons capacity. It's not as turbulent as you might think in there.

Is it worth while to mount a Hypro pump with the output on the top so that air can escape and make bleeding it faster and easier? Bart and other have their hand pumps feeding the Hypro but I'm keeping my two pumps more independent. Also I'm considering putting one of those gas line squeeze bulbs fro...

I've not felt the need for two gauges reading at the same point. There are all sorts of other places besides the boiler that are worthwhile or at least interesting. Feed water pump output. After the throttle as near as is convenient to the engine. Condenser output vacuum. Sometimes a good idea to us...

What a beautiful gauge! You are lucky to find it. Now build yourself a dead weight tester to make sure it reads right. They are stone simple and the only things needed for very good accuracy are a micrometer and some way of weighing the weight. How close you are on the weight and ram diameter contro...

Checked it out. It's fiberglass. Fine for what I'm doing though.

Mike After reading your post I went and looked at my insulation blanket and I think it might be ceramic fiber. I'll go out later and hit a bit of it with a flame and see if I can get it to melt. Glass melts under even a propane torch. This stuff should survive warhead re-entry into the atmosphere! I...

Greg, I'll check out the ceramic stuff though I already have my glass blanket. Fred, Good idea about the aluminum flashing. I'm used to working with the stuff as I built an airplane out of aluminum once. With some hi temp RTV to seal up a few critical places I think I can do a decent job. My boiler ...

Packages for the island are apparently tied to the first passing stray dog and then we wait.

From what I can find here on the forum and with some web searching, there seems to be a fairly wide range of schemes for VFT insulation. Most seem to be using wood lagging but with and without anything under it. My present boiler had a thick (over 1") glass wool blanket with 3/4" of wood over it. Th...

Thank you Bart. My bookmark file runneth over!