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Neat old Vertical boiler for sale cheap on Facebook Market

adammil1

Titanium
Joined
Mar 12, 2001
Location
New Haven, CT
Just passing this along maybe someone here can find a use for it rather than see it scrapped. Massive antique boiler make me an offer - Appliances - Guilford, Connecticut | Facebook Marketplace. If someone can capture and post photos here please do. I am on my phone which makes that harder to do.

Looks like an old lap seam boiler which I don't know what the current rules are like for running. No idea on pressure rating. It looks like it was configured for solid fuel but converted for oil. Also interesting I have never seen a vertical boiler configured as such. Typically you see a big funnel on the top of these things for good drafting but this one has an interesting side exhaust arrangement. I wonder what the reason for that was. Seems like it would have cost more to build it that way.

If only I had a bigger property with a man cave barn it would likely come home with me but hopefully someone here can save it.

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Adam:

The boiler was built by Eclipse "Lookout", a well known builder of vertical firetube boilers. You are correct in that the boiler was originally built for solid fuel firing, and someone added an additional dry firebox ring for the oil burner. As you also note, the boiler has a unique design in terms of the way the smokebox (top) end is designed. To retube the boiler, it would be a real job. My guess is retubing might well involve busting rivets and knocking them out to remove the top head and then cutting thru the top sheet of the smokebox. The smokebox is 'wet' (submerged) from the looks of things, with the smokepipe passing thru the water space and out the side of the barrel. I've never seen this design of VFT. It looks like a boiler designed for a tight location, which would be about the only reason anyone would order such a boiler.

My guess is the boiler may well have been ordered for use in a small installation such as a small steam laundry, or dry cleaning establishment and used for steam pressing. Or, the boiler may have been ordered for use in some small business needing a small amount of steam for processing such as sterilizing or cooking/canning.

I am as much at a loss as you are as to why anyone would order a boiler that would be next to impossible to maintain, let alone retube. Even 'punching flues' to clear them of soot deposits is next to impossible with this configuration of boiler. Eclipse Lookout built VFT boilers to ASME code, and this boiler, having the handholes and design features that it does, may well have been built to an earlier ASME code edition.

As you note, drafting on this configuration of boiler was going to be another matter. The traditional conical 'smoke hood' over the smokebox, with a straight shot up the stack gave much better- and 'freer' drafting. This design is convoluted and would require a tall chimney or stack to get any kind of good natural drafting. As originally built, for solid fuel firing, the customer likely had to have had plenty of tall stack. A small boiler stuck in the basement of a shop with 3 or 4 stories above it would have had plenty of chimney height to get some kind of drafting. Taking the line of thinking that the boiler was ordered for a small business in a city and stuck in a basement setting, the side-outlet smokebox would make sense. This would give maximum height to the barrel/steam space while keeping within headroom limits in a basement.

Every so often, in driving around various areas, I will see a 'tall stack' on a what had been a small manufacturing or food processing plant. These businesses are usually long gone, but the stacks remain. These are sometimes brick masonry or sometimes riveted steel, maybe 30-40 feet tall at most. In Kingston, there was a small local meat processer who put up sausages and cold cuts. The stack is maybe 18" diameter x 35 feet tall, still in place. Years ago, down in Brooklyn, I'd see very small VFT's installed in storefront dry cleaners for running clothes pressing equipment. These were riveted construction, usually fired on gas, and used city water main pressure (about 40-45 psig in Brooklyn) for feedwater supply. I don't think they carried much more than 10-15 psig for steam pressure, so qualified as 'low pressure' boilers. The food processors may have carried higher pressures, needing higher temperatures for cooking, pasteurizing, or sterilizing.

A U/T along with a mirror and good light would tell a lot about that boiler. Without being able to get to the top tube sheet and submerged smokebox, the boiler is a real potential can of worms. The smokebox is fully submerged in this design, given the safety valves tapped into the top head. That design puts anyone wanting to really inspect and investigate the boiler in the blind. My guess is that if a person wanted to use this boiler, they'd wind up removing the top head and top sheet of the smokebox to inspect and retube it. Now for the real zinger: imagine building that boiler in the boiler shop. My guess is the 'guts' of the boiler were made up as a unit, i.e.- bottom wet firebox with bottom tubesheet, top submerged smokebox minus its top sheet, and tubes were rolled in and beaded (at least on the firebox end).
This created a 'gut package' and the top sheet of the submerged smokebox was riveted in last. A boilermaker reaching thru the smokepipe opening could handle a rivet snap and some sort of bucking bar. When the 'gut package' was fully assembled, it was then slid into the barrel and tied in at the mudring. A shop hydro test would disclose any leaky tubes, and again, a boilermaker with a long arm reaching in the smoke pipe hole could handle touch up rolling.

