I'm waiting for............

Brad White_9

Hydronic platform with a FHA model and domestic on-board. Three orifices (orifi?) made for the utility company replacement market. It had a surge in the late '70's and early '80's but was too far ahead of it's time.

Maybe this could be resurrected with appropriate controls, materials and know-how?

S Ebels

I'm waiting for.........

Wishing and waiting for one of the boiler manufacturers to start thinking outside the box, be it Blue or Red or White or Tan, and incorporate some forced air thinking into thir product. Various furnace manufacturers have tried providing domestic hot water via their equipment but the results have been poor. I also think that their approach was too limited. (They were thinking in the F/A box)

What Id like to see is a heating source which uses variable temperature water as the heat transfer medium for all HVAC purposes. This appliance would have the capability to be used for F/A, radiant and medium temp (<170*) HWH applications. It would be internet connectable right out of the box and call the contractor when there is a problem, capable of producing domestic hot water either on demand or via an indirect in higher load applications and be built with a control that would allow both the hot water and F/A side of the system to run simultaneously. This would provide air cleaning, ventilation, humidification and heating as a normal F/A system does but at the same time allow the radiant or hot water side to produce the comfort normally deemed as sub par in a typical F/A system.

If connected to a radiant system, radiant cooling could also be easily accomplished due to the fact that a condenser/chiller could be utilized to provide dehumidification in the cooling mode on the F/A side.

Just day dreaming out loud here but a little birdie told me that one of the major F/A manufacturers is working on something like this only on a more limited scale. I'd love to see some Yankee ingenuity from one of the boiler manufacturer's thrown at this. I have my doubts that the F/A crowd will get it right.

rich pickering

Like this?

The Matrix from NTI
http://www.nythermal.com/Products/furnaces/gas/matrix.htm

Mike L

heat maker

was bought out and became the Endurance if I'm not mistaken. I install a lot of systems with hydro-coils for w/a replacments. Gets rid of the direct fired water heater,mor efficient heat transfer,and the benefits of hot air heat.Any thing to get rid of the oil fired or electric water heater.At least in this part of the country.

tim smith

Heatmaker

I have kept a fair amount of these running over the years, have more parts on the shelf than I like to think about. Surprising enough they have held up fairly well for what they were. Then design is kind of haphazard but they have worked! I can attest that I have never installed one because they have driven us crazy a few times with nuisance lockouts etc but some are still chugging along.

[Deleted User]

Hate Maker

I installed ONE of the Hate Makers...

Lessons learned...

John Blackadar was the "inventor" of the heat maker. He'd actually developed it under a grant from the Department of Transportaion as a steam generator for use in automobiles.

Rumor has it that his test vehicle had an explosion, that it almost caused him to change the name to widow maker...

He abandoned the transportation idea and went into the hydronic heating business.

Funny how life takes you down different rooads eh...

ME