Icehouse Otto Belted Up - 1929 50 Hp Otto Diesel On Load - Coolspring Power Museum - June 2023

This engine was built in 1929, just before the Depression, at a time when large multi-cylinder engines were becoming common. It was thus one of the last of the big singles made.
The engine powered an ice house in Lewisburg, PA, driving the York ammonia compressor and large lighting alternator and exciter seen here.
Diesel World magazine did a good article on this engine, titled "You Otto Know". Worth a look.
Despite the strobe effect, everything is rotating clockwise in these views.
LG G7
[787]
NOTE: My videos are not monetized! Most of my videos are to help multiple nonprofits, thus allocating any income would be a nightmare. YT is throwing ads where they shouldn't be! Worse, many of the ads are obnoxious or offensive.
230617j_Icehouse_Otto_Belts.mp4

[@WillSmithHitandMiss]

Very Nice!

[@SteamCrane]

I love this engine!

[@WillSmithHitandMiss]

@@SteamCrane Certainly my favorite building there...

[@able880]

I came from a old line of machanic electricans -
My grand father would talk about old ice & power houses -
Often they only provided power for 4 hrs a day to blocks of homes - many homes had house batterys as they were called -
Just as there farm lighting plants with house batterys in rural homes - it was the same in many small towns -
except that the homes depended on a power provider for the charging of the housee battery's -
Each home might have a 32 volt battery bank - there would be 3 homes battery banks hooked to the 110 volt power line in series so that each home recieved around 37 volts toward charging there house batterys for 2 to 4 hrs a day -
I live in the deep south - down here it doesn't get real cold so the acid strength was often 1.200 - modern deep cycle batteries use an acid strength of 1.275 gravity -
You generally can only get 3 to 7 yrs of service out of them - the stronger acid destroys the positive plate and sulfate builds on the negative plate -
With the weaker acid solution of 1.200 there is a 40% loss of capacity and they can freeze at 0° -
The up side is the cells lasted from the 1890s up to.the 1950s when REA brought AC power to many rural. towns -
If a home wanted more power than a town could provide - they could add batterys to there house and purchase there own generator to charge there batterys -
Those batterys were generaly at 1.220 gravity so they had more capacity - but many towns only alowed generators to run on friday all day once a week to charge the house batterys because of the noise they made -
The large power house could often generate power at 22:1 efficency - that meant they could generate 22000 watts of power per gallon of oil burned or diesel crude burned - were as small high speed gas generators had a efficency of 4:1 meaning they produced 4000 watts per gallon of gas burned -
My grand father, dad and uncles talked about that as i was growing up -
If you bring the price of fuel up to our cost today - you multiply the price up till 1932 by 200 times - so if fuel was 15¢ a gallon in our money thats $30 a gallon today -
In the end those slow speed engines had time to burn most of the fuel so they were more efficient to run -
For those that understand battery tecnology - you can delute the acid in a golf cart battery to 1.200, 1.220 or 1.240 - at 1.220 its good for minus 17° with out freezing - at 1.220 there is a 30% decrease in capacity - but they can be cycled 2500 times - generaly batterys for farms were sized for charging once a week - itwas common for all cells to last 40 yrs -
as for charging just watch for when the cells gas about like when a coke setting on a table bubbles - as for the float voltage if its to high you will need to add water often - you want the float to were they dont need make up water for long periids of time - i wound up as a offshore oilfield genrator man so im about 3rd or forth generation - i do use a oil burning stationary engine -
At 500 rpms the efficency is 18:1 vs a gas gen at 3:1 -
Its semi hybrid - slow speed single cylinder genrstor creat a bad lighting flicker so there generally set up in parrel with a battery bank to smooth the flicker out -
After hurricanes our power off the pole can be off for 9 months at times - it helps to have an old style set up vs a modern set up -

[@SteamCrane]

There is a guy that shows a really nice FM home lighting plant at Coolspring. Search for "Fairbanks-Morse Home Light Plant - 32VDC, 600 Watts - Coolspring Power Museum".

[@able880]

@@SteamCranethanks for letting me know about that -

[@ElAirHawk]

Is that a Frick HDI 6x6, or a 5x5? It’s been close to 20 years since I’ve seen and operated one - in my Engine Room I had (2) 6x6, (4) 9x9, and a 12x12 Frick HDI Compressors on the High Stage.

[@UnitCrane514]

The tag on the compressor was York. Dad did commercial refrigeration for close to 50 years, when I was a kid he would take me into the engine rooms of the freezers he serviced in Detroit. Many of them had large Howe and York Ammonia compressors from this era still being used or fully refurbished and ready to be fired up for stand by use. Mind you this was in the early 2000s so let that be a testament to how well made those compressors were to still be a viable option for modern refridgeration needs. Im sure many are still in use to this day