It is not what I would call a practical or maintainable boiler. With an unknown past history, lapped barrel seam, and the smokebox design that it has, I'd pass on it even if it were in close reach of my home. I have friends with heavy equipment and the means to go get a boiler like that one and haul it home and set it. We worked on a few locomotive boilers along the way and we have plenty of boilermakers' tools, aside from means of moving and hauling the boiler, but this is one boiler I know we'd all steer clear of. Call it a can of worms- literally.
 
Dairies, particularly were big users of VFT type boilers. Apparently the small milk bottles used for milk served in schools required to be sterilized - and a small boiler was common for this.

As a teen I took the excess brass valves from a dairy boiler installation in Grafton, MA. The boiler of use was still there but not used as the dairy was no longer. The brass I took was actually from an earlier boiler which the present boiler replaced. The owner lamented the short life of these boilers in this service since "can't use any boiler treatment chemicals as it leaves a film on the bottles."

Joe in NH
 
Here's some more photos. The more I look at it the more confused I get about how the thing is laid out. There are at least 6 staybolts located vertically above the fire door which seems a little odd for a fire tube boiler. Then the water space and steam delivery all comes off the top of the boiler. Is it possible that it isn't really a firetube boiler but rather some sort of large shell that surrounds the combustion space?

I would really love to see a cross section of the whole thing. If only I had more free time I would probably see if I couldn't go visit the boiler. It is only located about 30mins away from my house.
boiler6.jpgboiler7.jpg
 
I can't give you a specific reference for the layout of this boiler, but I think its cross section is found in one of the "Audel's Mechanics & Engineers" handbook series.

IIRC, it had the common ogee style firebox almost identical to a VFT. The tubes/flue gas go up surrounded by the water and land into an "upper flue box" suspended in the water/steam space. A "side flue" exits this upper flue box and passes through the outer shell at the side.

The design may be a variant of a VFT variant known as a "submerged head" VFT.

Normal VFTs have the tubes passing through the steam space and thereby are able to provide at the least a very dry steam, or optimistically some degree of superheat. The downside to the normal VFT is it can be subject to tube leaks - the tubes are relatively thin and corrosion is most pronounced at the water line - and it can burn out tubes since the upper third of the tubes are subject to flue gas one side/steam on the other.

Both of these issues were corrected in the submerged head VFT, which has the upper tube sheet suspended in the water space and a flue box in the upper steam space. Submerged head VFTs are a bitch to re-tube since the tube sheet tends to "hide" in the funnel shaped upper combustion chamber. Old tubes out/new tubes in would best be done via the firebox.

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This boiler I think a submerged head boiler on steriods, since the access is not "in-line" with the tubes, but rather perpendicular to the tubes.

Joe in NH
 
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I would think you could re-tube such a boiler with something like a folding back-spotfacing cutter with a long shaft to cut the upper flare or roll, and a regular expanding tool, but again with extended shaft, to roll the upper end of new tubes in.
Not tolls you would want to have to make for one job, but at one time there were probably enough similar boilers to justify it.
 
Magnetic:

Seeing the pictures of the boiler that Adam posted and reading your post as to retubing- or even rolling in the tubes when the boiler was first built- reminded me of some of the old boilermaker's tools. Namely, the 'banjo'. A 'banjo' is a 90 degree gear drive, likely a bevel pinion on the drive shaft and larger diameter 'crown gear' on the output. The drive shaft and input shaft bearing project off the circular case holding the crown gear, giving things the shape reminiscent of a banjo.

A banjo was used by boilermakers to drive tube rollers or tube cutters in places where they could not go straight in with a roller or cutter. On the boiler in this thread, if the boiler were shop assembled to the point it had the submerged smokebox and end head all riveted in place, about the only way to roll in the tubes in the smokebox sheet would be with a tube roller and banjo.

BTW: I was browsing the web the other day and came on a steam festival in Holland. It featured a number of steam vessels as well as models and a Sentinel steam wagon. What caught my eye was a small 'shear leg derrick' on a barge. This derrick had a steam hoisting engine (multiple drum steam winches) right out on the open deck of the barge, and had a vertical firetube boiler of the same design in Adamill's post. At the very top of the dished head on the boiler, a steam whistle was attached to the tapping. The boiler was in steam and the crew were enjoying themselves blowing that whistle. The shear leg derrick barge was being moved in a procession of steam vessels by a small steam tug. Why the submerged smokebox design of boiler was used on the shear leg derrick barge is anyone's guess. No reason for it, since headroom was not an issue. Maybe it was a replacement boiler and that was what was readily available, or maybe the added steam space of this design was wanted to meet sudden steam demands of the hoisting engines, or perhaps a steam pile driving hammer.
 








 
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