Beckett Aquasmart Warning to all users

cwilliams2000

I have been a happy AQS user for about 3 years. This winter in Mass has been terrible for everyone but something unique this year have been multiple below 0 days. Today was no exception and it is currently -9 out. My heating system is functioning normally and is working fine and has no problem heating my house.

The warning is this, I believe that I have encountered a software bug on the AQS. In my opinion the unit has been flawless and if you are familiar with the menus and their terminology I have my system configured for 180hi limit. I have DHW wired to the dedicated terminals the other contacts go to a Taco zone controller and run 7 other zones. I had set the unit to HI efficiency and I also have the Beckett Outdoor Wireless Temperature Reset module.

Last week when we woke up I found that almost all zones were calling for heat (via thermostats) and they were not cold but getting some heat but not the way they normally do. At first I thought it was the very cold day but that didn't make sense since this never happened before. When I looked at the AQS it was economizing at a very low high temp but I can't remember what it was. Eventually by disabling it, etc the house came up to temp and we have not had the low temps again.

Today confirmed when it happened again...
The unit sees the OAT as -9. I have two special settings that I added after speaking with their tech support which included the Boost function which adds 2* to the economized limit after ever 10 minutes of unsatisfied heat calls, which seems like a good idea since it should in theory prevent whats happening today. The even better function is the LOA temperature which is basically the Low outdoor air temperature that tells the unit to stop economizing all together which is defaulted to 0 but after last week I set it to 5* to be absolutely sure I wouldn't have these issues.

I am going to try call Becektt today but the warning to all of you if you have this system is what I saw today. When all this was happening and I went downstairs to see what was happening. The boiler temp was at about 138*!! and water was circulating and when I looked at the AQS the display was reading, Economizing, High Limit 140. That's the problem, I when into the menus and manually disabled all economy and immediately it fired again to go back to 180 and things are slowly catching up.

I believe the "bug" I am seeing is that when the temp is below 0, this AQS, at least the one I have thinks the temps are really 109* or some other math glitch. It was completing ignoring two settings, first the Low outdoor air temp which is a main failsafe and also the Boost which should have been adding some degreed overnight and it would have been far about 140.

If you use these typically when its around 15* outside the boiler will be setting the high limit to around 167-175 or somewhere in there, so 140 is completely off the charts for 109 and tells me its a glitch.

I know Beckett will help me but I can't say I am very happy that this even happened at all or the thought of wiring a replacement unit since I have a lot of wiring going in there and it's tight.

Update: Now that the house is warmed up a bit more, I just tried to turn the economizer mode back on and imediately the high limit was set to 145 on medium efficiency so there is definitely a glitch. I confirmed connectivity with the outdoor temp sensor and its sees -8. My theory is that once it returns above 0 everything will work normally. I dont think I will have any choice but to replace the unit and expect Beckett will swap it for me.

Any ideas if I am wrong or thoughts would be appreciated.

cwilliams2000

Another Update: Now the temp is 13* and I re-activated the economy settings and they are all working correctly, so I can only think that either the wireless outdoor module has an logic error or the heat manager does but it can not handle a below zero temperature condition.

Jamie Hall

All quite reasonable -- and the sort of thing which drives programmers nuts. Remember the Y2K debacle?

cwilliams2000

Unfortunately yes! I really hope that it may just be the outdoor wireless module that can be replaced to save me the wiring bother.

AlCorelliNY

Thank you for your perseverance in this. I thought I was going crazy with a similar issue.

unclejohn

Carrier had a tstat that was a two digit display. It was in a laundry mat and the temp in there was 109*F. The stat was mounted on a wall 12' high to keep fingers off it. I thought the 09 was a error code. Called Carrier and they said there was no 09 error code and that the temp. must be 109*F which it was. Your control may be doing something similar. -9 being read as +9.