Right, let's get this life carrier issue out of the way. 

For the sake of pleasing your beloved GM, could we just leave the water purification equipment as a requirement to repair? I mean, we have floating air ships, it stands to reason that we could have a bit of leeway on steam engine logic. Perhaps we could put it down to the generator being unequal to the task, and that every little helps? Getting the thing off the ground will be nothing short of an engineering miracle, but hoorah away we go?

Otherwise I'll have to allow Grothnor the thing from the get go- which I'm happy to do, so long as everyone else is okay with the idea.