The Biggest Loser

CMadatMe

Great Article Mr Yates. Thanks for the sales tool!!!! For those that have not had the pleasure to read it enjoy.

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

ROI & simple payback are excellent

If anyone doesn't believe ECM circulators are a GREAT investment with a short payback, join me in San Antonio where I'll be giving away the secrets you need to know to sell these things like hotcakes at a pancake jamboree!



Comparing a fixed-speed 87-watt circ against an ECM circ mano-a-mano in a real-world example where it replaced an 87-watt fixed-speed circ and is using 14-watts to do the same job. Power is 12-cents per kWh & run hours will be at least 3,000 due to outdoor reset. Add 5% per year for increase in power costs & my customer avoids $1,363.89 over 20-years time.





In terms of simple payback, they get that in the 5th year if we're seeing a $200.00 cost diff between the two circs. 



I'll be a bit late for work today! Went after that stupid groundhog who saw his shadow this morning - the bugger knocked down my trees in his hasty retreat!

Mark Eatherton

YIKES....

Looks like biomass material to me :-)



Excellent presentation by the way. Wish I cold be in Tejas to hear you representation, but work, that 4 lettered word, raised its ugly head,,,



Great article for sure. Times, they are a changin'



ME

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

well then

You'll be able to catch me in the near future on the RPA site doing a webinar on the numbers-crunching and sales aspects.



Trees don't look so big till you see someone sitting on them. And, this was the smaller one.

Paul Pollets

Great Article!!

Good work, Dave. See you in San Antonio....

Wayco Wayne_2

Great article.

I've been using the ECM circulators for my customers ever since the Wilo Eco became availible. Trouble is my personal home system is old enough to reflect my old ways as a circoholic. Your article may provide the needed motivation for me to bring my lawn chair back down to the boiler room and see how I can modify and rectify that design. thanks for the bump in the took ****. WW

bill_105

Just what I was looking for!

About a month ago I was pitching a wilo to a H.O. Now money is not an issue to this guy, but I had a hard time explaining this variable speed thing and the benefits. This article is great!

Now a question. After the electrical benefits, does a reduction in short cycling exist and to what extent are the benefits?

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

tis why

The Cobbler's children go barefoot!

joe_94

Payout for only one ECM?

But what if  the system has only one  1/25th HP circulator. and 5  zone valves.?

Pretty long payback time?

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

nice payback & ROI

It depends! Seriously: you need to have a few bits of info to really judge and determine the answer, but let's say you have a 97-watt 1/25th HP circ (checked 1/25th HP circs to find that wattage), electricity in the starting year is 12-cents per kWh, run-hours will be 3,000 due to using outdoor reset, and the cost of electricity will increase by 5% per year for my calculation.



Since we're comparing circ v circ, we'll ignore the zone valves.



First year cost for the 97-watt circ will be $34.92 & if the ECM circ is using 14-watts the first year cost is $5.04. Customer avoids $29.98. If the cost difference between the two circs for your customer is $200.00, the ROI is 14.94% in the first year. Not bad & this is a great way to show customers the value of investing in energy conservation. As electricity costs rise, so does the ROI.



Payback occurs in the 7th year and over 20-years time, the customer avoids giving the utility co $1,100.22.



If you're bouncing off of the five zone valves, then the ECM circ's wattage will vary as ZV's open/close. (True for delta-P or -T) That's why I used the Kill-a-Watt to data log my total power usage.



According to Siggy, that $29.98 translates into $41.97 in real value due to tax-avoidance. If so, then the real payback occurs early in the 5th year.

Charlie from wmass

The thing is for me

many systems are not about the difference in cost of the two circulators. The existing circulator is working just fine. In this case it is hard to sell a better solution. Not impossible, but hard.

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

sometimes

Charles,



I have used the ECM circs very effectively to win bids for replacements and new work by showing the long-term energy-conservation. In several cases, it was the circs that caused the owners to sign our higher-priced (up front costs) contracts.



Present the options; provide the economics; ask for the contract.



The competition is not doing the due diligence and they are not providing the after-the-sale ongoing costs of operating their hi-head circs and equipment. An additional $200.00, or $2,000.00, becomes an easy pill to swallow once the justification education has been presented.



Or present yourself (not referring to you Charles) as just another commodity item based solely on up-front costs and get lost in the card-shuffle. I want everyone in this business who has a passion for what they do to have the tools rrequired to go forth and sell these things like hotcakes at a pancake jamboree. I am & If I am, so can anyone who wants to.   

Robert O'Brien

Any data?

On circ run times without P/S? 

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

run hours

Swapped an 87-watt induction motor fixed speed wet rotor circ with a ECM on a baseboard system (actually two for two with two zones). and the ECM settled in at 14-watts. Run hours should ave 2,250 in my heating zone (SE PA).  They had bad experiences with zone valves, so that option was tossed.



If that's accurate for run hours, we're paying 12-cents per kWH, which renders a 10% ROI in the first year (increases with the increase in energy costs) with a $200.00 difference in costs between circs and simple payback on that difference in the 9th year if power costs rise by 5% per year. At the end of the 20th-year, each circ will provide a bit more than $600.00 cost avoidance.



Interesting job in that the customer did not choose the hi-eff boiler due to the end of the fed tax credit (also because they plan to move in two years). Even more so given the short 2- to 3-year simple payback on the increased cost for the hi-eff boiler vs. the chimney-vented model.  

NRT_Rob

Hey Dave

can you translate run times into run fractions? don't know the timeframe you're calculating over.



