Weil-McLain's Famous Glass Piped Steam Boiler Fired Up at EEE 2019

Gordo

Weil-McLain's well known glass piped steam boiler is fired up at EEE 2019 in Hershey PA.
My thanks to the W-M demonstration crew for letting me film this.
Dan Holohan makes a cameo appearance at the end of this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5mzrLlIHbY

EBEBRATT-Ed

Like they say a picture is worth a thousand words!

Need 2 more versions:

A dropped header

a boiler pipe WRONG

gerry gill

a great training tool

DanHolohan

Thanks, Gordo. Great job on that famous show-stopper.

Robert O'Brien

Resting until the next gig on LI

Danny Scully

When is that @Robert O'Brien?

Robert O'Brien

May 30 at Blackman

mikeg2015

Looking at that, I’m glad I added generous amount of slope to my drop header. My old boiler “got by” because it had a fairly large internal volume (HB Smith G300) and was performance limited by mud in the sections. I think he newer lower mass, lower volume boilers really need oversized drop headers. 3” pipe ain’t cheap, but it only needs to get installed once. Most replacement boilers after that should pipe right in with only minor piping changes and if same brand, dimensions likely won’t change much over the next 40 years.

ethicalpaul

Is that firing at the rated BTU or do they overfire the heck out of it to get it to boil that high?

DanHolohan

@ethicalpaul They fire at the rated BTU. That's normal.

ethicalpaul

Wow, that surprises me! Would that be considered wet steam? Or is it more of a continuum, as in "that steam would be dryer if it went through a drop header, but it will do OK"

How wet is too wet?

DanHolohan

When you look at photos of this (I have those in The Lost Art of Steam Heating Revisited), you can see the invisible dry steam in the top of the header. It's just the nature of modern steam boilers to do this. One of the things that made old steam boilers relatively inefficient was their massive size. This is why we must consider proper near-boiler piping a part of the boiler nowadays. The W-M boiler with in the video is clean and perfectly piped. I've been watching that beast perform for decades. W-M has done a great service for the industry in building it and sharing it so generously at the shows.

ethicalpaul

I couldn't agree more, it's a great way to see what is normally only guessed at.

I'm just struggling to understand wet vs dry steam. If this boiler with this piping is producing dry steam, then I can't imagine what wet steam would look like. I'll go look again at LAoSHR. Thanks!

STEVEusaPA

ethicalpaul said:

... I can't imagine what wet steam would look like...

You'd probably hear it before you saw it...

Gordo

Over the years, I've filmed this glass boiler firing several times, but I believe this is the first time I've gotten a good shot of what is going on directly inside the boiler. Usually, the MW crew is doing this demo for an audience and I don't want to be obnoxious and interfere with their presentation while getting close-ups of that window into the boiler.

This time, they very graciously fired up the boiler just for the film above because I assured them it would be given the maximum dissemination that I could muster. Having Dan in the video was an extra bonus!

The contrast between the violence going on inside the boiler and the almost serene gentle bobbing of the waterline in the sightglass is worth noting.

I think in the past they used to add a teaspoon of oil to show what happens. Splooosh!

Noel

I have some from 25 years ago.

Robert O'Brien

It will be at Blackman in Bayport on 5/30 for any Lawn Guylanders

Intplm.

I never get tired of seeing this. It is one of the best real life visual effects I have ever seen.

Kudos to @ethicalpaul for doing a "mini" version of this on his own boiler👍🏼

Erin Holohan Haskell

@Gordo - Thanks for filming. Can we share this in the Systems Help Center too?

Gordo

@Erin Holohan Haskell - Please, I would be honored.

Erin Holohan Haskell

Gordo said:

@Erin Holohan Haskell - Please, I would be honored.

Thanks so much!