39 The Magnificent Engine Room in the Power Plant
The enormous amount of power, heat and light required in this group of buildings for the usual and special purposes made it necessary for us to construct one of the most gigantic power houses of its kind in the world. It occupies a centr,!l position in the group of buildings, and covers thirty thousand square feet of space. The building is absolutely fireproof, constructed of steel, concrete and brick, and was especially designed to receive the special apparatus and machinery required. all of the generating”. apparatus, boilers, engines, etc., are located on the first floor,. whIle the connectmg pIpes and automatIc apparatus are located in the basement. The engine room is extremely ornamental, finished throughout with white enameled brick with red English tile floor, with a magnificent visitors’ gallery from which all the machinery may be conveniently viewed. The entire power plant is designed and laid out to permit of the greatest economy in its mechanical operation. There are installed Corliss compound condensing engines directly connected with their respective electric current generators. Within this power house are innumerable air compressors, house and elevator pumps, fire pumps. artificial ice making plant, heaters and other varied and special machinery supplying all the power, heating and lighting necessities of the general buildings. In this room is developed an electrical current sufficient to maintain eighty thousand incandescent lamps. and six thousand arc lamps, an electric current which would light three hundred towns of fifteen hundred population each. The power developed operates two hundred and twenty-five electric motors, forty elevators, thirty pumps, and compressed air apparatus operating fifteen miles of pneumatic tubes. The engine room is equipped with an especially designed crane capable of handling the heaviest piece of apparatus in the plant WIth readiness and dispatch. All the heavy machines installed were handled by this crane, which has a lifting capacity of twenty-five tons. A crane is considered one of the most necessary appliances in a large power house, and without this one we would have been sadly handicapped in the work of installaMon. In fact, we would have been unable to accomplish the work we did In so short a time without tbe use of Ihis valuable and very essential machine.
Sears 1907 Fall Catalog
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