Need Assistance With an Automated Boiler

[un worry]

That would be very helpful Thanks!

Four pictures - basically:

1. Steve Carts Tree Farm in a 17x17 loop, outputs via Cargo Manager to Item Tesseract.

2. Logs, Saplings and Apples ... feeding 2x 36HP solid fuel boilers
- Logs top up the two barrels, with an overflow chest which gains about one stack an hour.
- Sawmill outputs planks to the firebox and sawdust to an item tesseract (or a void pipe if you have no use for it)

3. Structure pipe and gate emits a redstone signal when Sawmill inventory is empty, via a jacketed cable which triggers Filter to push a full stack of logs.

4. Sawmill input top and rear (so gate can get reading), outputs logs to the side and sawdust down. Gate emits redstone on inventoryEmpty

Just ask if you want more detail on any of the steps.

Hope that was helpful. Have fun!

 

[Jacobblue34]

What are you powering the sawmill with? And what kind of engines are you running/what are you using the steam for?[DOUBLEPOST=1363798659][/DOUBLEPOST]And on the tree farm loop what is that track that looks kind of squarish? (Where the track loops around) And what is the steves cart made of?

 

[AlanEsh]

Looks like he has an energy tessearact feeding the sawmills. You can just use one sawmill and one Hobbyist steam engine to power it. Pipe steam from your boiler into the steam engine to power it (you should be starting up your boiler with coal/charcoal/coke so you will have steam ready before you need the sawmill running).

 

[zilvarwolf]

For the cart, the common configuration I've seen is a coal engine, a solar engine, side chests, and a woodcutter on a standard frame. Sometimes a fertilizer, but it's hardly necessary. Set the solar engine to high, the coal engine to low. Fill the engines with wood logs and the woodcutter with saplings and let'er'rip.

Setup the cart manager to share sides, unload everything from the chests and load into the engine (a moderately sized track shouldn't burn a full stack of logs before the cart makes it back to the manager, so it will only load logs back in...) It seems to want to run forever like that.

His setup is pretty nice. Mine is a little rougher because my boilers are 1000m away from the sawmill (love those tesseracts), and because I already have 120k oak logs and don't care to store any more

Verbally, since I'm not in a position to take pictures, my tree cart dumps into an ender chest. That chest is attached to a sorter. The sorter pulls all logs (since I don't need any more for storage) down toward a relay on top of the sawmill. Next to that relay is a restriction tube leading to a different relay. If the sawmill-side relay is full, the logs are spit out into a void pipe, otherwise it just fills up that sawmill. On the other side of the item tesseract, I have a diamond pipe. Planks go into a diamond chest and sawdust goes into an autocrafting table, and from there to a furnace, and from there back to the gold chest.

There's so much overflow that I'm quite sure I can run a second solid boiler...I just need to make the building and set it up.

 

[AlanEsh]

...sawdust goes into an autocrafting table, and from there to a furnace, and from there back to the gold chest.

Not all modpacks are set up to allow autocrafting of sawdust. I know the server I play most on requires the sawdust be compressed into "wood plates" via compressor.

There's so much overflow that I'm quite sure I can run a second solid boiler...I just need to make the building and set it up.

Definitely. I was running dual LP36 boilers via an "E" shaped SC tree farm and a single sawmill. Still was overflowing with logs!

 

[zilvarwolf]

Not all modpacks are set up to allow autocrafting of sawdust. I know the server I play most on requires the sawdust be compressed into "wood plates" via compressor.

If that was the case, I'd just void it. It's not worth crossing power systems just to get a few extra units of heat when the planks work just fine.

Bleh.

Definitely. I was running dual LP36 boilers via an "E" shaped SC tree farm and a single sawmill. Still was overflowing with logs!

It would technically be 3 in my case and MIGHT handle 4 (2 solid, 2 liquid) if there were no other drains on the biofuel/biomass. But yeah, I'm sure that most people are doing the same thing and using the liquid fuel as well. Not bad for one little cart that's running off the wood it chops down, right?

 

[AlanEsh]

If that was the case, I'd just void it. It's not worth crossing power systems just to get a few extra units of heat when the planks work just fine.

Yeah if i were to do it again I would void the sawdust, but at the time I aspired to waste nothing so I had a generator fueled with saplings from the cart-supplied sapling barrel to provide EU to the compressor

SC tree farms are awesome. Some say OP, but for me, if I can't get a reliable fire-and-forget power system going, I don't bother. I don't consider the tedium of trying to keep things fueled by hand or "automated" with a seriously gnarly/unreliable mishmash "fun". So bring on The Little Cart That Could!

 

[Spachi1281]

This link is to a railcraft boiler calculator. It has a nice function to allow you to compute the number of items you need to heat a cold boiler to max temperature (and tell you it's consumption per hour once it's reached max temp). I'd use that as a starting place for anyone who wants to start a boiler and is concerned on whether they have enough items on hand (or production capacity) to start up a boiler.

In the end, I had to resort to 2 16x16 ish SC tree farms to supply my 2x 36HP boilers. I might have been able to squeeze more efficiency from my tree farms if I went with a 2 space gap between rails but that caused mob spawning issues so I went with a 3 space gap (and added torches when necessary).

If you're running ultimate FTB, I'd take a look at MineFactory Reloaded's method of tree farming. It's very fast if you automate production of industrial fertilizer via an animal farm.

 

[MektonZero]

Ah. Ok that makes sense. Definetly going to stockpile possibly use barrels... Does anyone know if boilers will pull out of barrels? But definetly going to stockpile... That makes sense guess a chest full of logs turned into planks wasnt enough...

