Not sure if I'm going the right direction for steam production

[Servillo]

I'm going the Buildcraft route for a lot of my power in my base, since I'm doing some Forestry and Extra Bees stuff, and I'm somewhat concerned that I'm not going to be going about this the right way.

Currently, I have one 36 HP boiler just sitting in my base, haven't even put one bit of fuel in it yet. I'm worried that my fuel supply just isn't going to be suitable. I didn't want to build the same Steve's Carts tree farm everyone else built, so I decided to go with turtles. I currently have two turtles that chop down a Fir tree whenever it spawns, dumps the wood that gets shunted to some furnaces to make charcoal, and that charcoal goes into storage for my eventual use.

With this running, I ran it overnight, and made 56 stacks of charcoal in 9 hours. Assuming that over that 9 hours the trees grew and were harvested at an average rate, that winds up being almost 150 stacks of charcoal per day. Based on data on the wiki, one 36 HP boiler takes 135 stacks of charcoal per day, assuming 24 hour runtime.

My main concerns are:

1) Am I really doing my math right, meaning will this current rate be sufficient?
2) Am I gimping myself somehow by not using a Steve's carts farm? The only thing I can think of to make my turtles more efficient is add bonemeal to my tree farm system and grow trees at regular intervals instead of letting it be done randomly.
3) Do I need to add a second boiler if I'm going to be running the Extra Bees machines? I hear those things rip through MJ like no other.
4) Assuming I actually have excess power, is there any good way to siphon it off to, say working towards running a Mass Fab (I'm on a DW20 server, so no Gregtech to worry about)?
5) Should I actually care about running this thing 24/7? Right now it's in a chunkloaded area because I've been running my bees endlessly to produce Alveary products, but those are the only reasons I keep my base chunkloaded. If I move my bees, is there any reason to keep my boiler chunkloaded? Side note, my chopping turtles are also chunkloader turtles because they're off a little bit from the main area of my base. My server doesn't see much load on it at all, so I'm not too concerned about it.

Thanks.

 

[PeggleFrank]

SC2 farms are quite expensive, so you should probably stick to turtles.

The extra bees machines only require power if you're using them, so as long as you have decent energy storage (which they have built-in) you shouldn't need to worry about getting more than one boiler.
Some of them take an awfully long time though, so you might need to get another boiler so you can run even more of them at the same time.

A single 36 HP boiler should be fine for power. If you have any leftover charcoal that starts to pile up, you can use that to power generators > electric engines w/ either efficiency or power boost depending on how much extra charcoal you're getting > MJ.

You'll need a serious dedicated source for a mass fabricator. Even 4 HV solar panels aren't enough, from what I can recall. Giving it the leftovers most likely won't do much at all unless you have a large and steady power source to build upon.

 

[Servillo]

Well my main concern is if I'm pulling power for several machines at once. I know most machines outside the Extra Bees machines aren't too energy intensive, but lots of machines at once, especially ones I'm running for a long period of time (Igneous Extruder, Magma Crucible for Obsidian, Centrifuges for constant comb production) can add up, and tossing two or three EB machines at once is going to drain power.

What I'll probably do is start up with one for now, see if I can actually run it naturally on my charcoal supply as it is, and add bonemeal and regular tree production if/when I add a second boiler.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Your numbers seem fairly reasonable- but you'll want to build a large stockpile of fuel before firing your boiler.

Check your heat values for what you're burning- putting logs in a sawmill might give more heat from 6 planks than 1 charcoal- as well as giving a byproduct to make charcoal.

SC farms are a pain to setup, and I've found them somewhat unreliable and inefficient. (carts have a habit of going AWOL or getting stuck).

Keep your treefarm and boiler chunkloaded (treefarm bare minimum)- if your boiler remains loaded, but the farm doesn't it might cause a few issues.

As for your massfab- depends on how much UU you want. That boiler can make quite a bit of excess power when you're not running machines. A well designed system will allow you to expend the farms and add more boilers as your base grows.
(Started out with 2x36HP running on my treefarm- I kinda underestimated how efficient it was and ended up with 8x36HP from just the planks. -ran a matterfab on the overflow from it)

 

[Servillo]

I've read that the sawmill for planks is better than charcoal, but I only read that today. My only issue is storing all of that, and getting the planks fast enough. Sure, they're more efficient heat-wise, but I'd have to make sure my turtles can keep up. Charcoal is more compact. Maybe I'll set up a sawmill assembly anyway; I'm just not sure of the numbers I'd need, really. I know it's a bit off from what most do, but I really don't care about efficiency. As long as the setup works, that's usually good enough for me. Kind of a bad attitude, since I'm an engineer; I really should be trying for efficient setups.

Maybe when I get Applied Engergistics going and have storage space out the wazoo, I'll shift to planks.

Thanks for answering most of my other questions though. I only have one main chunkloader, and I leave everything else to the turtles to keep loaded wherever they are. I'm hoping I'm not adding too much load to the server; we've only had three people on at the same time at most from what I've seen. I'm not gonna worry about a mass fab for now; I'll see just how much power I'm making to start.

 

[Heliomance]

This tool will tell you exactly how much you'll need of any fuel for any size boiler.