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Possibly a drain fitting at the bottom would save having to tip the unit over to drain, and you need a place for air to come in when draining anyway.From the dimensions on the bushings, sounds like a large boiler?
Hi Thomas,What size and style are you doing?Gerald.
Sounds nice! Hope you do a build log of it, love to see how it goes together.
Over here we have to have two means of filling the boiler, if a pump or injector should fail you can still get water into it without risk of running low or having to drop the fire.Is that 1/2" NPT you are talking about, seems a bit big to me for a 6" dia boiler, 1/4NPT would be fine for most, 3/8 NPT for the manual fill, 1/4" for pump/injector clacks.I'd be inclined to have a large dia flange on the top to take a steam dome, you can then connect steam outlet, safety valve and whistle to this. It will help prevent priming and reduce the chance of a fountain of hot water when the safety valve blows.
Since you mentioned a welded shell and the drawing shows the square shape, I take it that the boiler shell will be steel of some sort, with welded seams vs silver soldered? Does being electric heated rather than a gas or coal flame help out with being steel, vs the typical round tube copper? Very interesting, looking forward to the build!
What sort of pressures are you thinking of. We would never be allowed to have flat surfaces like that without additional stays to stop the thing bulging out like a football.