Forestry Peat and a 36HP boiler, a question??

[ScottulusMaximus]

Hellooooooo...

Anyone out there know how many of the max sized, new, irritating, pointless, tedious, multiblock Forestry peat farms are required to run a Railcraft 36HP boiler?

I can seem to find the figures for the average output of these farms and they're so tedious to build testing is gonna be a pain

 

[Omicron]

Counter-question:

If you consider the 300 seconds it takes to jump into a superflat test world, pull some blocks out of NEI and put them down "irritating, pointless and tedious", how can you assume that the people on this forum won't find the more-than-300-seconds it takes to give your post a qualified answer equally irritating, pointless and tedious?

The tone of your post is totally setting yourself up for a response like this. Post in a manner that you wouldn't be afraid of speaking out loud in front of someone IRL, and you'll get a much nicer, much more useful answer.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Well personally thats how I speak IRL, so unbunch your panties please... The point of this post was to find someone who maybe has set up this system before and can just say 2, or 4, or 16 because I've no idea not a snarky response from a soap box.

The burn values are easy to get but the output from the limited testing I've done(yes I did try testing it a bit) of the farms was all over the place and I haven't been able to have it running long enough to get a decent average for a continuous fire and forget boiler.

 

[mushroom taco]

Counter-question:

If you consider the 300 seconds it takes to jump into a superflat test world, pull some blocks out of NEI and put them down "irritating, pointless and tedious", how can you assume that the people on this forum won't find the more-than-300-seconds it takes to give your post a qualified answer equally irritating, pointless and tedious?

The tone of your post is totally setting yourself up for a response like this. Post in a manner that you wouldn't be afraid of speaking out loud in front of someone IRL, and you'll get a much nicer, much more useful answer.

He's right, you know...

Seriously, it doesn't take long to test it yourself. Especially if you're going to talk to people like that...

 

[Sarda]

Hellooooooo...

Anyone out there know how many of the max sized, new, irritating, pointless, tedious, multiblock Forestry peat farms are required to run a Railcraft 36HP boiler?

I can seem to find the figures for the average output of these farms and they're so tedious to build testing is gonna be a pain

Very difficult to say considering Peat is wildly random, I've seen blocks take under a minute or over a hour to mature.

 

[Hoff]

Based on old values 10 bog earth out of say 100 should mature every 5000 ticks. Roughly.

This is a guesstimation at best.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

So from a brief 2 hour test on a max sized Forestry farm it seems peat production is still random, with anywhere between 30 and 40 being produced every 10min and an average over the whole test of 3.29/min...

From 1.5 fuel calculations you need one peat every 6sec to run a fully heated 36HP constantly, which is 10/min. Therefore you MIGHT get away with running 3 farms if you're lucky but 4 to be safe.

However to heat it up you will need 11 151 peat to 1000C which with 4 farms running will take 847min to accumulate or 14.1 real time hours!!! There will be a break even point before the 14 hours where the 4 farms will be able to keep up during heat up but(and I haven't calculated this) it'll probably be around the 10 or 11hr mark.

I see now why no one else has tried this, it's just not practical with these new forestry farms...

 

[MigukNamja]

I tried the new multifarms for peat and was terribly disappointed. So, I wrote a CC turtle program. 1 turtle can maintain up to a 20x20 peat farm. Minus the water blocks, that's 20x20 - (4x4) = 384 bog earth / peat blocks, which is slightly more than 2 max-sized Forestry Multifarms.

Here's the program if you're interested:

http://pastebin.com/9DgtXEF5

ex:
pastebin get 9DgtXEF5 peat
peat 20 20

The first time, and only the first time, you will need to supply it with some starter fuel. A stack of charcoal should be more than enough:

# drop 1 stack of charcoal into inventory
refuel all

After that, it will snack on peat as necessary to maintain energy.

The only thing you'll need to supply it with is Bog Earth in an inventory (chest, barrel, etc.,.) above the turtle's starting position. I recommend an MFR liquicrafter, TE Cyclic Assember, or equivalent to make the Bog Earth from dirt, sand, and water and a hopper or similar to put it into the inventory above the turtle.

I intentionally did not loop the program. I wanted to force myself to manually kick it off - a price to pay, if you will, for the peat farm. However, please feel free to wrap the main part of the program in a loop that sleeps for an hour or so to allow the bog earth to mature into peat.

 

[Omicron]

However to heat it up you will need 11 151 peat to 1000C which with 4 farms running will take 847min to accumulate or 14.1 real time hours!!! There will be a break even point before the 14 hours where the 4 farms will be able to keep up during heat up but(and I haven't calculated this) it'll probably be around the 10 or 11hr mark.

