Steam Boiler Help

[StaticPixel]

Hello, so recently I wanted to set up a HP steam boiler 3x3x3 (I guess 4 if you count the fireboxes) It is a solid fueled steam boiler running on charcoal. I am getting a steady supply of charcoal from my Steve's Cart's Farm. Going into this the first time I had no idea how much I would need. I had about 300 charcoal and now i'm laughing at myself because that, plus all my coal was no where near what I needed to maintain the boiler. It ended up cooling down.

I dont know the exact dimensions of my Steve's Cart's Treefarm, but it is a rectangle, that has a side piece going out, to make it an irregular shape. I got my charcoal level to a little over 3000 charcoal, and now I have 300 something charcoal left, after attempt 2 of heating up my steam boiler. It is at about 300 degrees, no where near the maximum point, and I am already out of charcoal again. Does anyone have any ideas to what I should do so it wont cool down again?

 

[Seraph089]

The only thing you could do is supplement the charcoal with other fuel sources while it heats up. If you have a healthy stockpile of normal coal or something, start feeding that in, otherwise just let it cool down and try again when you have a better charcoal stock. But once it is finally at full temp, the tree farm should keep up fine.

It really takes a massive amount of fuel to start the boiler, I wouldn't try a LP boiler with only 3k charcoal. I don't have a link, but there's a boiler calculator somewhere that can tell you how much fuel heat-up will take

 

[TheLoneWolfling]

Stockpile charcoal! Lots of charcoal. Lots and lots of charcoal. Lots and lots and lots of charcoal.

You'll need ~9444 charcoal to heat up the boiler fully, or ~147.5 stacks.

How much charcoal / hour are you producing? You'll need ~643 charcoal / hour to keep the boiler fully heated, or ~10 stacks / hour.

See here

 

[ThrillBird]

During the initial heatup it will consume a ton of charcoal, so make sure you have more than enough before you start the boiler. Once you reach max capacity, it's just to keep supplying enough charcoal, and it'll be stable

My advice is that you make sure you process all the wood you get, and that it reaches the boiler in time so there is coal in it at all times. I usually put chests adjacent to the boiler to store the charcoal in, the boiler will pull directly from the chests if they are touching it

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[netmc]

For the max size boiler (9 more boiler blocks than you have) it takes about 13k charcoal over 5 hours to heat up plus over 700 charcoal an hour to maintain.

You may need to increase the size of your tree farm, or start fertilizing it with sc or mfr.

 

[StaticPixel]

Hmm, I know my Tree Farm doesn't produce that much charcoal / hour, but do you guys have any tips on improving that so it does? By the way, The wood is transported into my AE system, then exported out into an induction furnace (at full heat) and then back into my AE network, and finally pumped out into an item tesseract directly to the steam boiler. I guess I'll just let it cool down and run on my lava power for a while, and try back again when I get 10k+ charcoal. Is there some sort of most efficient steve's carts build? Mine doesn't produce that much charcoal and is kinda slow. Although I am using the basic drill, I don't know if I have the resources to make a whole new cart with a fancy new drill attachment.

 

[Lisranda]

I'm thinking by your last comment, about different wood cutter types, that you're in 1.5.2 since the old version of Steve's Carts only had 1 cutter type that was invincible. Given that you need diamonds to repair that cutter fairly frequently, something like an MFR Planter, Fertilizer, and Harvester -- with a Sewer under an animal pen connected to a Composter to generate the fertilizer for the Fertilizer -- would generate significantly more wood for charcoal without the constant manual diamond repairs for the cutter.

Before the basic cutter got nerfed, I was able to run 2 solid fueled boilers with a staggered start off of one 7x7 track with a woodcutter that had no fertilizer. The basic cutter has a lower yield now and requires repairs -- which pretty much makes it a deal breaker for me.

 

[Seraph089]

Is there some sort of most efficient steve's carts build? Mine doesn't produce that much charcoal and is kinda slow.

MFR has definitely overtaken Steve's Carts for the most effective tree farm. You'll still need to work up a stockpile before starting a boiler though. With MFR, you can either make a default range planter and harvester with a fertilizer, or a near-max-upgraded range planter and harvester without a fertilizer. Either will keep up with the boiler once it's heated up

 

[Infallible83]

This is going off topic a bit but are you sure you need a 27HP boiler?

It is a question of efficiency vs output.

The reason I bring this up is because it seems to be burning through all your supplies so a more efficient option may be preferential to you.

If that is the case, Omicron's thread http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/the-final-word-on-steam-boiler-efficiency.13506/ is the be all and end all of boiler efficiency, defiantly worth a read.

Hope it's useful.

 

[netmc]

I had to step up to a 3x3 boiler myself. I ran a 2x2 boiler with 8 blocks first, then added 4 more to 12. It was only after running that for a while that I could afford the energy needed to go to the 36 hp boiler. My infrastructure wasnt up to snuff to run a larger boiler off charcoal. I was able to run ot off ethanol and creosote oil though. I finally get my 13k charcoal saved and enough infrastucture to mass produce charcoal.

 

[Lawn1boy]

I would make it liquid and use the saplings from the tree farm ferment and still into ethonal and use it as power it is much easier then solid fueal.

Hope this helps.

