While I detest a human
being guilty of such a dastardly trick, I have no sympathy to waste on
an engineer who can be caught in this way. So, if by this time you have
made up your mind never to build a fire until you know where the water
is, you will never be fooled and will never have to explain an accident
by saying, "I thought I had plenty of water." You may be fooled in
another way. You are aware that when a boiler is fired up or in other
words has a steam pressure on, the air is excluded, so when the boiler
cools down, the steam condenses and becomes water again, hence the space
which was occupied by steam now when cold becomes a vacuum.
Now should your boiler be in perfect shape, we mean perfectly tight,
your throttle equally as tight, your pump or injector in perfect
condition and you were to' leave your engine with the hose in the tank,
and the supply globe to your pump open, you will find on returning to
your engine in the morning that the boiler will be nearly if not quite
full of water. I have heard engineers say that someone had been
tampering with their engines and storm around about it, while the facts
were that the supply being open the water simply flowed in from
atmospheric pressure, in order to fill the space made vacant by the
condensed steam.
Pages:
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27