Extra Large Multifarm--Best Use?

[gusmahler]

I built an extra large multifarm on my base. Two important things about it. 1) it's an energy hog. I can barely keep my redstone cell charged, even though i have 12 electrical engines working. 2) it produces WAY more stuff than I need.

I needed a few logs to build a proper house. But I've now filled up a gold chest with wood. To solve both problems, I plan to use the multifarm for power generation. The farm produces a lot of both wood and saplings. I plan to build a boiler for my MJ power needs. So there are two possible solutions here: 1) wood into a sawmill into a solid burner; and 2) saplings into a fermenter/still/biogas setup for a liquid boiler.

In doing some testing, I'm not positive that I can fuel a liquid boiler with enough saplings for biogas. At least not a 36 block boiler. I haven't done any automation or anything, so it's certainly possible that I am just not efficient at it. And maybe I could run two fermenters instead of just the one.

So what's the best choice for me: 1) solid via the trees; or 2) liquid via the saplings?

 

[Guswut]

So what's the best choice for me: 1) solid via the trees; or 2) liquid via the saplings?

1.5) Both.

Just save up a LOT of liquid fuel (around 500 buckets of biofuel, I believe) and it will likely be able to keep it fueled after it is warmed up.

 

[Hitmaniac]

If you aren't sure about the Multifarm go with a Steve's Cart Tree Farm. This design uses little to no energy because it is powered by the logs it collects. You get an insane amount of wood and saplings. You could most likely power two boilers from solid, two from liquid. I don't have much experience with the Multifarms but I wouldn't use it to get wood/saplings.

 

[gusmahler]

1.5) Both.

Just save up a LOT of liquid fuel (around 500 buckets of biofuel, I believe) and it will likely be able to keep it fueled after it is warmed up.

I have 287 buckets saved now. But according to the calculator, even a full 720 bucket tank will barely fully heat up a 36 HP boiler (though it will heat up a 36 LP boiler).

Just wanted to know from anyone who's running a very large multifarm if it's output is enough to power a full size boiler (LP or HP).

EDIT: Just discovered the other feature of the calculator, the one that says how much fuel you need to maintain the boiler. A 36 HP boiler requires 697 buckets to heat up. But it only requires 36 buckets an hour to maintain. I'm pretty sure I'm making 36 buckets an hour, though I guess I'll do some calculations this weekend to make sure. A 36 LP boiler only needs 18 buckets an hour, which I definitely make.

Was thinking earlier that I could run two fermenters from the saplings, but that seems like wishful thinking. Don't think I get enough saplings for that. But again, I just don't have the energy to run it full time right now, so I can't do much testing.

 

[Zjarek_S]

This depends on trees. With saplings like that: http://i.imgur.com/EncFGpO.png it will be enough for a couple of boilers.

 

[gusmahler]

Thanks. I hadn't thought about that. I seem to get more saplings from oak than birch. But I had switched my farm to birch because I wanted some light wood. How did you get that graphic of how many saplings a tree makes?

 

[Zjarek_S]

This is treealyzer from arbioculture part of forestry, it require honey drops to work. To start with it you should first get some bees, they will cause crosspolination of nearby leaves, I recommend going to at least industrious or rural for best effect. There are many guides covering bees on this forum Mixed leaves drop saplings with some combination of traits from parents, however if combination is right a new tree specie may appear. Remember to automate them if you want to do serious bee/tree breeding without feeling that you are playing grindfest. Vanilla trees don't differ much in amount of saplings that they drop, even new tree species don't have that much saplings (but they provide a lot of new wood types).

Crossbreeding trees not only give you access to new species, you can also transfer traits from one tree to another. For biomass production I chose walnut as a base, because it has a lot of leaves. Saplings trait is from balsa, which has very small amount of leaves but drop a lot of saplings. I also added growth speed from oak to increase efficiency. Remember to keep sappiness at high level if you want to upgrade your world to 1.5 (biomass production will depend on it). As all the operation are random it takes some time to get good amount of crossbreed leaves providing really good trees. I use togglable water streams to collect new saplings, but other means of automatic collection like golems, transposers, conveyor belts or obsidian pipes would work.

 

[DoctorOr]

Just wanted to know from anyone who's running a very large multifarm if it's output is enough to power a full size boiler (LP or HP).

Its current output will power several boilers. Build a bigger tank, 720 total buckets storage is not enough.

 

[extrem09]

Hi, i'm just wondering, I keep hearing about this calculator for the steam boilers, but i can't seem to find it. So could anyone give me a link to it?

 

[ultradolp]

You cannot run 1 fermenter 24/7 with a single max size multiblock farm unless you have some super trees (tree breeding is your friend). But it will suffice for single HP boiler if you pay attention to the multiblock farm once in a while: refilling fertilizer and dirt when needed. If you do not know what to do with all the tree product, I suggest you to take a look on the configuration of multiblock farm. Inserting some circuit board you can change the farm product you want at ease. For wood/sapling, Steve Cart tree farm is probably the easiest to manage and you can take a look at it.

Tips for using steam boiler (ultimate):
1) Always have some reserve for start up! If your boiler for some reason cooled down you will get into energy trouble. 36 HP boiler is hard to boot up and can only output energy at 10% (HP boiler) or 20% (LP boiler). Good bootup material include Fuel (just get some oil capsule/pump from the oil well you stumble across, each gives you 200+ bucket of oil enough to boot to 10% heat), Coal Coke (occasional appearance in dungeon chest/village), nitrocoal fuel (if you are into GT machine) and ofc reserve biofuel, you definitely want some reserve in case of emergency.

