Neat steam-powered stuff

Fossils fuels are a limited resource. Firewood is renewable. We always tend to look “forward” in terms of technology, but perhaps we should be looking backward for solutions in the past? How cool would it be if every homestead had a steam-powered tractor to which you could attach various steam-powered implements such as the chainsaw in this video?! I think a half-tracked version would be even better than 4-wheels, but check this out:



How awesome! Kickstarter, anyone?

I LOVE steam and can appreciate what the person has done in that video for sure. Its really amazing what he has created. That takes a lot of clever engineering and as many of us know, the power of steam is just as staggering. Even today we do so much with it as a society.

Having my Boiler Welding Certification and having gone to school for Boiler Operations, because of those two things I just shake my head at the inefficiencies and complete lack of safety that makes that tractor and chainsaw inefficient, dangerous, and unsustainable.

It is really cool, but when the realities are factored in, it becomes circular. I can legally build and operate a steam engine, but because I can, also means I never would because I know how dangerous that is.

I'm an industrial safety guy in my professional life. The historical advancements created through the innovation of steam power has been paved with destruction and injury.

This is not to say modern day steam-powered devices are not now safe, but there is an inherit danger when building up pressure through the production of steam. I have a healthy respect for boiler systems and how each part works with the next to keep things chugging along.

If someone could create steam powered stuffs, I'd hope they would focus on getting the safety aspects correct and bulletproof as a first step.

My problem is, I do not see anything sustainable about that set-up.

Like the tractor, while it works, there is no efficiency there. The steam is exhausted to atmosphere so there is no recovering the condensate. Not only does that mean he must continuously fill his boiler with water A LOT he has to use wood to heat cool water past the point of boiling water since he’s not recovering the condensate. And seeing no super heater on his steam engine tractor, its wet steam at best which is corrosive and inefficient.

Then there is the maintenance aspect of it. Not only is there a lot of lubrication to keep that 5 axial piston engine turning, there is cutting all the firewood needed to keep such an inefficient steam engine going. That steam tractor might not burn oil to make it go, but it uses a lot of oil keeping all those moving parts operating.

Then there is safety. That could never be operated in the United States because it takes certification to boiler specs to weld anything like that, and takes a high pressure steam license to operate. I have both certifications and understand why we have these laws; steam is very powerful, but steam has also killed and maimed a lot of people before these laws were put into place. Steam is NOTHING to mess with. Getting scalded alive like a lobster in a pot is a best case scenario followed by months in a Burn Center, and death at the worst. And the chainsaw is no better. I spent four days in the hospital from a logging accident where a chainsaw WITH a chain brake struck me in the head. That steam chainsaw has no chain brake at all.

It is an amazing home build, and the cool factor is super high, but its completely unsustaininable long term. The man is enslaved to cutting firewood to make it all work, which means cutting tons of firewood, pumping water to make the steam, and using oil to keep everything lubricated. While that might take only a gallon of oil a day, my Kubota only burns five per day. With a society with no oil, neither my tractor of that homemade one will operate.

I, too, think there could still be a place for reciprocating steam (Rankine cycle) power, though I share Steve's sentiments about the video.

Monotube boilers might be safer for backyard experimenters, but they don't typically have the same "surge capacity" as traditional boiler, which maintain a substantial volume of water at the boiling point (whatever that might be, given the boiler's operating pressure).  Any small drop in pressure will flash some of that water to steam, whether the pressure drop is the throttle valve opening or a boiler seam splitting open.  So, this same ready capacity to usefully flash water to steam on demand is what makes a steam boiler explosion possible.  The throttle valve is obviously a lot more controlled process than a boiler failure.  Small volume conventional boilers, operating at low pressures, are safer than big boiler operating at high pressures, but there is still a risk.

In 2001, a Case 110 boiler exploded at the Medina (Ohio) County Fairgrounds, killing 5 people:
https://www.farmcollector.com/steam-engines/tragedy-at-medina-county-fairgrounds/
This is not theoretical.

Another approach to boilers is to use a monotube boiler, a very simple (and low pressure) version of which is found in countertop drip coffee makers.  This approach was used in several steam automobiles in the golden age of reciprocating steam (White and Doble, anyway, probably more - as in most things, I know almost enough to be dangerous!).

