Graham wrote ...
> Baz asked " So can one of you [this means Sean, I expect...]
> please explain how the crew of Emily Jane could 'manually put
> water into the boiler'? "
>
> As a lock queue sharer, I am unable to answer your question.
> I was told this snippet when I pointed out that the safety
> valve atop the boiler was chucking a lot of steam out, they
> bemoaned the lack of injector meant they couldn't cool the
> boiler whilst waiting for Somerton Deep lock. I'm not sure
> what other method they were using to get water into the boiler.
>
> Come in Sean, where ever you are ;^)
Dunno where Sean is but the above certainly puzzles me!
An injector uses steam to create a vacuum to lift feed water into the
boiler. One of the advantages of using an injector to top up the boiler
is that the injected water is heated up by the steam thus avoiding a
drop in boiler pressure due to adding cold water! In other words, the
exact opposite of what is said above!
If you want to cool the boiler down a bit, 'cos it's getting
over-excited, you'd use a feedwater pump to add cold water to the boiler
which, provided you've got enough water space in the top of the boiler,
will result in a drop in the boiler pressure
However, the big problem with doing that is that you can all too easily
end up with a boiler chock full of water and still bubbling away
merrily. If the safety valve then lifts it's spectacular 'cos it shoots
a bl**dy great plume of scalding hot water up into the sky and makes a
hell of a noise doing it!
It can also have other even more dangerous results on certain types of
boilers (like lifting the fire or worse still blowing the fire into the
engine room and such things of a very scarey, and potentially lethal,
nature)
Usual methods of adding water to the boiler are ...
A steam injector
An engine operated feedwater pump
An independent steam driven pump
A manual pump
Or, occasionally, an electric pump (for the lazy man on the river!)
Smaller stuff like launches usually have an engine driven feedwater pump
and a manual pump of some sort. Independent steam driven feedwater pumps
are usually only found in big jobs (President has one, or had in my day
anyway)
A pump will (usually) add cold water to the boiler, the injector (when
you can get the bl**dy thing to lift) hot
HTH
Bru
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