38 The Boiler Room in the Power Plant
The boiler room is one of the most interesting features of our power plant, and the boilers have an ultimate capacity of 12,000-horse power. These boilers are of the very latest improved high pressure type, designed especially for us and equipped with automatic chain grates and smokeless furnaces, so constructed that the waste paper and refuse from the various buildings may be used in the creation of heat and light and power [or the premises. The coal supply is unloaded from the cars on the track beside the building and carried by automatic machinery to an overhead coal bunker having a capacity of fifteen hundred tons of coal, from which it falls through chutes to the boilers below, as required.
The coal carrying machinery in the boiler room has a capacity of one hundred tons per hour. The refuse and ashes are automatically conveyed to an ash bunker and deposited in the cars ready to be taken away. All these facilities have lessened the amount of hand labor usual in plants of this character ; and the workmen employed in the boiler room are able to maintain the steam pressure without the arduous toil so common to most furnace rooms.
One of the unique features of this power plant is the towering chimney which furnishes the requisite draft for the hailers. This chimney is constructed of radial brick; it is 250 feet high, 14 feet in diameter, and is supported on concrete caisson foundations 60 feet in depth , the height from bedrock to crown being 310 feet. The weight of this smoke stack is 2,500 tons.
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