Richard J. Smith developed a monotube boiler design, and a homemade control mechanism, as an educational tool and technology demonstrator in the 1960s, as an attempt to overcome some of the limitations of surge capacity of mponotubes:
http://www.firedragon.com/~kap/Educator/

He obtained several patents for his ideas:

vapor generator - https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/38/55/1d/93a9b60fc7c97c/US3598090.pdf
vapor generator control - https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a6/61/ae/9edf02ff6d2ff2/US3507258.pdf
rotary valve - https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/55/5b/cb/d9919521434a97/US3650295.pdf

Apparently, some people are still experimenting with his "Educator" steam runabout design:
https://steamautomobile.com:8443/ForuM/read.php?1,13319

I collected info on the Smith system, because I thought is might be a safer way of operating a line shaft system for a steam powered machine shop.  My big lathe is a pre-1905 R. K. LeBlond (before their lathes were truly serialized - mine is labelled as "Lot 67 No. 4"), and has a 5-speed cone drive - it was built to be run by overhead line shaft power.  It is pretty ratty, but it's what I have, and it was free for the hauling.  My milling machine (a Gorton knee mill, basically a baby Bridgeport), could also be run off a line shaft pretty easily.  I am waiting for a friend to excavate an old post drill for me from his stash of blacksmithing tools, but that also has a flat belt drive sheave, in addition to the hand crank.  Will I ever do this?  Maybe not.  Electric motors are fairly cheap, and it's easier to just drive everything from electricity, but you never know what may come down the pike.

On a more professional note, Livio Dante Porta was an Argentinian steam engineer/designer of some note, who spent a lot of time thinking about how to make conventional reciprocating steam, especially locomotives, more fuel efficient.  He investigated everything from draft velocity through the firebox (to reduce carry over of unburned fuel as sparks and soot) to better anti-scaling chemistries to  improve heat transfer.  If you are serious about modern steam, you might want to dig into his ideas.  Porta improved reciprocating steam in his native Argentina, in South Africa, and at several heritage railways in the UK.  Porta died a few years ago, but a number of his students are still active in reciprocating steam, and he left behind a lot of papers and design studies.

Another approach to reciprocating steam is to use some working fluid other than water.  Usually this is a hydrocarbon, in which case the term of the art is "Organic Rankine Cycle".  The working fluid can be chosen to boil off at a much lower pressure and temperature than water (though there are,as with everything, trade offs), which can make it useful for recovering energy from low grade waste heat.  However, this still seems to be rather experimental, from what I can gather.  A very early instance of this would have been the naphtha engines used in some boats.  The naphtha was both fuel and working fluid.  As you might imagine, this was rather fraught with peril!  Explosion and fires were commonplace.  I can't recommend that particular embodiment!

Lastly, compressed air was also sometimes used to run what were, for all intents and purposes, steam engines, but without boilers.  Instead, they had air tanks.  Usually, these seem to have been small switcher engines in and around factories, so that they were always near the compressors to get a recharge.

One way of compressing air, if you have a large elevation drop, is to use a "trompe".  I know of at least two mines - one in the US and another in Canada - which used a trompe in historical times to generate compressed air to operate equipment.  Very permie, if you have the terrain to support it.  My brother has a small stream - perennial, but low flow - and many tens of feet of elevation drop on his property.  We've discussed implementing a trompe, as an approach to micro hydro there.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

What about all the hundreds  of thousands of boilers operated safely for many, many decades in the prior centuries?
That tractors failing was one of maintenance and carelessness.

Aren't compressors just steam engines in reverse?
This is from Rochester, Nevada, 2010 or so. Probably gone now, the whole ghost town was being swallowed/buried by the tailings pile creeping in from the open pit mine next door.

One engine of some sort drove the big Ingersoll compressor. That vented circular hull in front of it had (long ago vandalized) copper windings for a good sized ( probably DC) Westinghouse generator. After that the draw works/hoist for the head fame in the background. All run from the same power source, maybe steam.

The second photo is from the mine's mechanic shop, of what would have been called an 'ironworker' in the last century. Punch, press, hammer, all pneumatically driven.

How interesting, I stumbled upon a video right on this subject!



It looks like they are still early in their build of a true modern steam tractor but folks are exploring it. I'm interested in the idea of 'lightweight' steam boilers as the systems I am used to are huge in scale.

Tommy Bolin wrote:What about all the hundreds  of thousands of boilers operated safely for many, many decades in the prior centuries?
That tractors failing was one of maintenance and carelessness.

Aren't compressors just steam engines in reverse?

