Steam power plants, their design and construction . often, and thismeans a loss due to too much air entering while the doors areopen. The practical objection to frequent firing lies in the factthat it is difficult to get a fireman who will fire a boiler properly,most of men who perform this kind of labor being of the classthat prefers shoveling a large amount of fuel into the furnaceand then sitting down for half an hour than to shoveling a lesseramount at shorter intervals. The kind of men who take an in-terest in stoking properly, and do it, are not likely to remain fire-men. For the reasons
Steam power plants, their design and construction . often, and thismeans a loss due to too much air entering while the doors areopen. The practical objection to frequent firing lies in the factthat it is difficult to get a fireman who will fire a boiler properly,most of men who perform this kind of labor being of the classthat prefers shoveling a large amount of fuel into the furnaceand then sitting down for half an hour than to shoveling a lesseramount at shorter intervals. The kind of men who take an in-terest in stoking properly, and do it, are not likely to remain fire-men. For the reasons given, the only way in which coal can besupplied to a furnace in such a manner as to produce the bestresults is by mechanical means or mechanical stokers. There isevery reason to believe that a plant of boilers using bituminouscoal mechanically fired will operate with a sufficient economy offuel over hand-fired boilers to pay a good return on the increasedinvestment required for the stoking apparatus. This result can I STEiM POWER PLANTS, 153 1^. l>r-i fe O o HC/3 154 STEAM POWER PLANTS. be effected by an5^ fireman who is sufficiently intelligent to doordinary firing but not, however, unless the mechanical stoker isgiven some attention to see that holes in the fire do not occur orthat clinker does not form to impede the uniform movement ofthe coal. The stoker is not wholly automatic, but, given a fairdegree of attention, it is an indispensable aid to the firemen in theattainment of the perfect combustion of bituminous coal. Me-chanical stokers are also of value in reducing smoke with bitum-inous coal and reducing the number of men in the boiler are of particular value in making it possible to burn low-grade smoking coals in situations where the emission of smokewould be objectionable. As an improper air supply affects theamount of smoke emitted by coal, mechanical stokers properlydesigned very much reduce the smoke and oftentimes entirely doaway with it. Burning
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