heat manager vs outdoor reset

Lynne

The heat manager by Beckett and the IntelliCon both save run time for oil and gas boilers for less cost than outdoor reset. How do you think they compare in saving fuel? it would seem that outdoor reset saves more fuel.

TJ_5

Heat Manager

The heat manager is a relatively inexpensive install and Beckett guarantees 10%savings. The ODR while giving a better chance of savings is a more costly in complicated install if the controllers are not already present

Lynne

thanks

I was on the same frame of mind that outdoor reset saved more, i do like the guarantee from Beckett,

realolman

I have


a heat manager... I don't dislike it, but I don't know how much it is helping either. You have to run your water temperature higher than you otherwise might. It does have the light come on sometimes when the burner would otherwise be running, but when the thermostat is satisfied on the OTHER end of the run, it shuts off, so I don't know how much run time is saved.

You may be delaying the burner startup in the beginning of the call for heat, but you may also be cutting it short on the end of the call for heat. What difference it makes... I don't know.


I have spent a good deal of time and effort monitoring my boiler. I think determining whether the heat manager is saving you 10% would be very difficult. There are so many variables, and I don't know how much you can attribute to the Heat Manager.

Sometimes I think I would just prefer an aquastat with a large range of differential adjustment.

This summer I split my house up into 4 zones with programmanble thermostats, and insulated the heck outta the walls in half my basement. I believe that has done way more to save oil in my house than anything else I have done.

So although it is too late to make a long story short, I have a Heat Manager, it didn't cost much, it was easy to install, and it does delay the start of the burner. How much that saves in oil... I dunno.

Chris S

Heat manager

I've installed both, rather all three. I believe an ODR controller is doing the most & therfore saving the most.
Watching a heat manager does not give a real sense of savings. The Intellidyne HW+ has an LCD readout which shows burner run time, and economizer time- the time the burner or gas valve is held off by the control, then it calculates savings and shows this too.

My sense is this will work pretty well on a cast iron, oversized, zoned boiler. One that I installed a week ago showed 14.8 hours of run time, with 8 hrs of economizer time, and 28% savings. I find the 28% hard to believe, but the numbers are very encouraging. That was on a WM Gold, with 6 zones in a 3000 s.f house, which fits my initial description pretty well.

I installed another yesterday on a steel boiler with 2 zones in a 2400 s.f. house. I doubt they'll see those same number, but I plan to go back and check.

I'm buying both units for the same price, so Intellidyne is my first choice. A Tekmar 260 is costing me close to double, plus it's a more complicated install, they are a little harder to sell. I do have one going in next week, on an all radiant job- with a cast iron oil boiler which in my opinion begs for ODR, and will bebefit from it


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realolman

I don't mean

to dispute you or argue about anything youe say... you obviously are quite knowlegeable.

My comment is about electronic stuff. Suppose a person made a box which did nothing except time delay the burner from coming on, and then kept track of the time it delayed it, and read it out with an LCD.

He could claim that the device kept your burner from running 2,3, or how ever many minutes you set it to delay (perhaps randomly), and claim a big savings, when all it really did was delay the time your house got water hot enough to be worth circulating.

Add a lo limit switch to actually start the burner and you got something.

Chris S

The logic of these controls- their claim is that they sense if there is available heat in the boiler that can be used and hold the burner off for a while, thus using that heat before allowing the burner to fire.

I suspect that in a system with a lot of zones such as the one that I described. In the simplest of terms, If a small zone was satisfied witout firing the boiler when the boiler normally would fire, then true saving would be achieved. It seems to me that these add on controls are trying to approach what an MCBA board does, one parameter at a time. While I understand that a btu is a btu, and you need a finite amount of these to meet any heating load, if we can make the boiler operate more efficiently (by reducing short cycling for example) then we can burn less fuel to create those btus.
I have a low mass boiler. I am going to install a control on it today. I don't expect to see much however, as there isn't much heat to scavange.
Installing a low limit as you suggest might accomplish most of what these controls do, but would not on a broad range of sytems, hence the sensors. If you were to run a boiler manually, you would need data to make the decision of when to use that big on/off switch no?

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Gary_27

ODR

I have the tekmar 256 ODR. If you like to experiment and try different settings then ODR is for you. It can be set up many different ways. If you are a set it and forget it person, then get the heat manager.

realolman

Again,

I don't mean to argue with you. I hope you don't take it that way, because that is not what I intend... I'm just trying to have a little discussion with a knowlegeable guy. Thanks for responding.

When they claim to sense whether there is available heat in the boiler, it seems to me that an aquastat would do that.

Seems to me that the only way that an operator, electronic or manual, could surpass the aquastat is if it was "familiar" with each zone's heating load, and could "tell" which and how many zones were calling for heat.

