502 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



confined. The object of a small boiler is to reduce the amount of steam 

 and in turn the amount of fuel burned. Therefore, to make your power 

 plant efficient you must utilize every pound of steam generated. Make 

 every ounce of steam do its share of the work to be done. This can't 

 be accomplished with valves and unions leaking They must be absolutely 

 tight. In a whole-milk creamery where there is skim-milk to pasteurize, 

 live steam will have to be used. I had a fellow say to me: "By using 

 a steam engine and big boiler, there is exhaust steam enough to pasteurize 

 the skim-mi^.k, and I can't see where I would be anything ahead to use 

 a small boiler and have to use live steam." He was firing a 20-horse 

 boiler, running a 15-horse engine and his machinery consisted of two 

 separators, churn, ripener, etc. That idea (he said some salesman showed 

 him where he was saving money by using exhaust steam to pasteurize 

 his skim-milk) is costing that man at least $15.00 a month, and he thinks 

 he is saving money. He bought a new 20-horse boiler instead of a 10. 



Now I am not trying to beat the supply houses out of bigger sales. 

 I am simply showing what can be done and what eventually everybody 

 is going to be doing. In a proposition like this, on one side comes the 

 advice to put in smaller power equipment and on the other side the 

 advice is to buy larger boilers and engines. I am not personally inter- 

 ested in the matter one way or the other, but the mission of a paper 

 like the Creamery Journal is to be of assistance to its readers. I have 

 and am practically demonstrating every day in three creameries under 

 my own direction that it is possible to reduce the fuel bill 50 per cent 

 and still obtain necessary results. 



At the Deerfield (Iowa) creamery we have a 6-horse engine and a 3-horse 

 upright boiler. During April we manufactured 5,880 pounds of butter 

 with twenty gallons of gasoline at ten cents, and $4 w^orth of coal, or a 

 total cost for steam and power of $6. The plant is seven miles in the 

 country and the $4 included the cost of hauling the coal from the town. 

 This is a gathered cream plant. The cream was heated to seventy de- 

 grees and held about three hours, then cooled to fifty-three. The engine 

 was in use about an hour and a half for heating and cooling, then about 

 three hours the next day for churning and working. We do not pasteurize 

 the cream. For pasteurization it would take a larger boiler. 



At the Dewar plant w-e have a 10-horse boiler and a 6-horse gasoline 

 engine. We operate three 2,500-pound separators, a 700-pound churn, 

 ripener, starter can, pump, etc. We churn and separate with the 6-horse 

 engine, and have a small 1^2 horse engine which we use for cooling. 

 During April we handled about 5,000 pounds of milk per day, pasteurized 

 the starter and skim-milk, heated the milk before separation, heated water 

 for cleaning purposes and operated the tester with 160 pounds of coal 

 per day. The coal cost $4 per ton, or twenty cents per 100 pounds, or a 

 total cost of thirty-two cents per day. The two engines consumed on an 

 average of twenty cents worth of gasoline per day, or a total cost for fuel 

 of fifty-two cents, which amounted to $15.60 for thirty days. With our 

 old power plant — a 20-horse boiler and a 20-horse engine — the cost for 

 practically the same amount of milk was $39.40. At that time it took 

 100 pounds of coal per day just to bank the fire. 