Heatup time for a 36 HP boiler is 5 hours 9.5 minutes. Since you need the full 11,151 peat only by the time the temperature indicator hits 1,000°C, this means you can subtract the heatup time from the time it takes you to stockpile the sum. As a result, you stockpile for roughly 9 hours (assuming 3.3 peat/min per farm) and then begin heatup. By the time the 5 hours the boiler needs to burn through the stockpile have elapsed, the farms have completed providing it.

However, you can have it much more practical by spending some thought on your boiler choice. If heatup costs are an issue, then building two 36 LP boilers will give you the same MJ/t for the same fuel consumption, but at 1/2 the heatup cost. Plus you can stagger the heatup and gain half the power output much earlier.

One 36 LP requires 2,726 peat to heat up, a process which takes 2 hours 33 minutes. During that time, the four farms produce 2019 pieces of peat. As a result, you can start heatup of the first boiler when you have about 700 peat stockpiled (a waiting time of just 53 minutes, most of which you could be spending on actually building the boilers and their surrounding infrastructure). After it has finished heating up, it consumes 4.8 peat per minute. This reduces the net output of the four farms from 13.2 to 8.4 peat per minute.

For the second boiler, the farms produce 1,285 peat during the heatup time, meaning you have to wait another 2 hours 51 minutes for the farms to stockpile roughly 1440 peat before you can begin the heatup phase.

On the bottom line:
- with one 36 HP boiler you will be waiting for roughly 9 hours 10 minutes with no output, after which you will get 144 MJ/t (all 36-size boilers hit 100°C after 12 minutes).
- with two 36 LP boilers you will be waiting for roughly 1 hour 5 minutes with no output, then have 72 MJ/t for the next 5 hours 25 minutes. And after the combined time of roughly 6 hours 30 minutes you get the full 144 MJ/t.


EDIT: obviously a faster peat procuring method reduces all times accordingly.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

I tried the new multifarms for peat and was terribly disappointed. So, I wrote a CC turtle program. 1 turtle can maintain up to a 20x20 peat farm. Minus the water blocks, that's 20x20 - (4x4) = 384 bog earth / peat blocks, which is slightly more than 2 max-sized Forestry Multifarms.

Here's the program if you're interested:

http://pastebin.com/9DgtXEF5

ex:
pastebin get 9DgtXEF5 peat
peat 20 20

The first time, and only the first time, you will need to supply it with some starter fuel. A stack of charcoal should be more than enough:

# drop 1 stack of charcoal into inventory
refuel all

After that, it will snack on peat as necessary to maintain energy.

The only thing you'll need to supply it with is Bog Earth in an inventory (chest, barrel, etc.,.) above the turtle's starting position. I recommend an MFR liquicrafter, TE Cyclic Assember, or equivalent to make the Bog Earth from dirt, sand, and water and a hopper or similar to put it into the inventory above the turtle.

I intentionally did not loop the program. I wanted to force myself to manually kick it off - a price to pay, if you will, for the peat farm. However, please feel free to wrap the main part of the program in a loop that sleeps for an hour or so to allow the bog earth to mature into peat.

Oooooh thanks for that, think I'm gonna use this as my backup of stacking two farms on one multiblock appears not to work like the good old days[DOUBLEPOST=1383838436][/DOUBLEPOST]

Heatup time for a 36 HP boiler is 5 hours 9.5 minutes. Since you need the full 11,151 peat only by the time the temperature indicator hits 1,000°C, this means you can subtract the heatup time from the time it takes you to stockpile the sum. As a result, you stockpile for roughly 9 hours (assuming 3.3 peat/min per farm) and then begin heatup. By the time the 5 hours the boiler needs to burn through the stockpile have elapsed, the farms have completed providing it.

However, you can have it much more practical by spending some thought on your boiler choice. If heatup costs are an issue, then building two 36 LP boilers will give you the same MJ/t for the same fuel consumption, but at 1/2 the heatup cost. Plus you can stagger the heatup and gain half the power output much earlier.

One 36 LP requires 2,726 peat to heat up, a process which takes 2 hours 33 minutes. During that time, the four farms produce 2019 pieces of peat. As a result, you can start heatup of the first boiler when you have about 700 peat stockpiled (a waiting time of just 53 minutes, most of which you could be spending on actually building the boilers and their surrounding infrastructure). After it has finished heating up, it consumes 4.8 peat per minute. This reduces the net output of the four farms from 13.2 to 8.4 peat per minute.

