I’ve been wanting for quite a while to indulge in my steam interests and last week was the perfect moment to give them a spin.

A couple of blocks from here there’s a facility that bottles carbonated water but also rents hot/cold dispensers. From time to time they swap the boilers when the limescale fouls them; discarding the whole unit, thermostat, heater and all.

Every time I walk past their door I pick one or two if they are not pitted. They are very nice, made of stainless and have a lot of uses.

I chose the ones in better shape and collected all the gas and water fittings that were lying around in the house trying to get a sense of what can be done.

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The first prototype looks nice and after fixing some leaks it raises pressure without problem, albeit a bit slow.

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One of the first lessons that I learned was that a cheap plastic air line is not suitable for use with hot steam. As soon as I opened the valve the pressure dropped and it lost its curly nature:

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Not happy with the speed and the fact that the steam was very wet I decided to use the heater from a coffee maker and the boiler as a reservoir and steam dome.

This sketchy contraption is what people use nowadays to summon death:

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After a pause for thought and a badly burst hose I decided that it would be better and safer to use two heaters and another boiler as a dome, thus giving birth to this second and final iteration:

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That works like a charm as a pressure cleaner:

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