Steam:
Its Generation and Use

HEATING FROM CENTRAL STATIONS. It has been thoroughly demonstrated, by practice, that a number of buildings may be heated from a single central plant, instead of its being necessary to place a boiler in each. This is a simple problem where the buildings form a group, as at Columbia College, in New York city, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. ¥., Vander- bilt University, Nashville, Tenn., the Indiana State Asylums for the Insane, and many other similar institutions, where a single plant of thus supplied regularly with steam, at reduced cost to them, and at a profit to the producer. This company have, at present, three stations in operation, one of which is doubtless the largest single plant of stationary boilers in the world, —12,000 II. P., under one roof,— supplying steam through seventeen miles of pipe, laid in the streets. In a work of this magnitude it becomes abso- lutely imperative that the boilers which furnish the steam should be of such a construction as to Babcock & Wilcox Boilers supply heat and power to a number of detached buildings. It has also been attempted in a number of places to carry steam, as gas and water are supplied. Though a number of these attempts have been failures, the experience of the New York Steam Co., the most extensive of such plants yet constructed, has fully demonstrated that it is possible to thus carry steam for miles, with no serious losses, and that private houses and business places may be give the greatest amount of useful effect for the coal burnt, and at the same time be able to run continuously, with a minimum amount of stop- page for repairs; and, above all, they should be so constructed as to be safe against destructive explosion. The ability to furnish dry steam is also a very important point, where it is intended to carry it through so many miles of pipe before it is finally used up. The boiler adopted was the Babcock & Wilcox Water-tube Boiler.