Not denying the root causes of the Medina boiler explosion, but highlighting the potential hazards.  Amateur constructed boilers should be inspected and hydro'd, just like the big ones.

The question isn't the compressors and steam engines, but the difference between air tanks and boilers (or, more the the point, the difference in stored energy - the saturated steam boiler mostly full of water has a lot more energy stored up as  than does a tank full of air at the same pressure).  But yes, the similarity of the reciprocating engine/compressor is extensive.  Simple steam engines can be built as "bash valve" engines - basically a bolt or screw on the crown of the piston of a small gasoline engine "burps" a check valve where the spark plug used to be to let steam into the cylinder at top dead center.  2 stroke engines can simply be vented out through the crankcase ports, 4 strokes take a bit more finagling.

Tommy Bolin wrote:
This is from Rochester, Nevada, 2010 or so. Probably gone now, the whole ghost town was being swallowed/buried by the tailings pile creeping in from the open pit mine next door.

One engine of some sort drove the big Ingersoll compressor. That vented circular hull in front of it had (long ago vandalized) copper windings for a good sized ( probably DC) Westinghouse generator. After that the draw works/hoist for the head fame in the background. All run from the same power source, maybe steam.

The second photo is from the mine's mechanic shop, of what would have been called an 'ironworker' in the last century. Punch, press, hammer, all pneumatically driven.

Wow!  That's pretty cool.  Thanks for sharing this.  I have a touch of "old arn" disease, so any old industrial equipment is like moth and flame for me.

Jonathan de Revonah wrote: How cool would it be if every homestead had a steam-powered tractor

That might be cool though I have never been around steam powered stuff.

What I think is cool is how our ancestors accomplished so much without powered things.

Look at what was accomplished back in Egypt when the pyramids were built.

The problem with steam powered machinery is that it is not connected to back up water systems.

They have one tank of water, and it runs out and the crown sheet becomes exposed and suddenly you have an explosion. This is exacerbated by a widely pitching machine as it climbs and descends hills, or cants from side to side. It was not so bad on railroads where elevation is only a few degrees and elevation climbs are at 1 to 2 percent. It gets insane with tractors. Even full of water and it might be a steep enough pitch to expose the crown sheet... made worse if your headed back for water to top off and must descend a steep hill to get there.

With steam plants we have back up pumps for the backup pumps so we are always making steam, but have water to do so. Circulating back condensate makes them really efficient too since you are only jacking the water from 200 degrees, not ambient water temperature.

I have absolutely no knowledge or expertise in this field. I just thought it was “cool.” 🤣 Thank you to all of the experts chiming in on the challenges of such an idea. I appreciate the discussion.

I was wondering how he powered the chainsaw. He simply used an air impact wrench to turn the steam pressure into rotational motion.

My Dad has a tethered electric chainsaw to go with his Elek-Trak tractor. It would be great to get that going again. It needs new batteries.

Steve Zoma wrote:With a society with no oil, neither my tractor of that homemade one will operate.

I know that this is just one of many issues you pointed out, but are there no plant-based oils that could serve as a suitable substitute?

Timothy Norton wrote:How interesting, I stumbled upon a video right on this subject! It looks like they are still early in their build of a true modern steam tractor but folks are exploring it. I'm interested in the idea of 'lightweight' steam boilers as the systems I am used to are huge in scale.

I found this video through the one you linked. It looks promising.

I think steam might be the future of powered units, but I don't think it will be coal, oil or wood, but rather nuclear powered steam units. The US Navy has sealed reactors that never need to be refueled, they just operate to their end of life and then are picked up and hauled away for safe storage.

Now that powerplants are going with that same design, that is tractor trailer sized reactors that are taken to a sight and added in segments to make much bigger powerplants cumulatively, I can see nuclear powered tractors being driven by nuclear power units, making steam and making tractive power so that food can be produced even more inexpensively. Or trucks hauling freight across country, and definitely trains powered by nuclear power.

If all this seems farfetched, Three Mile Island is coming back online. It is slated to cost 1.1 billion dollars, but with the need for 24/7/365 electricity for data centers, nuclear power is making a resurgence. Micro-units making steam could do the same for tractors someday soon.

Steve Zoma wrote:I think steam might be the future of powered units, but I don't think it will be coal, oil or wood, but rather nuclear powered steam units. The US Navy has sealed reactors that never need to be refueled, they just operate to their end of life and then are picked up and hauled away for safe storage.