2) If you do not have access to steel production, using LP boiler is absolutely fine. LP boiler generates half the steam as HP boiler but also uses half the fuel.

3) DO NOT use steam engines. It is not worth the 200 iron/steel to make the engines when all you need is 12 gold and 1 diamond per boiler. The iron saved up can be used to build another boiler. Just use steam consumer + energy bridge + MJ(IC2) producer combo. A easy set up for this is to put the steam consumer at top of boiler and surround it with 8 liquiduct. It will happily take all steam you produce this way

 

[Omicron]

Hi, i'm just wondering, I keep hearing about this calculator for the steam boilers, but i can't seem to find it. So could anyone give me a link to it?

Forecaster's excellent online calculator is here: http://ttower.dyndns.org/boilerCalculator/

The link in my signature contains an excel sheet with some useful tables and a LUA script that can be run ingame on Computercraft stuff, though it might require you to tweak it a little to show exactly what you need (I wrote it to output the specific numbers I needed for my analysis).

 

[gusmahler]

3) DO NOT use steam engines. It is not worth the 200 iron/steel to make the engines when all you need is 12 gold and 1 diamond per boiler. The iron saved up can be used to build another boiler. Just use steam consumer + energy bridge + MJ(IC2) producer combo. A easy set up for this is to put the steam consumer at top of boiler and surround it with 8 liquiduct. It will happily take all steam you produce this way

What is a "steam consumer"? I don't see it in the wiki.

 

[Omicron]

They are from overPowered Converters.

 

[extrem09]

Forecaster's excellent online calculator is here: http://ttower.dyndns.org/boilerCalculator/

The link in my signature contains an excel sheet with some useful tables and a LUA script that can be run ingame on Computercraft stuff, though it might require you to tweak it a little to show exactly what you need (I wrote it to output the specific numbers I needed for my analysis).

Ok thanks!
I have been looking for this for a while.

 

[gusmahler]

I have done some experimentation. It looks like the ultimate answer is that I can use both.

I turned on my multifarm for half an hour. In that time, it made 47,590 mB of biofuel. Since I only need 36,000 mB an hour to power a 36HP boiler, this works.

The solid fuel option also works, but not as well. In the half hour, I made 540 logs, which, using a sawmill, can turn into 3240 wood planks. According to the calculator, you need 3802 planks per hour to keep a boiler fed, so that'll work.

Problem is, you need 74,337 planks just to get it heated up.

The other big problem is dirt. Looks like it'll use up all the dirt in about 2 hours. So if, like me, you're on a server and have a chunkloader, you're going to run out of dirt overnight.

I'm going to have to look into turning a fourth of the multifarm into a dirt generator.

EDIT: After an hour, the total was 103 buckets of biofuel. But the multifarm is a huge energy hog, using up an entire full redstone energy cell, even while the cell is being fueled by 12 electric engines. Of course, energy won't be a concern once the boiler is up and running.

 

[gusmahler]

You cannot run 1 fermenter 24/7 with a single max size multiblock farm unless you have some super trees (tree breeding is your friend).

Actually, I think this is wrong. My multifarm has been running nearly 4 hours. I had a hopper on top of the fermenter and it was fine at first. But I just checked the hopper and it is completely full now (4 stacks of saplings in the hopper plus a stack in the fermenter). So I think I could probably hook up another fermenter setup. I just have to figure out how to put half the saplings in one fermenter and half in the other.

Unfortunately, I'm out of room right now, so I can't test it now. I'm going to dig a larger basement area where I can put this stuff.

 

[KirinDave]

What you should do is document the output for us, please. Forestry multifarms are poorly understood beasts by this community.

 

[gusmahler]

That's what I'm trying to do here (document the output). I'm getting 100 buckets an hour of biomass from the multifarm, populated almost exclusively by spruce trees. I think I may be able to get more from oak trees because I can turn the apples into apple juice, increasing the yield on biomass in the fermenter.

I've now saved up enough biofuel to get my boiler started, so I'm digging out an area for that now and making the fireboxes for the boilers. Still need to make some tesseracts to move the biofuel to the new boiler.

As for hooking up two fermenters, the easiest way to do that would be to make the multifarm half oak and half spruce, so I can just send spruce saplings to one fermenter and oak saplings to another. But I think oak gives more saplings, so you can't keep it balanced, (the oaks will take over eventually).

 

[breeeze]

Try using redwoods, the amount of logs and saplings you get is insane!

 

[KirinDave]

That's what I'm trying to do here (document the output). I'm getting 100 buckets an hour of biomass from the multifarm, populated almost exclusively by spruce trees. I think I may be able to get more from oak trees because I can turn the apples into apple juice, increasing the yield on biomass in the fermenter.

I've now saved up enough biofuel to get my boiler started, so I'm digging out an area for that now and making the fireboxes for the boilers. Still need to make some tesseracts to move the biofuel to the new boiler.

As for hooking up two fermenters, the easiest way to do that would be to make the multifarm half oak and half spruce, so I can just send spruce saplings to one fermenter and oak saplings to another. But I think oak gives more saplings, so you can't keep it balanced, (the oaks will take over eventually).

And what's the power consumption look like? And the fertilizer consumption?