NATUBAL HISTORY BUILDING 79 



MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT 



CHARACTER AND LAYOUT OF THE MACHINERY PLANT 



The heating, lighting and ventilation of this large building, in 

 view of its great open spaces, call for a relatively extensive plant, and 

 the one that has been installed embodies the best of recent improve- 

 ments in steam and electrical engineering. Its capacity having been 

 gauged to meet the requirements of the older buildings also, an 

 economy has been secured in the maintenance of the museum service 

 generally. It is unfortunate, however, that the plant could not 

 have been located in a separate structure, on account of the annoy- 

 ance caused by coal dust and soot and by the vibration produced 

 by certain parts of the machinery, troubles that can best be reme- 

 died by the establisliment of a central power plant for the Govern- 

 ment buildings in the western part of the city, as has been proposed. 



Essentially all of the ground story of the east wing except the 

 series of rooms along the south side, used as carpenter, metal and 

 paint shops, and a storage room at the east end, has been given 

 over to the purposes of the plant. The layout of this space, in- 

 cluding the positions of the principal pieces of machinery, is shown 

 in the accompanying diagram (plate 12) . The coal bunker is located 

 on the north side of the inner driveway. Beyond an intervening 

 corridor is the boiler room, with the boilers (A, A), enclosed in front 

 and at the sides by a wall, having a vertical sliding door at each 

 end, to prevent as much as possible the dissemination of dust as the 

 coal is passed to the hoppers. Adjoining the boilers on the north is 

 a stoker fan (B). The machinery room which follows occupies the 

 entire middle part of the wing between the outer rows of piers. It 

 is open at the western end but enclosed on both sides by walls pro- 

 vided with large glass transoms. It contains four electric generators 

 with engines (C), three of which are arranged along the southern 

 side of the room, while the fourth, of smaller size, is on the north- 

 ern side near the boilers. The other machinery consists of two 

 boiler feed-water pumps (D), the blow-off tank for the boilers 

 (E), feed-water heater, oil separator and drain pump (F), high- 

 pressure service and fire pump (G), hot water service pump, motor, 

 tank and heater (H), vacuum pumps, heaters and circulating 

 pumps for the house heating system (I), drain pump, receiving 

 tank, etc., located in a pit (K), and vacuum cleaning apparatus (L). 



At the western end of the room is the electrical generator switch- 

 board (M), and in the northwest corner of the wing, the main elec- 

 trical distribution switchboard (N). A suite of rooms along the 

 northern side of the wing furnishes an office for the engineer and 

 machine and plumbing shops. 