Now that powerplants are going with that same design, that is tractor trailer sized reactors that are taken to a sight and added in segments to make much bigger powerplants cumulatively, I can see nuclear powered tractors being driven by nuclear power units, making steam and making tractive power so that food can be produced even more inexpensively. Or trucks hauling freight across country, and definitely trains powered by nuclear power.

If all this seems farfetched, Three Mile Island is coming back online. It is slated to cost 1.1 billion dollars, but with the need for 24/7/365 electricity for data centers, nuclear power is making a resurgence. Micro-units making steam could do the same for tractors someday soon.

Copenhagen Atomics seems to be quite serious about bring containerized molten salt thorium reactors to market.  If I recall correctly, their stated eventual production goal is one reactor per day.  These are 100MW plants in a 40 foot sea can.  Not tractor sized, and not the Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future, but if regulatory hurdles could be cleared, might be a step toward broadly distributed microgrid generation.  I would guess if CA is successful in bring a small high production volume reactor to market, competitors will follow suit.

There are also quite a few enterprises working on fusion - not BIG SCIENCE hot fusion, but smaller scale units.

Back to the steam tractors, I do have (again, somewhere in the stash of stuff) plans for building a scale model road engine.  These were the early British equivalent of a semi tractor (very low speed), for over the road transport of heavy goods.  Some of these were set up with an electrical generator, and used to haul fair entertainment from town to town, and provide electric illumination for the fair at night (which would have been an attraction all its own, back in the day).  I think this one was actually a 3-speed, and has a differential gear (spur gears).  Because it was a scale replica, this one has a very conventional coal burning fire tube boiler, as drawn.  The plans were serialized in some British model engineering magazine or other.  British copyright law being what it is, I don't know if I can post it here, at least in full.  Maybe a screenshot or two, if there is interest.

Was it the Robert’s and Doan Steam Road Tractor?

That was a three wheeled tricycle tractor that was 3 wheel drive used geared cogs and of course horizontal steam boilers. I think that tractor was English made around 1875 but my memory is slipping at my age.

It was a very unique clogged gear arrangement to get that front wheel powered yet steerable.

Steve -

No, that doesn't sound quite right (though now I'll have to see what I can find on that one, too!).

This one was rear wheel drive only, had two steered wheels in front.

It may have been this Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies, but I can't be certain, and a quick search on by 1TB drive (not yet full - still room for more!) didn't turn up the one I was thinking of (though I did find a set of hand-drawn scale model plans for a Case traction engine):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux_DuyeiRSA

There seem to be quite a few of these Ransomes engines built in 2" scale (2":1 foot, or 1/6), but I thought it was a bit bigger than than, maybe even 4", as drawn.

On edit: I am now pretty well certain now that it was the 4NHP Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies, or one very like it.
https://modelengineeringwebsite.com/Ransomes_1_files/RSJ4NHP-A2-SHEET-02.PDF
https://modelengineeringwebsite.com/Ransomes_5_files/RSJ4NHP-A2-SHEET-12.PDF
The drawings I have were had drafted, whereas these are in CAD, so this drafting service has redrawn them.  I assume these plans are available for purchase.
Fun fact: 4NHP is a "horsepower" rating for taxation purposes which was computed based on cylinder displacement and an assumed (and quite low) operating pressure.  I don't remember the details, but the 4 horsepower rating of the original full size road engine was an accounting artifact, not an engineering rating based on Prony brake testing or some such.

On further edit: the above drawings are freely available
https://www.modelengineeringwebsite.com/Ransomes_1.html
Click through the links for the subsequent pages.

This stuff was collected in the period of time when I was looking into various cable plowing schemes.  This was a way to plow fields which couldn't support the weight of a traction engine.  No one was (yet) overly concerned about soil compaction (or, evidently, preserving soil structure and tilth).  Actually, the very earliest cable plowing seems to have used horse-drawn stationary engine, with a big cable winch drum slung underneath.  Plows (ploughs) were set up to plow in both directions, by "rocking" one set of bottoms or the other into the soil, see-sawing on a set of transport and/or gauge wheels as the draft direction changed.  Some arrangements used an unpowered anchor carriage which could be rolled along the opposite headland by cable drive when a drive clutch was engaged.  Others (Fowler ploughing engines, as I recall, probably others, too) could be supplied in matched pairs.

