Any ideas how to keep a steam boiler full of charcoal. I have a tree farm set up and furnaces making the charcoal. How do i go about keeping them from exploding.
[Yogscraft] Keep steam boiler pull of charcoal.
- Thread starter ArchLancer
- Start date
Well, the firebox can pull from the contents of an adjacent container. I haven't tried a barrel, but I do know a chest works. You might keep a bunch of barrels full and use them to feed to the chest to keep it full (and if you do that, there's no reason to use anything but the most basic chest).
So, get into some of the Redpower methods of filling a chest if that works for you. Or, fill a bunch of chests and set up a golem to keep the chest full. Or, use Buildcraft pipes in a constant cycle to keep it full, which is probably the cheapest method unless you have the golem researched already.
As for where the charcoal comes from, what I do is set up a Steve's Carts tree harvester then feed the logs into coke ovens. That is slow enough that it takes a lot of coke ovens but there's pretty easy math in figuring out how many you need for how fast the boiler burns through charcoal. I like the supply of creosote for a liquid-fueled boiler too. I know that's not what you were asking, but it's different than your own solution so it's something to think about.
So, get into some of the Redpower methods of filling a chest if that works for you. Or, fill a bunch of chests and set up a golem to keep the chest full. Or, use Buildcraft pipes in a constant cycle to keep it full, which is probably the cheapest method unless you have the golem researched already.
As for where the charcoal comes from, what I do is set up a Steve's Carts tree harvester then feed the logs into coke ovens. That is slow enough that it takes a lot of coke ovens but there's pretty easy math in figuring out how many you need for how fast the boiler burns through charcoal. I like the supply of creosote for a liquid-fueled boiler too. I know that's not what you were asking, but it's different than your own solution so it's something to think about.
Actually, it's even easier than that...
To keep them from exploding, don't put water in them while they are dry and hot. For this, use an Aqueous Accumulator. Basically, it's an infinite water source + Pump in the same block, although it needs two water sources adjacent to it. Do that underneath the boiler, set and forget.
As he said, the boiler will pull from any adjacent inventory. This means you just need to get charcoal automatically into that chest.
Now then, about the simplest fast method of making charcoal is with an induction furnace (you CAN theoretically get faster speeds with a furnace + overclockers, but it's horribly energy inefficient and pricey to build that many overclockers). Which means you should have a system to get your wood from your steve's carts tree farm (through your Cargo Manager) to your Induction Furnace(s), then you need a way of pulling it OUT of your induction furnace(s) to your chest attacked to the boiler.
To keep up with demand, you're going to need to use a Filter + Timer to get stuff out of the Induction Furnace. It pulls stacks out at a time. Wooden Pipe + Autarchic Gate, while simpler and not requiring a timer, just won't keep up.
To keep them from exploding, don't put water in them while they are dry and hot. For this, use an Aqueous Accumulator. Basically, it's an infinite water source + Pump in the same block, although it needs two water sources adjacent to it. Do that underneath the boiler, set and forget.
As he said, the boiler will pull from any adjacent inventory. This means you just need to get charcoal automatically into that chest.
Now then, about the simplest fast method of making charcoal is with an induction furnace (you CAN theoretically get faster speeds with a furnace + overclockers, but it's horribly energy inefficient and pricey to build that many overclockers). Which means you should have a system to get your wood from your steve's carts tree farm (through your Cargo Manager) to your Induction Furnace(s), then you need a way of pulling it OUT of your induction furnace(s) to your chest attacked to the boiler.
To keep up with demand, you're going to need to use a Filter + Timer to get stuff out of the Induction Furnace. It pulls stacks out at a time. Wooden Pipe + Autarchic Gate, while simpler and not requiring a timer, just won't keep up.
Shneekey points out something I didn't mention: you're asking two different questions. The first question, "how to keep a steam boiler full of charcoal," is about production/supply/transportation of fuel. But, because of the way boilers work your second question, "How do i go about keeping them from exploding," is about keeping the boiler full of water. If your boiler always has water, it won't explode. If your boiler runs out of fuel it just cools down but it won't explode. Even if the boiler is hot and runs out of water it won't explode.
Boilers explode when just one scenario occurs: A hot boiler (over 100C) without any water suddenly gets a water supply. Boom. So follow Shneekey's advice.
Boilers explode when just one scenario occurs: A hot boiler (over 100C) without any water suddenly gets a water supply. Boom. So follow Shneekey's advice.
If the boiler is already at full heat, you only need to put a powered furnace next to it that has a steady supply of logs. What I have in my setup is two powered furnaces in between two HP boilers. An Aqueous Accumulator is more than enough for either type of boiler.
But yeah, a powered furnace by itself is enough to run a single boiler that's at full temperature. If you're not running it 24/7, then you might want to just consider using hobbyist's steam engines, regular TE steam engines.
But yeah, a powered furnace by itself is enough to run a single boiler that's at full temperature. If you're not running it 24/7, then you might want to just consider using hobbyist's steam engines, regular TE steam engines.
For on-demand low-end power, after you get through your initial phase of 'a couple of hobbyist engines to get yourself started', I like to go Magmatic. It's fairly easy to set up once you hit the Nether, the biggest expense involved are, in my opinion, the enderpearls at that stage of the game (before you actually hit the End) for the liquid tesseracts.
Of course, this doesn't work so well on servers, for that I try to get Biomass up and running for some Biogas engines, which transitions nicely into Biofuel-powered boilers in the later game.
Yeah, actually. I have 2 HP Solids and one of each liquid boilers, powering 60 Industrial Steam Engines, I use a forestry moisturizer along with some more tesseracts to get the mulch to my fermenter. long story short, one steve's cart tree farm (not even the super-effecient E shape I keep hearing about) is enough for all four of these boilers. And since the entire thing is self-sufficient, I never worry about turning it off.
Also I have a mining machine that NEEDS this much power. it's a little crazy.
Edit: I will admit that I've had some trouble with the disappearing golem bug (how I keep the saplings and logs supplied to fermenter and furnaces), so I'm trying to figure out a way around that, or maybe some kind of alarm for when my boiler gets empty.
Also I have a mining machine that NEEDS this much power. it's a little crazy.
Edit: I will admit that I've had some trouble with the disappearing golem bug (how I keep the saplings and logs supplied to fermenter and furnaces), so I'm trying to figure out a way around that, or maybe some kind of alarm for when my boiler gets empty.
you can add an structure pipe on a side with a gate on inventory full redstone signal, the signal to a timer (on fast) to a transposer under a barrel connected to the boiler, when it runs out of a stack, the timer will spawn 10-14 coal and keep the boiler heated.
I figured out that you actually have to put the structure pipe on the side of one of the fireboxes. The bottom of the fireboxes connects to the internal water storage as far as I could tell, and the boiler blocks just did the steam. But what I did was just have the structure pipe go to red alloy wire, which went to a not gate, to a timer set to .2 seconds, to note blocks. So if either boiler ever has space in inventory (as opposed to inventory empty, to give me more time to correct the problem) I have an actual alarm, lol.