ISO a very accurate thermometer to be certain my large steam heated Hse is properly heated

davevarga

I have a 100 year old kind of large three floor house. One boiler, singly metered, steam heat. Two floors for tenants, one for me. The radiators are generally well balanced it appears. I also have a wireless thermometer system strategically placed in 4 of the rooms so from my apt I can look at a display and see if there is a specific or general heating issue surfacing, or the temperatures are just fine.

Question: Does anyone know of a digital thermometer that is actually accurate to standard? Accurate to a 1/10th of a degree? My idea is for me to use that to gauge the accuracy of my dispersed temperature sensors so that I can then mentally add or subtract from each sensors display to really know the temperatures that I am delivering to my tenants.

I note I can take the existing sensors and for testing purposes place them next to one another and there is 1-2 degrees difference from one another! I note I can take my 3 table top 'Accurite' digital temp sensors and do the same and they are 1-2 degrees off from each other! Is one of them aligned to standard, or are neither of them aligned to standard? I search and search on Amazon and read the thermostat comments and for every manufacturer this unforgivable inaccuracy is that or even worse according to reviewers! It's a pretty sad state of affairs that for a thermometer, measuring and displaying the temperature according to standard is the one thing they are created for, and there is such inaccuracy.

Hope you can recommend an accurate to tenth of a degree standard digital thermostat! Much Thx! Dave

offdutytech

There will always be a +/- rating on any temp sensor. The accuracy that you are looking for can be found in more process control type sensors. Depending on how elaborate you want to get you can use a power supply/ 4-20mA sensor and a display to make a custom one. Here is a link to a website that should have what you are looking for. Tekmar also makes some controls for steam systems.

https://www.omega.com/en-us/temperature-measurement/c/temperature-probes?_gl=1v84u71_up*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAjwgfm3BhBeEiwAFfxrG-w6fQ_5QdoqSULwKYjm4kJSEav6VWX1EnPvAV_JzRaZGNVjFzbO2BoCpOYQAvD_BwE&gbraid=0AAAAAD_f1Fs0m_HCOkaOm0qO-ERljIkWr

Jamie Hall

They are available, Scientific and lab. supply houses carry them. You might find something wireless here:

Precision Thermometers | Instrumart

You need to ask three questions: what accuracy do you think you need (that is, tenth of a degree? Hundredth?) What precision do you need (that is, measuring the same temperature ten times, for instance, what is the variation between measurements) and third, to what standard is the instrument calibrated (e.g. local standard, such as distilled ice bath at a certain atmospheric pressure; factory standard without traceability, traceable to NIST or other national standard' etc.).

Having asked those questions you can search for suitable equipment.

It's going to cost you.

Sylvain

The air temperature is not enough for evaluate comfort.

There are instruments that take into account air speed (draft) and radiation from the cold or warm surfaces nearby. One must also take into account the physical activity level of the persons.

Whatever one do, in a building with enough people to make statistics, one can not reach more than 95% of satisfaction.

Personnally, while keeping the same level of activity and room temperature, I nevertheless experiment less comfort starting around 18h (!?).

While I like precision, for this application, 1/10th of a degree is IMHO overkill; and more so with Farhenheit degrees as 1 °F is 5/9 of a Celsius/Kelvin degree.

+/- 2°F should be good enough.

Anyway

For comparison purpose, you only have to calibrate around the target temperature ( +/- 10°F ?) and not for the entire range of the sensors.

If your system is running with a single thermostat (in your own apt ?) it will not take into account the solar radiation or wind chill effect in other rooms.

mattmia2

Various thermoworks products, an electronic thermometer and thermocouple probe. Most will be +- a couple tenths of a degree but the room temp is always going to be changing too. Look at the system specs and decide how much you are willing to pay for how much accuracy.

The actual temp can vary significantly over a few inches based on air currents and sunlight and things like that.