The old-fashioned, plain cylinder boiler is a plain cylindrical pot
over the fire. If enough plain cylinder boilers presenting the
requisite number of square feet of absorbing surface are put into a
cotton mill, experience has shown that they will make a yard of cotton
cloth about as cheaply as tubular boilers. If this is so, why do not
all put them in? Because it is the crudest and most expensive form of
boiler when its enormous area of ground, brickwork, and its fittings
are considered. Not all have the money or the room for them. To
produce space, the area is drawn in sidewise and lengthwise, but we
must have the necessary amount of square feet of absorbing surface,
consequently the boiler is doubled up, so to speak, and we have a
"flue boiler." We draw in sidewise and lengthwise once more and double
up the surface again, and that is a "tubular boiler." That includes
all the "mystery" on that subject.
Now, we find among the mills, just as I imagine we should upon the
railroads, that the almost universal tendency is to put in too small
boilers and furnaces. To skimp at boilers is to spend at the coal
yard. Small boilers mean heavy and over-deep fires, and rapid
destruction of apparatus. In sugar houses you will see this frequently
illustrated, and will find 16 inch fires upon their grates.
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