Here's a nice scale model of a Fowler, with some closeups of the cable drum and just such a tilting plow:
https://modelengineeringwebsite.com/Fowler_ploughing_engines.html

Cable drive of equipment was an early remote power transmission method (also rope drives for textile mills): one steam engine driving a bunch of distributed equipment.  Some viticulture operations in the Steilhang and in steep bits of Italy (maybe elsewhere in Alpine Europe, as well) use (or at least, used) cable and winch equipment to cultivate between fall-line rows (perpendicular to the contours) and to pull up the harvest.  There are also the cutest little monorail cog railways, but that's another post!

I many need to resuscitate my old desktop machine to find the scale road locomotive plans.  I know there is a bunch of home shop machinist stuff on that hard drive, which I have been meaning to get transferred to the archival external drive, but just haven't gotten around to it, yet.  I'm sure it's high time, since I haven't fired up that machine in 10 years.

Was it a Remington? Rumely? Best? Holt? McLaughlin?

These are some of the steam road tractors I have in my old tractor book.

It does not have info on cable plows but I know about them from other research. Kind of a neat concept.

Steve Zoma wrote:Was it a Remington? Rumely? Best? Holt? McLaughlin?

These are some of the steam road tractors I have in my old tractor book.

It was something British.  It may have been a Ransomes, SIms and Jefferies.  It may have been a Burrell.  I'm pretty certain it wasn't a Fowler.

Fairly sure it had a compound engine, and could be run in "high compound", that is, for maximum output, at reduced efficiency, run both cylinders on high pressure steam, rather than as a compound (steam first through the high pressure cylinder, then through the low pressure cylinder, before exhausting the steam).  It definitely had a spur gear differential, with all of the differential gearing on one side.  And, I'm pretty certain it was set up as a true road locomotive, with a three speed gear (with forward-reverse handled by the valve gear, as would be typical for a reciprocating steam engine).  One of the challenges of building it was the large number of spur gears to be cut (which lead me to investigate various means of gear cutting and generating appropriate to a small shop, including the Jacobs gear hobber, and the late John Stevenson's gear hobbing setup).

I'll dig some more.  I'm pretty sure I have it.  Somewhere.

I think I remember seeing what you are talking about. I know in the first years of steam tractors they were mostly imported from England.

I also remember the gearing well. I was formerly a welder by trade but naturally machined steel too and thought about how tough that machining job would have been for those unique gears.

It is possible we are thinking about different gear set-ups, but I once saw a Youtube Video where this guy claimed to have invented this new spur gear design which was just like the old steam tractor I am speaking about (and maybe you). I sent him a message and let him know while he might have come up with it on his own accord, it was hardly novel and that it had actually been used in manufacturing.

I understand having a busy life 100%, but at the same time want you to know that you really have my curiosity up on this. If you do find the information, I would love to see what tractor it was. I am odd like that, enjoying old steam machines. I do live in Maine where we are home to the Lombard Log Hauler, one of the first bulldozers ever made and it was steam powered.

I think @Matt McSpadden used to volunteer a lot for this old logging museum and festival, but at Leanard Woods in Maine, one day a year they bring out an old Lombard Log Hauler and let the general public steer the machine in a looping romp around the place. Their idea was, taxpayers helped rebuild the machine so taxpayers should be able to operate it. It was pretty cool to do. The picture shows me steering it.

I love steam as I said, and tractors too, but also am a writer of 14 novels so far. In always wanting to write a war type novel, but not so much about it being OF war, as it was a story DURING war, I wrote one about the Lombard Log Hauler used in the Russian Revolution of 1920. It is actually a love story about an American Doughboy and Siberian woman who from first chapter to last, are on a Lombard Log Hauler in the Siberian Wilderness. It even included a few chapters of an old Best steam road tractor. None of this was too far from the truth. Russia did buy Best steam tractors and Lombard Log Haulers. My 83 year old Mother in Law has read the novel and loved it so it must not have been that bad of a novel.

While this thread is about steam tractors, there was a man that wrote a book about how efficient the old steam boilers were in domestic residences. I never bought it, but should, as leafing through it he made a lot of great points about how efficient steam heat was.

Having an old house myself, I have often wondered if reverting back to steam might be better for this place? I have both my high pressure steam operating and welding certificates so it is something I could legally do, if I had to get high pressure steam to do it that is.

Does anyone on here know anything about domestic steam heating?

Steve Zoma wrote:Does anyone on here know anything about domestic steam heating?