Anyone have a good setup that may or may not be better than mine?

If you're looking to automate, use Forestry to set up Tree Farms, a Wheat Farm and Peat Bogs. The Bog produces dirt, which you can turn into humus for the tree farm and peat you can burn in your firebox. The Tree Farm produces logs to saw into planks and sawdust to turn into charcoal, as well as excess saplings to burn) and sand which can be used to make Bog Earth. The Wheat farm with a moistener produces the mulch you'll need, along with a couple of carpenters, to make the Humus and Bog Earth. Bog Earth takes 4 dirt, 4 sand and returns 8 dirt, Humus takes 8 dirt and returns 9 sand. Of course if you're ever running low on dirt, you can use 8 wheat or 8 seeds to make a plantball and pulverize it into dirt. Excess sand I'd use with Thermal Expansion to make slag.

 

[AlanEsh]

If you're looking to automate, use Forestry to set up Tree Farms, a Wheat Farm and Peat Bogs. The Bog produces dirt, which you can turn into humus for the tree farm and peat you can burn in your firebox. The Tree Farm produces logs to saw into planks and sawdust to turn into charcoal, as well as excess saplings to burn) and sand which can be used to make Bog Earth. The Wheat farm with a moistener produces the mulch you'll need, along with a couple of carpenters, to make the Humus and Bog Earth. Bog Earth takes 4 dirt, 4 sand and returns 8 dirt, Humus takes 8 dirt and returns 9 sand. Of course if you're ever running low on dirt, you can use 8 wheat or 8 seeds to make a plantball and pulverize it into dirt. Excess sand I'd use with Thermal Expansion to make slag.

How is that superior to a SC tree farm? Looks a buttload more complicated.

 

[un worry]

What are you powering the sawmill with? And what kind of engines are you running/what are you using the steam for?[DOUBLEPOST=1363798659][/DOUBLEPOST]And on the tree farm loop what is that track that looks kind of squarish? (Where the track loops around) And what is the steves cart made of?

MJ from energy grid, however each 36HP steam boiler supports 2 Industrial Steam Engines (16MJ/t from 80 steam) in addition to the two Steam Turbines (200EU/t from 640 steam) so once running and warmed up it is self sufficient.

The SC farm feeds these two 36HPs which produce steam for steam turbines. This in turn powers my Industrial Grinder and Industrial Blast Furnace, Electrolyzers and Centrifuges, which are processing the input from 4 full sized quarries.

In addition to the logs, the saplings from the same farm are fermented/stilled and produce sufficient biomass for 10 BioGas engines (50MJ/t), and BioFuel for 12 Combustion Engines (to run TE machines) plus a third 36HP on bioFuel which produces 144MJ/t.

Surplus EU and MJ (EU via MagmaCrucible/Thermal Generator) are directed towards the MatterFabricator.

Total power grid from one modest SC Tree Farm supports:
2x 36HP Solid Fuel & 1x 36HP Liquid Fuel
feeding 22 Industrial steam engines, 10 biogas & 12 combustion engines
with 2 sawmills, 1 fermenter and 3 stills
for a total of 286 MJ/t and 400 EU/t (not including power draw from sawmills/fermenter/stills)

The little loop was designed to maximize coverage on the small circular roof and increase the logs to saplings ratio, as space was quite limited and I wanted the solid fuel boilers to be running in a small surplus (which they are now)

 

[un worry]

a panoramic view of the total line in the basement, from left two right:

• 2 solid fuel boilers fed logs, output steam to 4 steam turbines, into EU and 3 MFSUs
  (note centre MFSU is cabled direct to MatterFab and set to only emit power if adjacent MSFUIs are full, so that my IC2/GT machines get priority if they are processing ores from quarry. When all is quiet, the MFab will receive the full 400 EU/t)

• Apples to Apple Juice (not used - yield from water-Fermenters is sufficient for my needs)

• Saplings to BioMass and on to biogas engines in floor
  
  
• Biomass to Stills to BioFuel to Combustion Engines (foreground) and Liquid Boiler at the end of the line into ISE and MJ

Sure it's a pretty standard setup. Hope it helps.

 

[Jacobblue34]

If you're looking to automate, use Forestry to set up Tree Farms, a Wheat Farm and Peat Bogs. The Bog produces dirt, which you can turn into humus for the tree farm and peat you can burn in your firebox. The Tree Farm produces logs to saw into planks and sawdust to turn into charcoal, as well as excess saplings to burn) and sand which can be used to make Bog Earth. The Wheat farm with a moistener produces the mulch you'll need, along with a couple of carpenters, to make the Humus and Bog Earth. Bog Earth takes 4 dirt, 4 sand and returns 8 dirt, Humus takes 8 dirt and returns 9 sand. Of course if you're ever running low on dirt, you can use 8 wheat or 8 seeds to make a plantball and pulverize it into dirt. Excess sand I'd use with Thermal Expansion to make slag.

I have something similar but its a pain and it likes to throw humus and bog earth at me and anything else really and doesnt make much wood. Just enough for the occasional crafting or as an addition to my SC farm. Ill upload pictures if you want. I have that forestry thing pretty darn compact. Compact enough that its underground and doesnt take up much space.[DOUBLEPOST=1363829446][/DOUBLEPOST]Thanks. I think ill use something similar in my base. Now to figure out why the heck the server admins decided it was a good idea to have both the ARS and MFFS v2 mods. Same recipies, basic idea, etc. That has really ruined my plan for the underwater base until thats fixed. Guess ill get a layout set up in creative. Thanks for you help guys!