Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel Part 11

In the employment of peat fuel, regard must be had to its shape and bulk. Commonly, peat is cut or moulded into blocks or sods like bricks, which have a length of 8 to 18 inches; a breadth of 4 to 6 inches, and a thickness of 1-1/2 to 3 inches. Machine peat is sometimes formed into circular disks of 2 to 3 inches diameter, and 1 to 2 inches thickness and thereabouts. It is made also in the shape of b.a.l.l.s of 2 to 3 inches diameter. Another form is that of thick-walled pipes, 2 to 3 inches in diameter, a foot or more long, and with a bore of one-half inch.

Flat blocks are apt to lie closely together in the fire, and obstruct the draft. A fire-place, constructed properly for burning them, should be shallow, not admitting of more than two or three layers being superposed. According to the bulkiness of the peat, the fire-place should be roomy, as regards length and breadth.

Fibrous and easily crumbling peat is usually burned upon a hearth, _i.

e._ without a grate, either in stoves or open fire-places. Dense peat burns best upon a grate, the bars of which should be thin and near together, so that the air have access to every part of the fuel. The denser and tougher the peat, and the more its shape corresponds with that usual to coal, the better is it adapted for use in our ordinary coal stoves and furnaces.

5.--_Burning of broken peat._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1--STAIR GRATE.]

Broken peat--the fragments and waste of the cut or moulded blocks, and peat as obtained by plowing and harrowing the surface of drained peat-beds--may be used to advantage in the _stair grate_, fig. 1, which was introduced some years ago in Austria, and is adapted exclusively for burning finely divided fuel. It consists of a series of thin iron bars 3 to 4 inches wide, _a_, _a_, _a_, ... which are arranged above each other like steps, as shown in the figure. They are usually half as long as the grate is wide, and are supported at each end by two side pieces or walls, _l._ Below, the grate is closed by a heavy iron plate. The fuel is placed in the hopper _A_, which is kept filled, and from which it falls down the incline as rapidly as it is consumed. The air enters from the s.p.a.ce _G_, and is regulated by doors, not shown in the cut, which open into it. The masonry is supported at _u_, by a hollow iron beam.

Below, a lateral opening serves for clearing out the ashes. The effect of the fire depends upon the width of the throat of the hopper at _u_, which regulates the supply of fuel to the grate, and upon the inclination of the latter. The throat is usually from 6 to 8 inches wide, according to the nature of the fuel. The inclination of the grate is 40 to 45 and, in general, should be that which is a.s.sumed by the sides of a pile of the fuel to be burned, when it is thrown up into a heap. This grate ensures complete combustion of fuel that would fall through ordinary grates, and that would merely smoulder upon a hearth.

The fire admits of easy regulation, the ashes may be removed and the fuel may be supplied without _checking the fire_. Not only broken peat, but coal dust, saw dust, wood turnings and the like may be burned on this grate. The figure represents it as adapted to a steam boiler.

6.--_Hygroscopic water of peat fuel._

The quant.i.ty of water retained by air-dried peat appears to be the same as exists in air-dried wood, viz., about 20 _per cent._ The proportion will vary however according to the time of seasoning. In thoroughly seasoned wood or peat, it may be but 15 _per cent._; while in the poorly dried material it may amount to 25 or more _per cent._ When _hot-dried_, the proportion of water may be reduced to 10 _per cent._, or less.

When peat is still moist, it gathers water rapidly from damp air, and in this condition has been known to burst the sheds in which it was stored, but after becoming dry to the eye and feel, it is but little affected by dampness, no more so, it appears, than seasoned wood.

7.--_Shrinkage._

In estimating the value and cost of peat fuel, it must be remembered that peat shrinks greatly in drying, so that three to five cords of fresh peat yield but one cord of dry peat. When the fiber of the peat is broken by the hand, or by machinery, the shrinkage is often much greater, and may sometimes amount to seven-eighths of the original volume.--_Dingler's Journal, Oct. 1864_, _S._ 68.

The difference in weight between fresh and dry peat is even greater.

Fibrous peat, fresh from the bog, may contain ninety _per cent._ of water, of which seventy _per cent._ must evaporate before it can be called dry. The proportion of water in earthy or pitchy peat is indeed less; but the quant.i.ty is always large, so that from five to nine hundred weight of fresh peat must be lifted in order to make one hundred weight of dry fuel.

