The Locomotive . endous amount of energy, for the wrapper sheetunwound completely by bursting the welded seams and pulling awayfrom the staybolts. There were no signs that the metal had beenpreviously weakened by over-heating, and the fusible plug was foundto be unaffected. It seems prol)able that the fault lay in the safety valve, although thevalve was so badlydamaged in the acci-dent that this supposi-tion could not be veri-fied. During cold weath-er the boiler was calledon to heat the building,Init at all other timesit was used merely tosupply hot water forthe tenants. When op-erating in th
The Locomotive . endous amount of energy, for the wrapper sheetunwound completely by bursting the welded seams and pulling awayfrom the staybolts. There were no signs that the metal had beenpreviously weakened by over-heating, and the fusible plug was foundto be unaffected. It seems prol)able that the fault lay in the safety valve, although thevalve was so badlydamaged in the acci-dent that this supposi-tion could not be veri-fied. During cold weath-er the boiler was calledon to heat the building,Init at all other timesit was used merely tosupply hot water forthe tenants. When op-erating in this way, theheating system stopvalve and return linevalve were closed andthe boiler water circu-lated through a coilheater where it gave upits heat to the water ofthe supply it is evident that the only safeguard against-over-pressure wasthe safety valve, for during hours when the demand for hot water wasleast the fire would put heat into the boiler water faster than the heat-ing coils could extract Figure i Although an accident in a store and flat building at Gary, Indiana,on March 26th, was by no means as violent and destructive as the onedescribed above, it snuffed out two lives and caused property damageof about $1,000. In this case lack of a rehef valve and impropermanipulation of valves in the system caused the explosion of a cast 230 THE LOCOMOTIVE October, iron hot water supply boiler, killing an eight-year-old boy outrightand inflicting fatal injuries on his grandfather, the janitor. On the morning of the accident the janitor instructed the firemanto shut off the hot water supply so as to give him an opportunity torepair a leaky faucet. The fireman followed instructions to the letter,closing off, among others, the valves between the boiler and the hot
Size: 1487px × 1680px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorhartfordsteamboilerin, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860
