About Insulated Pipe Breaks (Heat Changes)

[8bitlikadam]

I want to build a sauna room, but there's a big problem. When hot water or steam passes through the pipes, they start to break. Shouldn't insulated pipes normally retain this heat and keep the temperature in the outer layer nominal?

[asurendra]

12 minutes ago, 8bitlikadam said:

I want to build a sauna room, but there's a big problem. When hot water or steam passes through the pipes, they start to break. Shouldn't insulated pipes normally retain this heat and keep the temperature in the outer layer nominal?

Insulated pipes slow down heat exchange. However, they dont stop it entirely. Also material is important too: ceramica or insulite keeps water cool for much longer than regular granite etc. 

Make sure water is constantly flow. Breaks usually happen when water stay still for too long

[blakemw]

Insulated pipes are really badly insulated, like they're not as badly insulated as normal pipes, but there's a massive difference in insulation quality between insulated pipes and insulated tiles. Like multipliers don't say everything, but insulated pipe has its baseline conductivity divided by 32, while insulated tiles baseline conductivity is divided by 16256, so you could say they are 508x better insulated.

A normal pipe inside an insulated tile is MUCH better insulated than an insulated pipe, an insulated pipe inside an insulated tile is even more better insulated but hardly needed.

So here are the principles to use:

1. Whenever possible, have pipes inside insulated tiles or outside the steam room entirely, only have them pop in to connect to the Aquatuner.
2. Make these pipes inside the steam room out of the material with the lowest conductivity, such as Ceramic, Mafic is good too for Gas Pipes. A gnarly detail of the demented heat exchange formula for buildings, is if the pipe is carrying stuff hotter than the environment you benefit significantly from lower SHC, so obsidian is better than igneous. But if the pipe is carrying stuff cooler than the environment SHC makes no difference.
3. Bridges are magical teleporters and no heat exchange takes place "inside" a bridge, furthermore for a pipe that is completely free flowing the bridge grabs a packet entering the inlet before that packet can exchange heat. So using bridges can reduce the number of tiles where heat exchange is actually happening.
4. Ensure that any pipe segment inside the steam room keeps flowing. If you have something like an automated Liquid Vent for steam turbine exhaust water to cool down hot spots in the steam room, you could either have exhaust water flow behind it to a downstream Vent that is always open, or you could automate the vent with a second Timer sensor like 1/99 so every 100 seconds it lets a water packet out regardless of the primary automation.
5.  

[Bzhydack]

23 hours ago, 8bitlikadam said:

I want to build a sauna room, but there's a big problem. When hot water or steam passes through the pipes, they start to break. Shouldn't insulated pipes normally retain this heat and keep the temperature in the outer layer nominal?

If you dont need full capacity of pipe, then you can limit flow amount to 10% with Valve. If pipe is full only in 10% (1kg for liquid, 100g for gas) then will not break due to phase change.

[8bitlikadam]

On 9/2/2025 at 9:51 AM, blakemw said:

Insulated pipes are really badly insulated, like they're not as badly insulated as normal pipes, but there's a massive difference in insulation quality between insulated pipes and insulated tiles. Like multipliers don't say everything, but insulated pipe has its baseline conductivity divided by 32, while insulated tiles baseline conductivity is divided by 16256, so you could say they are 508x better insulated.

A normal pipe inside an insulated tile is MUCH better insulated than an insulated pipe, an insulated pipe inside an insulated tile is even more better insulated but hardly needed.

So here are the principles to use:

1. Whenever possible, have pipes inside insulated tiles or outside the steam room entirely, only have them pop in to connect to the Aquatuner.
2. Make these pipes inside the steam room out of the material with the lowest conductivity, such as Ceramic, Mafic is good too for Gas Pipes. A gnarly detail of the demented heat exchange formula for buildings, is if the pipe is carrying stuff hotter than the environment you benefit significantly from lower SHC, so obsidian is better than igneous. But if the pipe is carrying stuff cooler than the environment SHC makes no difference.
3. Bridges are magical teleporters and no heat exchange takes place "inside" a bridge, furthermore for a pipe that is completely free flowing the bridge grabs a packet entering the inlet before that packet can exchange heat. So using bridges can reduce the number of tiles where heat exchange is actually happening.
4. Ensure that any pipe segment inside the steam room keeps flowing. If you have something like an automated Liquid Vent for steam turbine exhaust water to cool down hot spots in the steam room, you could either have exhaust water flow behind it to a downstream Vent that is always open, or you could automate the vent with a second Timer sensor like 1/99 so every 100 seconds it lets a water packet out regardless of the primary automation.
5.  

 

21 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

If you dont need full capacity of pipe, then you can limit flow amount to 10% with Valve. If pipe is full only in 10% (1kg for liquid, 100g for gas) then will not break due to phase change.

Thank you so much for the very detailed information 🙏🏻☮🌴