8.--_Time of excavation, and drying._

Peat which is intended to be used after simply drying, must be excavated so early in the season that it shall become dry before frosty weather arrives: because, if frozen when wet, its coherence is destroyed, and on thawing it falls to a powder useless for fuel.

Peat must be dried with certain precautions. If a block of fresh peat be exposed to hot sunshine, it dries and shrinks on the surface much more rapidly than within: as a consequence it cracks, loses its coherence, and the block is easily broken, or of itself falls to pieces. In Europe, it is indeed customary to dry peat without shelter, the loss by too rapid drying not being greater than the expense of building and maintaining drying sheds. There however the sun is not as intense, nor the air nearly so dry, as it is here. Even there, the occurrence of an unusually hot summer, causes great loss. In our climate, some shelter would be commonly essential unless the peat be dug early in the spring, so as to lose the larger share of its water before the hot weather; or, as would be best of all, in the autumn late enough to escape the heat, but early enough to ensure such dryness as would prevent damage by frost. The peculiarities of climate must decide the time of excavating and the question of shelter.

The point in drying peat is to make it lose its water gradually and regularly, so that the inside of each block shall dry nearly as fast as the outside.

Some of the methods of hot-drying peat, will be subsequently noticed.

Summer or fall digging would be always advantageous on account of the swamps being then most free from water. In Bavaria, peat is dug mostly in July and the first half of August.

9.--_Drainage._

When it is intended to raise peat fuel _in the form of blocks_, the bog should be drained no more rapidly than it is excavated. Peat, which is to be worth cutting in the spring, must be covered with water during the winter, else it is pulverized by the frost. So, too, it must be protected against drying away and losing its coherency in summer, by being kept sufficiently impregnated with water.

In case an extensive bog is to be drained to facilitate the cutting out of the peat for use as fuel, the ca.n.a.ls that carry off the water from the parts which are excavating, should be so constructed, that on the approach of cold weather, the remaining peat may be flooded again to the usual height.

In most of the smaller swamps, systematic draining is unnecessary, the water drying away in summer enough to admit of easy working.

In some methods of preparing or condensing peat by machinery, it is best or even needful to drain and air-dry the peat, preliminary to working.

By draining, the peat settles, especially on the borders of the ditches, several inches, or even feet, according to its nature and depth. It thus becomes capable of bearing teams and machinery, and its density is very considerably augmented.

10.--_The Cutting of Peat._--a. _Preparations._

In preparing to raise peat fuel from the bog, the surface material, which from the action of frost and sun has been pulverized to "muck," or which otherwise is full of roots and undecomposed matters, must be removed usually to the depth of 12 to 18 inches. It is only those portions of the peat which have never frozen nor become dry, and are free from coa.r.s.e fibers of recent vegetation, that can be cut for fuel.

Peat fuel must be brought into the form of blocks or ma.s.ses of such size and shape as to adapt them to use in our common stoves and furnaces.

Commonly, the peat is of such consistence in its native bed, that it may be cut out with a spade or appropriate tool into blocks having more or less coherence. Sometimes it is needful to take away the surplus water from the bog, and allow the peat to settle and drain a while before it can be cut to advantage.

When a bog is to be opened, a deep ditch is run from an outlet or lowest point a short distance into the peat bed, and the working goes on from the banks of this ditch. It is important that system be followed in raising the peat, or there will be great waste of fuel and of labor.

If, as often happens, the peat is so soft in the wet season as to break on the vertical walls of a ditch and fill it, at the same time dislocating the ma.s.s and spoiling it for cutting, it is best to carry down the ditch in terraces, making it wide above and narrow at the bottom.

b. _Cutting by hand._

The simplest mode of procedure, consists in laying off a "field" or plot of, say 20 feet square, and making vertical cuts with a sharp spade three or four inches deep from end to end in parallel lines, as far apart as it is proposed to make the breadth of the peats or sods, usually four to five inches. Then, the field is cut in a similar manner in lines at right angles to the first, and at a distance that shall be the length of the peats, say 18 to 20 inches. Finally, the workman lifts the peats by horizontal thrusts of his spade, made at a depth of three inches. The sods as lifted, are placed on a light barrow or upon a board or rack, and are carried off to a drying ground, near at hand, where they are laid down flatwise to drain and dry. In Ireland, it is the custom, after the peats have lain thus for a fortnight or so, to "foot"

them, i. e. to place them on end close together; after further drying the "footing" is succeeded by "clamping," which is building the sods up into stacks of about twelve to fifteen feet long, four feet wide at bottom, narrowing to one foot at top, with a height of four to five feet. The outer turfs are inclined so as to shed the rain. The peat often remains in these clamps on the bog until wanted for use, though in rainy seasons the loss by crumbling is considerable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2.--GERMAN PEAT-KNIFE.]