 

[netmc]

I have 2 MFR harvesters for my tree farm. 1 is set to shear leaves, the other not. If you shear leaves, you don't get saplings. I have my harvesters attached to a redstone signal from a ME level emitter. It automatically causes the active harvester to switch if the sapling supply gets too low. I convert the leaves into IC2 plant balls, and feed that into the fermenters. It works quite well, and two fermenters and stills power 1 max size HP boiler, and produce slightly more ethanol than used. My real bottleneck isn't the fermenters, but the rate my ME network can craft plantballs. I don't have any crafting CPUs in my ME network yet, so I can't craft enough plant balls to keep the fermenters completely stocked, but they do the job.

 

[PierceSG]

I use a MFR Planter and Harvester, both upgraded with tin upgrades to service a 9x9 area of Jungle saplings. No fertiliser, feeding the logs to an induction furnace and the resulting charcoal to three 36hp boilers. Still getting a surplus of charcoal and a ton of saplings in my DSU, too lazy to make a fermenter+still setup.

 

[Infallible83]

I have 2 MFR harvesters for my tree farm. 1 is set to shear leaves, the other not. If you shear leaves, you don't get saplings. I have my harvesters attached to a redstone signal from a ME level emitter. It automatically causes the active harvester to switch if the sapling supply gets too low. I convert the leaves into IC2 plant balls, and feed that into the fermenters. It works quite well, and two fermenters and stills power 1 max size HP boiler, and produce slightly more ethanol than used. My real bottleneck isn't the fermenters, but the rate my ME network can craft plantballs. I don't have any crafting CPUs in my ME network yet, so I can't craft enough plant balls to keep the fermenters completely stocked, but they do the job.

I use a cheap early game method of automated crafting until I have CPUs in my ME network that might be useful to you.

I build a vanilla "Rapid Redstone Pulser" which is very easy to set up (Google if needed, there are MANY videos and images) it only needs 4 redstone torches and some redstone. I run the redstone from the pulser to a LiquiCrafter (http://ftbwiki.org/LiquiCrafter) which will autocraft on a redstone signal. I then run a level emiter to face a run off from the pulser that is set to emit a signal when I have sufficient levels of the item I cam crafting, this will stop the pulser.

This is amazing for me early game until I can afford the mats to build the number of CPUs that I want, it takes up a bit more space but I think it is worth it for early mass production.

Infallible

 

[ndDean]

I highly suggest not using regular coal to startup a boiler, it is a lot faster and more efficient to build yourself a coke oven, and turn the coal into coal coke, then put that coal coke into the boilers. Trust me, it will heat up much faster this way and wont require as much

 

[Infallible83]

I highly suggest not using regular coal to startup a boiler, it is a lot faster and more efficient to build yourself a coke oven, and turn the coal into coal coke, then put that coal coke into the boilers. Trust me, it will heat up much faster this way and wont require as much

I have often thought this, but how many coke ovens do you need to support a boiler? I am guessing it must be a pretty high number.

 

[kheeler]

Trust me, it will heat up much faster this way and wont require as much

Last I knew, the fuel did not affect heat up times. Only the size and type (HP vs LP) affect heat up times.

 

[Drawde]

I use a 9x9 square packed with cows, with an upgraded sewer in the middle. I use that and four composters to make fertilizer.

Using a planter, harvester and fertilizer, all upgraded to 9x9, I make nine different crops (nether wart, both types of mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, wheat, cocoa beans, and two non-jungle trees, or four types of trees if you don't want the mushrooms) and feed them into a bio generator. The resulting biofuel will easily run several bio reactors while waiting until you get enough fuel stockpiled. Or several combustion engines or bio engines if you don't have the blaze rods for the reactors. Four bio engines will actually produce more MJ per tick in the same amount of time as one reactor, but it requires more material.

My settup runs a max size high pressure boiler with three reactors with no maintenence, if you have an AE system (or some other method) to deal with the crops. And I don't use the entire 9x9 area either, only planting two squares of nether wart, one of each tree and mushroom, one jungle log with beans (4), four of each vegetable, and nine wheat.

If you play with Dartcraft you can use a Forestry multifarm to grow force trees. A max size multifarm can feed two squeezers, though I haven't tested how many force engines that can run. Easily four, with a single MFR rancher to feed the engines milk, provides 40 MJ a tick. It requires a constant influx of Forestry fertilizer and dirt, but both of those can be crafted, and the entire thing eventually automated. And I haven't played with fermenting the saplings, with a constant supply of vegetable juice.

 

[ndDean]

Last I knew, the fuel did not affect heat up times. Only the size and type (HP vs LP) affect heat up times.

Yes but coal coke burns longer than regular coal so it requires less to get it up to heat.
EDIT: Actually I had this wrong. Normal coal only produces 3.2k heat while coal coke is double that. So
its both hotter and burns longer

You only need 1 coke oven generally to get it going, I always make one ahead of time and start getting coal coke before I get to the point where I need to make the boiler. Once you get the boiler at max heat you can stabilize it with a tree farm.

It has been a minute since I had to do it but I think the last time I did it took me around 10-15 stacks of coal coke to get my boiler hot enough to start burning wood. (Could be more or less).

 

[Infallible83]

Using a planter, harvester and fertilizer, all upgraded to 9x9, I make nine different crops (nether wart, both types of mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, wheat, cocoa beans, and two non-jungle trees)

Whooooa whoa hold on there... mushrooms in a Planter with a Fertilizer and a Harvester. Does this work? How do the mushrooms grow in sunlight? Do they resond to fertilizer? When harvested do they need to be replanted?

Teach me your ways master.