I've been using ballparks of 50% runtime for fixed temp, 75% for outdoor reset and 100% for Teknet 4/Constant circ/Indoor feedback systems.



What are you seeing for reset/no reset run fractions?

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

spot on

At first I thought about 100% run-time, but knew that wasn't right for weather-responsive outdoor reset. Tracking my actual run-times for zone valves vs. circs and cross-checking that against historical degree-day data, I too arrived at 75% for the primary circs: 2,250 divided by .75 = 3,000 run-hours



The zones, on the other hand, did not see the same number of hours and eventually I was able to peg them (on ave) at 2,800 run-hours.  

Robert O'Brien

Thanks,Dave!

I really believe all the "bad experiences" with zone valves are due to poor technical skills on the part of the service provider!

Robert O'Brien

Thanks,Dave!

I really believe all the "bad experiences" with zone valves are due to poor technical skills on the part of the service provider!

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

true today

But turn back the hands of time a few decades & there were lots of leakers and motor failures. The ECM study has certainly turned my head towards zone valves. No big surprise, really, given our extensive use of telestats in radiant systems for zoning straight off a common manifold and their steadfast reliability.



NRT-Rob, Should have added why - suspect you know already (sure of it, so I am - knowing you from years of posts here). The one thing that prevents us from seeing 100% run-time with standard outdoor-reset is wind and its adverse affect on heat loss due to 40% (or more) of a structure's loss being related to infil- exfil-tration. As a result, our programmed 'curve' needs to be high enough to provide comfort during those more adverse conditions.

Steamhead

Good article, as usual

Here's our Vee-lo experience:



http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-thread/131327/WILO-pronounced-Vee-lo-savings-update



But it's worth noting, a steam system using gravity return has no parasitic pumping loss at all.



:-)

NRT_Rob

interesting point

i would typically chalk it up to inaccuracies in heat load calculation methodology though. We calculate aggressively and, as the Daikin Altherma thread I'm posting in shows, our actual heat load is about half what we calculated. If I set a reset curve on my calc it would be "roomy".



I think 99% of reset curves based on actual calcs out there are "roomy" as I think all those calcs are also "roomy".



our shop is pretty special that way, I think, but still.... no one is calculating to the line. Very few people ever calculate loads lower than me, and I know I'm still roomy!

Mark Eatherton

Welcome to real world situations....

I have never seen one of my system that was dead nuts on at design conditions. Even on systems that I know for a fact were calculated correctly, when I show up at design conditions and see the heat source doing a 50% duty cycle, it tells me that the heat source is 2 times bigger than it need be, but I am the last person to want to cut the boiler size in half. If you set a mod con boiler, it will modulate to what ever the real time load is.



There are SO amy things that the loss calcs DON'T take into consideration that affect real time loading conditions. I've said it before,a nd will say it until someone brings it out, that the methodology we use to calculate real time loads needs significant modification to take into consideration what is really happening in the field, like flywheel mass effect, diurnal loading, internal gains (solar and other)...



I'll just sit over here in the corner and wait for someone to bring it out...



ME

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)

roomy

I never really realized just how roomy those calcs were until we had three geo systems in & running before the electric resistance supplemental toasters were connected. Where calcs indicated the assistance was needed, the homes (under construction in one case at design temps with contractors in/out all day long) had no issues maintaining desired indoor temps.



Mark - Modcon with automatic ECM circs so both load-match to the home's conditions at that moment in time. Or inverter geo (what the hey-ho are they waiting for???) units with the same circs or ECM blowers allowed to roam.



We're rapidly approaching nirvana, but still woefully inaccurate on the load & flow sizing side.  Soon there will be feed-back from our installed equipment that will provide accurate lods under actual operating conditions with fuel utilization tracking in real-time.



Could it be that soon equipment might be available in a one-size fits all (within reason) that will self-adjust & self-tune to the actual operating conditions while constantly maintaining peak efficiencies. I sense the already wild ride getting wilder and faster. 

CC.Rob

energy diet! and performance, too!

Amazing stuff, these ECM pumps. Thanks Dave for the great article, and everybody else for the additional insight in the posts.



Just reduced the electrical cost by 93% for a constant circ baseboard system. Went from 163 Watts to 12. Simple payback in 3 heating seasons.



Flow rate reduced to around 2 gpm from whatever it was before. Finally have a reasonable deltaT where almost none existed before. Structure heats beautifully.

scott markle_2

run time for tn4

Rob,



The tn4 420 reset modules I'v setup and watched in action were not constant circulation.



Of course It really depends on the setup. For the one I'v spent some real time around I'd guess the system pump runs 75% of the time. (low mass low temp situation.)



I just commissioned a newer tekmar house control (which works with 2 wires) it runs 5 zones of base in a poorly insulated house with a just big enough Vitodens. I haven't seen much operation above 35 deg but I almost never see a blank -- -- target. It's really doing a great job. I'v noticed some much better differential logic on the new Vitos, under low load it seems to allow a generous overshoot of target in order to allow a reasonably long burn. 130 seems to be the often seen shut off temp for these conditions.



What is nice about the house control and the interface on the new vito is that it's not the usual outboard burner modulation control. The 0-10 is instead used to request a specific supply temp. from the boiler. In other words the boiler uses it's own supply and return temperature sensors and differential logic to modulate the burner based on a requested supply temp. This eliminates the need for a fire delay, motor speed and some other settings. It puts the boiler in charge of the burner modulation, I think that giving the boiler a desired target and leaving it's onboard electronics in charge of how to get there is the way to go.