Midwest Steam Vertical Boiler

Has anybody built the Midwest Steam engine and vertical boiler kit ? I want to use this boiler to power the PM Research model stationary engines 3BIM and 7BIM.

1. How many PSI does this boiler generate ?

2. Could I use a methylated spirits burner in this boiler ? Midwest Steam recommend sterno but I want to use something else if possible.

3. Is the boiler made of copper ?

Edited By Brian John on 10/04/2014 06:44:52

You may be better off asking on one of the American model engineering forums as we don't have that many members from the US where the PMR and Mid West products are far more common. Try MEM forum for a start and also HMEM.

Not sure where you are located but check the local boiler regs, I doubt it makes much pressure but it may not be allowed as it has no safety valve that I can see!! Its possible that they use the silicon tube as the safety expecting it to blow off if teh pressure gets too high. So likely to be quite low pressure similar to Mamod

Don't see any reason why you could not use meths

Its copper with a brass fluetube

J

Edited By JasonB on 10/04/2014 07:54:12

I live in Cairns, Australia and I am pretty sure that it has a safety valve.

Edited By Brian John on 10/04/2014 14:05:02

I was going by the instructions for building the boiler, all I can see is a filler cap and an outlet stub which takes the silicon tube.

You may also find it a bit wanting in the amount of steam produced for your engines, wht not try the PMR vertical.

The PMR boilers are quite expensive but I must admit they are very good..

The ebay ad does say '''Boiler includes a pressure relief valve''.

Some of the youtube videos of the completed PMR engines have them running at very low PSI (about 5 PSI) which is why I thought I might get away with using the Midwest Steam boiler.

I have never built a boiler before and I was not really keen on having something that runs at 30 to 40 PSI on the bench. I thought it might be safer to have my first boiler run at less than 10 PSI

Edited By Brian John on 10/04/2014 17:51:41