For the second boiler, the farms produce 1,285 peat during the heatup time, meaning you have to wait another 2 hours 51 minutes for the farms to stockpile roughly 1440 peat before you can begin the heatup phase.

On the bottom line:
- with one 36 HP boiler you will be waiting for roughly 9 hours 10 minutes with no output, after which you will get 144 MJ/t (all 36-size boilers hit 100°C after 12 minutes).
- with two 36 LP boilers you will be waiting for roughly 1 hour 5 minutes with no output, then have 72 MJ/t for the next 5 hours 25 minutes. And after the combined time of roughly 6 hours 30 minutes you get the full 144 MJ/t.

I'm 100% sure that's all correct coming from you but 2 LP boilers will mess up my power plant design and look out of place, I'm not doing this for any sort of practical reason I'm just doing it to try and get an HP boiler running off peat...

 

[MigukNamja]

...stacking two farms...

If you want to stack two of the 20x20 turtle farms, you' need a gap of 2 between each. But, if you're going for a more compact setup, I recommend relocating the Bog Earth inventory from above the turtle to behind it. But, you'll have to update some the code.

But, if you use the script as-is and you stack the 20x20 peat farm areas, I recommend the following layering:

-------------------B
-------------------T
FFWFFFFWFFFFWFFFFWFF
--|----|----|----|-B
--|----|----|----|-T
FF|FFFF|FFFF|FFFF|FF
 
Where:
B = Bog Earth inventory
T = Turtle
F = Farmland (Bog Earth --> Peat)
W = Water source block
| = falling (flowing) water

You will have to place the water source block. The turtle will bypass/skip it.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

If you want to stack two of the 20x20 turtle farms, you' need a gap of 2 between each. But, if you're going for a more compact setup, I recommend relocating the Bog Earth inventory from above the turtle to behind it. But, you'll have to update some the code.

But, if you use the script as-is and you stack the 20x20 peat farm areas, I recommend the following layering:

-------------------B
-------------------T
FFWFFFFWFFFFWFFFFWFF
--|----|----|----|-B
--|----|----|----|-T
FF|FFFF|FFFF|FFFF|FF
 
Where:
B = Bog Earth inventory
T = Turtle
F = Farmland (Bog Earth --> Peat)
W = Water source block
| = falling (flowing) water

You will have to place the water source block. The turtle will bypass/skip it.

Sorry, I meant I was trying to stack two layers of bog earth on the forestry farm like you used to be able to do with the old farms. It works if you put half the blocks on one layer and half on the second layer but seems to be coded in the max amount of blocks the farm can 'watch' so you can have two half farms on top of each other but not 2 full ones...

 

[MigukNamja]

Now you've got *me* interested in this project as well. Note that Bitminous Peat contains more than twice as much heat energy as regular peat, but it makes sense - it requires 2 regular peat per bituminous plus propolis and ash.

I have a good-sized bee setup, so propolis and ash are no problem. Indeed, I have to periodically purge (recyle/condense) my extra propolis and ash. I might see if I can get a 36HP up to and maintaining 1000C on bituminous peat...

The steam engines would be for show, lol. The purpose would be the same as yours - just to see if/how it can be done.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Now you've got *me* interested in this project as well. Note that Bitminous Peat contains more than twice as much heat energy as regular peat, but it makes sense - it requires 2 regular peat per bituminous plus propolis and ash.

I have a good-sized bee setup, so propolis and ash are no problem. Indeed, I have to periodically purge (recyle/condense) my extra propolis and ash. I might see if I can get a 36HP up to and maintaining 1000C on bituminous peat...

The steam engines would be for show, lol. The purpose would be the same as yours - just to see if/how it can be done.

Haha I haven't even started bees yet, still need to build my bee/tree breeding glass sphere in the sky And for that I need MFFS for the outline to place the glass blocks on and for that I need etc etc... I'll be using the power out of this through power converters into a MassFab, yes its OP but will be changing up to steam turbines once I can produce enough steel. But for that I'm gonna have to increase my input of coal and iron and build a few more coke ovens...

But goal of this map is to try and get as many HP boilers running off as many different fuels as I can, so far I've got 4 charcoal, 4 fuel and 1 coke boiler

 

[Omicron]

How many coke ovens do you have? If you have enough, you can run a liquid 36 HP off of creosote oil in addition to using the charcoal/coke for your solids. 48 charcoal-making ovens or 24 coke-making ovens will reliably fuel a fully heated up 36 HP. Best use a buffer tank in the middle, though - both for having a buffer for the heatup (starting it off with some fuel helps too), and because if you hook up the coke ovens directly, it will draw from the closest ones first. This will cause the coke ovens furthest away to choke on creosote and stop producing, especially if you have more than the required amount of ovens. A buffer tank will avoid this issue.

