Step Up To The Plate Manufacturers!

Paul48

If you spend some time here, you will see there's a problem. The folks that have suffered greatly because of hurricane Sandy, are now suffering more because their boilers will not run on a portable generator. This is a problem, and it is also an opportunity for you to do the right thing with future production. Some auto manufacturers have a "Limp Home" mode, that allows the car to continue running,even if the computer fails. Which of you is going to take the lead? Will any of you come forward, and say you are looking into the issue?

Zman

I see it happening

I know Triangle Tube has made some leaps in the trimax controller. I have not tried it on a generator but they claim the power supply is "universal" and can handle very dirty power.

Carl

Larry (from OSHA)

my experience

I have a Knight that is about 5 years old.  Our generator, a GE which is actually a Briggs & Stratton seems to work just fine.  I think that there are many different situations where a system will or won't work with axillary power.



Let's hope everyone affected by the storms come out ok really really soon.



Larry

Dave H_2

UPS Power

Has anyone tried a UPS system to power up a boiler that does not like generator power?



I experienced the same thing this past storm but I was able to get "test" mode to get me spurts of heat for 10 minutes at a time.



Dave H

Jean-David Beyer

boilers will not run on a portable generato

On my system, there are two issues with generator power (that I have never tried).



One is the controller. These do not seem to use much power themselves. Some energy is needed to run the computer part (must be very little), some to provide the spark to start the gas burner, some to run the variable speed blower that moves the gas-air mixture into the burner and make the exhaust go out and the combustion air come in.



The other is the circulators. I have a boiler circulator, an indirect fired hot water circulator, and two heating zone circulators. At most three of these circulators run at a time, and at least one does except for a short time when switching from one zone to another.



For the controller, the power supply seems to be a step down transformer to reduce the line voltage to what is needed to run the controller. That is no doubt rectified and filtered. If they put a small switching voltage regulator in there, that should eliminate the noise from a generator. The DC would be filtered before applying it to the switching regulator. I do not know how they come up with the high voltage for the ignitor.



For the circulators, I do not think much would be required for normal circulators such as the Taco 00 series. The clever circulators (with electronics) might well need cleaner power. Perhaps a Taco (or other manufacturer) representative could specify the requirements here.



For oil burners, I assume more power would be needed to run the oil pump (gas pumps itself as far as the homeowner is concerned), and the larger air supply blower. But these need not be super clean either unless it is so bad as to overheat the motors.