Anyone had problems with Skyland's???

[gand]

I think he should start a new thread on these pics, and put all this behind us. There's a similar hospital near me which has mostly been demolished now. I remember going into one of the old boiler houses as a kid. They look very similar if memory serves 

[john87]

Just now, gand said:

And atlast this thread turns into something interesting. Get some more pictures up. Stuff like this is great 👍 

The boiler house was a thing to see... It was spotless for a start off.. The boilers were fuelled by heavy oil, thick stuff like molasses. This was kept in heated tanks, pretty sure we had 18,000 gallons..

 

Anyway, the oil was heated to about 170F i think it was before it entered the burners. You can see these together with their fans for the combustion air at the front of the boilers. Every hour the boilers were shut down and the burner assembly hinged outward and you wiped the flinger cup thing out with thinners, This cup was about the size of a coke can and was driven at very high speed by an electic motor.

 

Next thing you started the ignition cycle.. The fans would start and "purge" the thing, then the oil sprayer would start and there was like a car spark plug, but about 18" long that served to light the oil spray.. If the boiler did not catch straight away, the purge cycle etc would start again..

 

Every now and again you would have like a backfire on starting. If you look on the front of the boilers you can see round disc things. "blow out doors" they were called.. In the event of a backfire they would blow out on springs to relieve the pressure and you would have to remove them and repack the groove with asbestos string.

 

Assuming the thing did start ok, you would test the high and low water alarms next. First off you started the feed pumps manually, this rasied the level of the water in the boiler until the "high water" alarm sounded. This from memory was a bell. Next you blew the boiler down. This meant opening about a four inch valve at the base of the things and blasting out some water. [This was led through pipes into a blowdown pit about 40 yards away outside]

 

Apart from serving to clean any sludge out of the bottom of the boiler this lowered the water level quite quickly. This set off the "low water" alarm which was a loud "klaxon" type thing. Then you would switch the feed pumps back to "auto" and they would fill the boiler back up to the proper level and then shut off and the boiler was back on line then.

 

You also had to blow down the water level gauge glasses too. [two on each boiler] both to clean them out and also to check that the water rose back in them so you knew they were working.

 

There were always one boiler off and cold and maybe having work done on it, and one on "standby", which meant it was full of water and steam and more or less up to working pressure too, so it could be online in a few minutes, and the other two would actually be online producing steam..

 

The flame from the burner would pass down the central firetube, then bounce off the back wall of the boiler, back through loads of little tubes [about 2" diameter] then back down another set of small tubes before going out and up the flues and hence up the  180 foot brick chimney.

 

Even though this was in 1975 the flue gases were analysed [CO and O2 content and flue gas temperature and "opacity" of the smoke] and all this was recorded automatically by what resembled 2 foot diameter lorry tacho charts!

 

The boilers ran at 150 PSI and so the feed pumps were multistage turbine pumps driven by rather large electric motors. These pumps let out a very loud banshee scream as they did their stuff..

 

Now, boilers are  rated by the weight of steam they can produce an hour, From memory, i think the two larger ones were 8000 lbs an hour each and the two smaller ones 5000 lbs each. A LOT of steam.. If you look above the boilers you can see a faintly coloured large diameter pipe. It was actually bright red. This was the steam delivery pipe from the boilers.

 

The steam was led all around the hospital through pipes in the ducts i was on about. Each ward had its water for heating and indeed "domestic hot water" produced by "calorifiers" These were simply heat exchangers. They were fed by the steam and also cold water. The calorifier heated up the water that was then pumped round to heat the place etc..

 

Now, What happens to steam when it cools?? Yes, it turns back to water. The water, or "condense" as it was called, was pumped back to the boiler feed water tank, and, as it was still hot, saved power when it was fed back to the boilers and re-heated.

 

This meant that the only feed water that was required was that to compensate for leaks and evaporation, so not much at all really. This all had to be tested for water hardness etc and treated with a white powder they would stir in. Cannot remember what that was after all these years....

 

Anyway, i was privileged to be working on these things, rebuilding steam traps, repacking glands, changing gauge glasses etc. If ever you had nothing to do, you were fitted out with a can of "brasso" and off you went polishing!!

 

The worst job, and i never ever did it, was about twice a year i think it was, the very large doors you can see on trhe front of the boilers would be unbolted, [there were doors at the back too] the doors swung open on the huge hinges you can see, and the tubes would have to be swept. Problem was, the tube the flame went down had to be swept too, some someone had to crawl down the thing and sweep it as they went!! They would come out balck and sooty!!

 

The boiler house is still there, although the boilers are gone and the place is heated by gas now.

 

The decline of the place from pampered pristineness, [and i include the entire hospital in this] is very sad to see, which is why i spend as much time as i can, and lots of my own money, trying to restore the place as best i can.

 

Some people like to go to the pub, others like to go on holiday, still others mess around with old motorbikes [been there done that] but me? i like to try to get the hospital back as it was..

 

I have been working on one garden in particular for a while, Now it looks like that, since i have sorted it, the possibilities have been noticed, and the garden, and a large building in it, may very well be brought back into patient use..

 

Yes it is hard work, yes it costs me a fortune, but the rewards when you see things coming back to life are HUGE.. That is why i do what i do...

 

I will get some photos from down the ducts!!!

 

john..

 

[john87]

7 minutes ago, gand said:

I think he should start a new thread on these pics, and put all this behind us. There's a similar hospital near me which has mostly been demolished now. I remember going into one of the old boiler houses as a kid. They look very similar if memory serves 

 

Yes, quite a few of the old hospitals were the same. They were built to a sort of standardised layout.. I have access to more of less anything i like there, including the technical drawings that works and estates have. A few weeks ago i found one giving the layout of the ground floor as it was in 1948. The drawing is about six feet long!

 

It was like a town. In them days the hospital was 120 odd acres, but we are down to about 60 odd at a guess now..

 

An awful lot of the staff are very interested in the history of the place. I get asked to do guided tours for newly qualified nurses!!

 

john..