Heating And Lighting

The Detroit Evening News says that at the Kalamazoo insane asylum, the finishing touches are now bcing given to what is undoubtedly the finest combined beating, lighting and power plant in the country. Prof. M. E. Cooley, of this city. is the designing and supervisïng engineer. The state appropriated $100.000 for this plant. There are the two immense main buildings, 100 feet above the railroad track, and 1,200 feet apart from center to center, with a chapel midway between, to be heated by steam and lighted with electricity. Then there is a large laundry to be supplied with hot water and power, a kitchen requiring heat and hot water, and bathrooms. Two and a half miles away is the farm, upon which stands several large cottages, whioh will be lighted by electricity, and the waterworks of the asylum require a pumping fot-ce capable of raising water 200 feet. The coal used must be elevated nearly a hundred feet from the railroad track. To accomplish all of these important purposc-s the plant was located in a fine new building in the rear of the chapel. Here is a battery of boilers capable of generating 12,000 horse-power, a part to be always in reserve, as 9,000 horsepower is adequate to the work. Leading 800 feet one way and 400 the other are two tunnels seven feet wide, six feet nine inches high, lighted with eleetricitv and paved with artificial stone. These lead to the two main buildings, and along them pass the immense low pressure steam muins for heating, the return and drip mains, the high-preasure power pipes, and the electr-ic lighting cables, everything convenient for constant inspection and repair. In this central building are the dynamos and engine that run everything. Prom his engine room the engineer can manage every part of the vast systom. He can raise coal from the tracks below with his electric hoist. Nine hundred feet away and 100 f eet below is the pumping station of the asylum water works. The pumps are electric, and the engineer can stop or start them and change the pressure irom an indirect one on the water tower for ordinary purposes, to a direct one f or fire protection, without stirring from his engine room. And the heating and lightingof the various portions of the large buildings are similarly immediately within his control. Such is the economy of the new arrangments over the old that in 10 years, making a liberal allowance for repairs and accidents, the new plant will pa.y for itself in the saving of fuel.