FocusPro 6000 & some general questions

butlermog

I have been keeping an eye on my system for the

past few days in hopes of understanding it a bit more. Like most folks around

here I am chasing after optimization and efficiency. I believe that my 2-pipe

Mouat system is working about as well as possible, but I wanted to see if you

all agreed with what I’m seeing. But before I go too much farther, a quick

thank you to everyone on The Wall and specifically Gerry Gill who went out of

his way earlier this year to answer some emails from me and recommend a quality

steam pro in my area.













 So, here is what I’m seeing. - After installing a new FocusPro 6000 thermostat I have

noticed the system working differently than with the previous ‘dumber’

thermostat. Now (with the desired temperature set to 65-degrees) the

temperature reading of the thermostat (and an independent thermometer in the

room) the temperature stays at the desired 65 constantly. Every once in a while

we will see it jump to 67 or 66 for a few minutes but that is well after the

call for heat has been turned off and the warmth of the radiators moves into

the room fully. But for the most part it is steady at 65.





I believe this means the anticipator of the

thermostat is working as designed – is that right? I was a little scared at

first because the thermostat calls for heat before it ever shows 64-degrees and

I thought it might be running the boiler before it needed to, but I’m guessing

this is what the ‘smart’ thermostat is supposed to do.





Cycle times are between 21 and 25 minutes from

ignition to boiler off, and that is about 1.25CCF of NG. This is enough time to

get all radiators hot, but not long enough to ever build pressure in the system

– again, am I right to think this is a good thing?





I am adding a little bit of water to the system

about once a week. I’m not sure how much I’m adding, but in the sight-glass it

is about 2 inches. My steam pro told me that Weil-McLain boilers (EGH-85) all

leak some steam due to not-so-great connectors of the sections, and I have

thought my makeup water is due to that.









Does any of the above sound crazy? My bills are

still pretty high (this month will probably use about 400-450CCF of NG), but we

are warmer than last year by 3-5 degrees so if this is as efficient and

optimized as we can get I’m OK with it.













My next optimization thought is to insulate the

house better if you all agree that it sounds like the steam system is working

as well as expected. I know there is probably a lot of detail missing.

I will be happy to give any data you’d think to be important.





Again, thanks to everyone here.

Jamie Hall

Except for...

The comment that "all Weil-McClains leak", sounds good to me!  Not all WMs do -- mine, for example, has used 4 gallons in a year and a half (not counting blowdowns), and all of that was in the first month or so.  But there are other places where steam can go, so I'm not sure I'd worry about it...

David Nadle

Sounds good

Everything sounds good to me. Honeywell programmable thermostats don't use a swing setting or an anticipator setting. It's normal to see the temperature never change. The one thing you could check is get the installer's manual and review the cycles-per-hour (CPH) setting. It should be set to 1. But I wouldn't worry about it because everything you described sounds fine.



If you want to know how much water you're adding, fill the boiler to the normal waterline, then drain into a pail until the waterline is 2 inches lower. Mark the inside of the pail and dump the dirty water, then refill the pail with clean water to the mark, measuring as you go. There's plenty of places steam can leak out unnoticed, including the vents.

butlermog

CPH = 1

Thanks for the reply.

The CPH is set to 1, and I have the 'Adaptive Intelligent Recovery' set to OFF.

Your idea is perfect for determining the amount of water loss - why didn't I think of something like that! Is there a general rule of how much water loss it too much? Are there things that I should be doing to tighten up the system so I could have as little water loss as Jamie Hall?

MrDvorak

Adaptive recovery off

>> and I have the 'Adaptive Intelligent Recovery' set to OFF



May I ask why? One of the points of this technology is to prevent temperature swings by observing a correlation between heat on and actual temperature changes in the room and modifying the heating cycles accordingly. It seems to be working quite well on a 8500.

David Nadle

Turn it on

Turn the adaptive intelligent recovery on. It's a great feature and I think it will help prevent some of the overshoot you've been seeing.



Jamie's 4 gallons per 18 months sounds extraordinarily good to me. I wonder if he's including summer months... I'm not aware of any general rule. In my amateur opinion, if you can make it two weeks in the middle of winter without adding water and without the boiler shutting off on low water, you're probably in a safe zone.



Measure your water loss and post it here. Maybe the collective wall can uncover a safe range. I'll post mine too.