REAL blueprints

Tinman

I was doing an estimate yesterday, for a boiler replacement, at an old church on Chicago's west side.

I asked if they had a set of prints I could borrow to do a heat loss load calculation.

This is what they gave me. REAL blueprints from 1929!

I love my job!

Steamhead

We've run into that with some larger homes. So far, all the ones that had plans available had Webster Vapor systems.

Tell us more about this job-...........

KC_Jones

I am a Draftsman/Designer by trade. I actually have some blueprints (rough) on my desk from when I was in high school and learned on the board. I don't miss the ammonia smell when making them. Cool stuff, I love when people share it!

Tinman

You're not going to like it. Or, at least, part of it. Probably the same part I don't like.

Its a new customer for me.

The sad part: They have an old two pipe steam system that was abandoned years ago and replaced with package RTU's set on the ground. Stained glass windows were knocked out to provide a duct chase into the building.

The good part: They also have an old American Standard hot water boiler that they are replacing and I'm the guy who is going to do it. On the same side of the church that the hot water boiler serves are 7 problem areas, literally no heat. I'll be adding 7 cast iron radiators with TRV's to those areas fed by a Grundfos Alpha.

My boiler of choice is a Lochinvar Knight WHN.

Before anyone gets too critical of the church's decisions in the past. You have to understand that the west side and south side of Chicago are typically not thriving communities and every penny spent must be weighed heavily. I understand their decision. It's not a perfect world we live in.

hot_rod

Nice find, put them under a piece of glass on your desk.

Is that an organ blower, next to the coal bin

Tinman

It is and its operational!

JUGHNE

This is a portion of the blue print I found for my local high school. This was a 12,300 sq foot addition drawn in 1953, it is only 9 (24 X 36") pages in total.
It has everything on it down to the bookshelves and lockers.
An architect friend told me that both paper and the processing was an expensive overhead at that time, and there might be up to 8 details on one page.

One thing it never mentions is the recommended steam pressure nor the fact that there were orifices installed on the inlet valves of the 2 pipe system; this was for an existing coal burning boiler. There may have been a spec book covering these items but often that is lost.

The EDR symbol, I'm assuming, is the parallelogram with the backslash thru it. I have looked for the symbol and actual definition but never found the actual reference for it in any book.

All pipe sizes and reductions are shown on the piping diagram.