270. _Q._--The main thing after all in boilers is their evaporative powers?
_A._--The proportions of tubular boilers, as of all boilers, should obviously have reference to the evaporation required, whereas the demand upon the boiler for steam is very often reckoned contingent upon the nominal horse power of the engine; and as the nominal power of an engine is a conventional quantity by no means in uniform proportion to the actual quantity of steam consumed, perplexing complications as to the proper proportions of boilers have in consequence sprung up, to which most of the failures in that department of engineering may be imputed. It is highly expedient, therefore, in planning boilers for any particular engine, to consider exclusively the actual power required to be produced, and to apportion the capabilities of the boiler accordingly.
271. _Q._--In other words you would recommend the inquiry to be restricted to the mode of evaporating a given number of cubic feet of water in the hour, instead of embracing the problem how an engine of a given nominal power was to be supplied with steam?
_A._--I would first, as I have already stated, consider the actual power required to be produced, and then fix the amount of expansion to be adopted. If the engine had to work up to three times its nominal power, as is now common in marine engines, I should either increase correspondingly the quantity of evaporating surface in the boiler, or adopt such an amount of expansion as would increase threefold the efficacy of the steam, or combine in a modified manner both of these arrangements. Reckoning the evaporation of a cubic foot of water in the hour as equivalent to an actual horse power, and allowing a square yard or 9 square feet as the proper proportion of flue surface to evaporate a cubic foot of water in the hour, it is clear that I must either give 27 square feet of heating surface in the boiler to have a trebled power without expansion, or I must cut off the steam at one seventh of the stroke to obtain a three-fold power without increasing the quantity of heating surface. By cutting off the steam, however, at one third of the stroke, a heating surface of 13-1/2 square feet will give a threefold power, and it will usually be the most judicious course to carry the expansion as far as possible, and then to add the proportion of heating surface necessary to make good the deficiency still found to exist.