I think it would have to have a sensor mounted on the return of each zone, know the outside temperature, possibly the wind chill, at what rate the temperature in the zone was increasing, and how close the zone's thermostat was to being satisfied.

Probably a sensor that did more than the "I'm happy" / "I'm not happy" thermostat... but "I'm pretty nearly happy... give me 2 more minutes of water at this rate of temperature decline, and I'll be happy... of couse I will imediately begin to swing toward being unhappy again... " at each thermostat would be useful

In the case of the Heat manager, it only has one sensor on the supply side of the boiler. I am sure a smart operator (electronic or otherwise ) could figure out some things with the info from that sensor, but I have a computer recording the operation of my heating system, and I have seen my burner come on for just seconds, right at the end of a call for heat. That's kind of aggravating, but I know that it's difficult for the heat manager to predict the future

Had the heat manager really been on the ball, it would have known that the call was just about satisfied and not let the burner come on at all... or alternatively that it might as well go ahead and fire up to temp because in a couple more minutes you're gonna need it.

It seems to me I have seen guys talk on this forum about constant circulation, and modulating the water temperature. I think the modulating boiler would be good too, but I have oil... so it's on / off for me.

I don't know what the ultimate load/burn "matcher upper" would be. I ( and I guess everybody else )am trying to figure that out.

Gary_27

ODR

Realolman, I enjoy reading your posts. You need ODR. I bought mine to achieve near constant circulation. It works great and if you enjoy tweaking your system there are countless ways of doing it. Have you gone to the tekmar site and downloaded any of the manuals? That's what I did and decided ODR was for me.

joeba

Speaking of dumb controls that don't have to be dumb, how about electronic, programmable thermosats that will call for heat even if in 30 seconds the next program setting will drop the set point down past the current temperature. I mean how hard is it to add a little SW to their controllers to figure that out?

Chris S

heat manager vs odr

I think ODR is superior to the heat manager in most applications. I have a customer with a low mass boiler so the heat manager is ng for her. Outdoor reset is great.

I have another customer with an oversized (way oversized) modcon in a modular which has barely enough baseboard installed. They were uncomfortable in the house until I disconnected the outdoor sensor. ( they have birds and keep the house 72-74 degrees, plus there are other issues with the construction drafts etc.). It's hard to believe that all that technology built into that boiler can't make them comfortable.

As for the heat managers, I've installed 8 (HW+ units) on cast iron oil & gas boilers. Most of them are oversized and overzoned, so the savings shown in a week all show over 20%. I plan to check back on them after more time has passed. I offered all of these customers ODR, but the price difference is a hard sell. I did sell ODR to a customer with all radiant, as I see a bigger benefit for them as I can program all of the temperatures way down.
I'll let you know how that one goes in a year. Will you still be here?

Chris

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Lynne

28% savings truely

on heat manager, isn't that the time that the burner is held off? does is account for run time to get the boiler back up to temp?

realolman

How

do you know it's that much anyway?

Chris S

heat manager

The Intellidyne HW has an LCD screen which gives the read out for cumulative boiler run time, economizer time, and average savings. The Heat manager does not have this feature. I'm not really sure how it calculates it because if you take the actual numbers for example
Run time 14 hrs
Economizer time 8 hrs
That would seem to be a straight up savings of well over 30%. Of course all those numbers really mean ( I think) is that the burner was held off from firing 8 hrs. when it normally would be firing.

I do see a huge POTENTIAL for savings when a 124K net oil boiler is firing to heat usually only one or two zones that amount to an average of 14,000 btus of load each.
In this instance the control is helping to eliminate some of the short cycling.

Perhaps someone out there understands this better than I do, and can explain those numbers better.

Chris



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CC.Rob_11

as I understand it...

it's a proprietary algorithm that actually determines "savings."

There is a run-time counter that tracks burner hold-off during a heating cycle due to the Intellicon device. Then it appears there is some "modeling" of what the cycle would have looked like (time and temperature) if there were no hold-off. The difference between the measured and the modeled is the "savings." How they get that is hidden in the black box, so it's not possible to evaluate the assumptions, algorithm, and resulting "savings" number.

Point being that one could make a widget to come up with any savings number you want. What sounds reasonable to you?

Long time-series with and without the device, normalized for the usual variables (e.g., HDD) would be a better approach.

realolman

I thought

you were talking about the "Beckett Heat Manager"... that's the name of it... apparently you were talking in terms of a heat manager by Intelledyne.... sorry

Lynne

beckett/intellicon same thing

by the looks of things, the intelli has a read out

1bourbon

same thing

Basically they are the same thing. The Beckett Heat Manager is made by Intellidyne. The IntelliCon-HW+ is a slightly fancier version of the HeatManager.