 

[MigukNamja]

...or 24 coke-making ovens.

Ah, your advice is useful for me as well. I'm currently using creosote solely for impregnated frames and casings, but have a huge surplus in a 2M bucket steel tank.

I currently have 8 ovens total, group in 4 pairs. The top/first oven of each pair turns sugar into sugar charcoal and creosote. The bottom/2nd of each pair turns sugar charcoal into sugar coke and creosote. Do I need just 24 total, or 24 pairs ? It would be easy to add 16 more ovens (8 pairs) to the system. But, I'm also on 1.6.4 with the latest liquid fuel nerfs, which implies 1/4 of a 36HP, which is an 18LP.

I'm using sugar instead of cactus since I have bees and Sugary Bees were easier / more compact than a cactus farm.

 

[Omicron]

I must admit I do not know how much creosote you get from sugar charcoal or sugar coke. My math is based of the 250 mB / 500 mB from wood -> charcoal and coal -> coke. Basically, you want to make 12 buckets of creosote per 3-min coke oven cycle. This powers a 36 HP for 181.82 seconds, so a minimal surplus is still generated that you could use for impregnating bee stuff.

Also, there was no blanket "all liquid fuels" nerf. There was just a nerf to a few specific fuel types that just happened to be liquids. Other fuel types that also happen to be liquids were entirely unaffected. Creosote oil, for example, still has the same 4,800 HU burn value even in the latest version. You can confirm this when you mouse over a creosote oil holding item (bucket, can etc.) while having a boiler GUI open.

 

[draeath]

Ah, your advice is useful for me as well. I'm currently using creosote solely for impregnated frames and casings, but have a huge surplus in a 2M bucket steel tank.

I currently have 8 ovens total, group in 4 pairs. The top/first oven of each pair turns sugar into sugar charcoal and creosote. The bottom/2nd of each pair turns sugar charcoal into sugar coke and creosote. Do I need just 24 total, or 24 pairs ? It would be easy to add 16 more ovens (8 pairs) to the system. But, I'm also on 1.6.4 with the latest liquid fuel nerfs, which implies 1/4 of a 36HP, which is an 18LP.

I'm using sugar instead of cactus since I have bees and Sugary Bees were easier / more compact than a cactus farm.

8 coke ovens should be able to fuel 12 boiler tank segments. Not sure if you can get that evenly, but the number of tank "segments" seems to linearly scale fuel consumption and steam production.

Don't know how it would work out for other fuel types though, that is for mined coal -> coal coke.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

How many coke ovens do you have? If you have enough, you can run a liquid 36 HP off of creosote oil in addition to using the charcoal/coke for your solids. 48 charcoal-making ovens or 24 coke-making ovens will reliably fuel a fully heated up 36 HP.

I've got 12 running at the moment fueling one boiler with coke and a blast furnace with a bit extra left over. If you only need 24 for a creosote boiler then I'm definitely gonna do this and add in another boiler and blast furnace for extra coke.

So with the peat boiler that's another 3 36HP boilers running MOAR POWAH!!!

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

If you want to stack two of the 20x20 turtle farms, you' need a gap of 2 between each. But, if you're going for a more compact setup, I recommend relocating the Bog Earth inventory from above the turtle to behind it. But, you'll have to update some the code.

But, if you use the script as-is and you stack the 20x20 peat farm areas, I recommend the following layering:

-------------------B
-------------------T
FFWFFFFWFFFFWFFFFWFF
--|----|----|----|-B
--|----|----|----|-T
FF|FFFF|FFFF|FFFF|FF

Where:
B = Bog Earth inventory
T = Turtle
F = Farmland (Bog Earth --> Peat)
W = Water source block
| = falling (flowing) water

You will have to place the water source block. The turtle will bypass/skip it.

Ok I've stacked four layers on top of each other in this fashion and it works great!!! Only thing is that if someone else tries this it's best to encase the whole structure in something as when the turtle passes through the water it spills everywhere and looks terrible...

Just one question though, I've got the turtles running on a startup program as a loop every hour. What happens if I close and restart the game? Will they remember where they are in the program or start over? This isn't a problem if they're waiting but if they get reset while out working it'll be a stuff up and once the boiler is running could starve it of fuel as margins are quite tight by my calcs.