Other modes of lifting peat, require tools of particular construction....

In Germany it is common to excavate by _vertical_ thrusts of the tool, the cutting part of which is represented above, fig. 2. This tool is pressed down into the peat to a depth corresponding to the thickness of the required block: its three edges cut as many sides of the block, and the bottom is then broken or torn out by a prying motion.

In other cases, this or a similar tool is forced down by help of the foot as deeply into the peat as possible by a workman standing above, while a second man in the ditch cuts out the blocks of proper thickness by means of a sharp spade thrust horizontally. When the peats are taken out to the depth of the first vertical cutting, the knife is used again from above, and the process is thus continued as before, until the bottom of the peat or the desired depth is reached.

In Ireland, is employed the "slane," a common form of which is shown in fig. 3, it being a long, narrow and sharp spade, 20 inches by six, with a wing at right angles to the blade.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3.--IRISH SLANE.]

The peats are cut by one thrust of this instrument which is worked by the arms alone. After a vertical cut is made by a spade, in a line at right angles to a bank of peat, the slane cuts the bottom and other side of the block; while at the end the latter is simply lifted or broken away.

Peat is most easily cut in a vertical direction, but when, as often happens, it is made up of layers, the sods are likely to break apart where these join. Horizontal cutting is therefore best for stratified peat.

_System employed in East Friesland._--In raising peat, great waste both of labor and of fuel may easily occur as the result of random and unsystematic methods of working. For this reason, the mode of cutting peat, followed in the extensive moors of East Friesland, is worthy of particular description. There, the business is pursued systematically on a plan, which, it is claimed, long experience[17] has developed to such perfection that the utmost economy of time and labor is attained. The cost of producing marketable peat in East Friesland in 1860, was one silver groschen=about 2-1/2 cents, per hundred weight; while at that time, in Bavaria, the hundred weight cost three times as much when fit for market; and this, notwithstanding living and labor are much cheaper in the latter country.

The method to be described, presupposes that the workmen are not hindered by water, which, in most cases, can be easily removed from the high-moors of the region. The peat is worked in long stretches of 10 feet in width, and 100 to 1000 paces in length: each stretch or plot is excavated at once to a considerable depth and to its full width. Each successive year the excavation is widened by 10 feet, its length remaining the same. Sometimes, unusual demand leads to more rapid working; but the width of 10 feet is adhered to for each cutting, and, on account of the labor of carrying the peats, it is preferred to extend the length rather than the width.

a.s.suming that the peat bed has been opened by a previous cutting, to the depth of 5-1/2 feet, and the surface muck and light peat, 1-1/2 feet thick, have been thrown into the excavation of the year before--a new plot is worked by five men as follows.

One man, the "Bunker," removes from the surface, about two inches of peat, disintegrated by the winter's frost, throwing it into last year's ditch.

Following him, come two "Diggers," of whom one stands on the surface of the peat, and with a heavy, long handled tool, cuts out the sides and end of the blocks, which are about seventeen by five inches; while the other stands in the ditch, and by horizontal thrusts of a light, sharp spade, removes the sods, each of five and a half inches thickness, and places them on a small board near by. Each block of peat has the dimensions of one fourth of a cubic foot, and weighs about 13 pounds.

Two good workmen will raise 25 such peats, or 6-1/4 cubic feet, per minute.

A fourth man, the "Loader," puts the sods upon a wheel-barrow, always two rows of six each, one upon the other, and--

A fifth, the "Wheeler," removes the load to the drying ground, and with some help from the Bunker, disposes them flatwise in rows of 16 sods wide, which run at right angles to the ditch, and, beginning at a little more than 10 feet from the latter, extend 50 feet.

The s.p.a.ce of 10 feet between the plot that is excavating, and the drying ground, is, at the same time, cleared of the useless surface muck by the Bunker, in preparation for the next year's work.