As with many things, almost enough to be dangerous.  When we moved into (rescued, really) our current home, I had to take the crash course.  It has single pipe steam radiators, with a low pressure boiler.  Except for a bit of low voltage electronics for controls and the main gas valve, all of this runs by Archimedes - not very many things to go wrong.  The current 1970s vintage gas boiler clearly replaced an old coal stoker boiler.  Other than a modern multistage burner, I doubt there's much that could be done to improve the boiler efficiency.  Sure, make the sections from thinner, flimsier metal for more immediate heat transfer, but then replace the tinny boiler every 10 years.  More efficient in the long run?  Rather doubtful.

To bone up on the basics, I bought a copy of Dan Holohan's book "The Lost Art of Steam Heating" (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Art-Steam-Heating/dp/0996477241 ).  It was very helpful, and in addition to my single pipe steam setup, discusses a bunch of different ways of piping steam to radiators and condensate back to the boiler, and the various patent gizmos required to do so.  Way more than I needed to get up to speed, at least as far as homeowner grade knowledge goes.

"Balancing Steam Systems" by Gill and Pajek may also be helpful if you have an open (i.e. single pipe) system.

One question which still remains in my mind is whether, with an open system, I ought to be running boiler dope.  The received wisdom is to blow down the boiler to clean scale, rust, mud and crud from the low water cutoff - which I have been doing weekly during the heating season for a decade.  Any anti-scaling treatment would be progressively watered down over a few weeks time by makeup water (manually administered - I try not to rely on the automated feedwater controls, though they get tested at every blowdown).  But, I know hard water scale will impact boiler efficiency.  If running boiler anti-scale, there may be no need to blow it down, but the low water cutoff could also still get plugged up, with no one the wiser, if not regularly blown down, irrespective of the presence or absence of boiler treatment in the system.  What to do, what to do?  Holohan remains silent on the matter, and I can't find much elsewhere, either.

I also figured out the hard way that I don't want to run too high of a water level, because carryover will cause vicious water hammer!  No damage ensued, but it did raise a cacophonous din...

I also discovered that borosilicate glass (i.e. Pyrex) is soluble in water under quite mild conditions, given enough time; when we moved in the sight glass tube was leaking - the bottom end had eroded down to a feather edge and was no longer sealing well to the rubber washer.  I now have a spare sight glass (cut from stock at the hardware store) and spare washer - just in case.

One of the things I've noodled on is whether I could rig up some sort of J-tube (maybe gravity fed pellet fired, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkvI6Gxn1Ro - maybe just a standard J-tube) to heat the low pressure boiler in the stead of the stock gas burner assembly (say, in the event of a prolonged utilities failure).  I also have in my possession, Bill White's book of 1976 "Convert Your Oil Furnace to Wood", which is basically a downdrafter add-on conversion to a conventional forced air furnace, with refractory reburn tunnel, made of bricks, cement and steel.  I am a little more skeptical of the Bill White control scheme than a simple gravity fed arrangement.  I have some experience with gravity fed pellet burners.  We also have a Q-Flame patio heater, pellet fired, which was a "fell off a truck" sort of bargain at my local hardware store.  They often have excess inventory, overruns or slightly damaged goods at crazy cheap prices.  The same family who owns the hardware also runs a grocery store, and they often have plastic grocery bags printed in Arabic or Spanish or from some grocery store in the Caribbean.  My guess is the bags are mis-prints or leftovers, and they were cheap.  They're not proud, but they are thrifty, and are very supportive of local small scale agriculture (they'll happily buy produce from my nephew at rack rates, though he usually gets a slightly better price at the farmer's market).  Anyway, this little pellet heater has been a great little addition for shoulder season.  The only adjustment is a draft control, and there is a grate shaker.  Dead simple to operate, and once the draft starts in earnest, not much to go wrong.

I can find out for you. My high pressure steam book  has a chapter on boiler treatment. I think it’s required, but I will find out for sure. I think it has to do with how the heat changes the ph which compromises the steel of modern boilers.

Yeah steam hammer is scary. We avoid it at all costs as it’s hard on valves.

Here in Maine I can’t work on low pressure boilers, but can on high pressure. In this state high pressure steam is anything over 13 pounds per square inch. I have not operated a boiler for 2 years now, but it was two synchronized 16 megawatt boilers operating at 750 psi.

I operate a 16 megawatt hydro dam now so a little different but still making power for the grid. I prefer boiler operation over hydro, but boilers are dying.