steam controller

rob brown

no, its not set up for staging. was thinking of trying to wire up the end switches(if the valves even have them, and if they work.it's very difficult to access valves)so at least if no zone is calling the boiler would not maintain pressure.but then again, with 6 zones the boiler wont rest very long. savings on standby loss would likely be minimal. that why i think a timer type control and de-zoning the system could cut standby loss. rob

rob brown

steam controller

hi all. was wondering if anybody has any feedback on different steam boiler controllers, ie: heat timer, tekmar, or r&d electronics. have priced them all, and r&d is cheaper by 1/2. any horror stories? any good stories? the venerable heat timer has been around forever, and i've heard nothing but good about tekmar,but i've never heard anything about r&d. tia rob

Steamhead (in transit)

I really like

the Tekmar 269.

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rob brown

steam

thanks for your opinion frank, i would love to talk this customer a tekmar. but they are a very "cost concious" customer.(church). right now they have 6 zones on a w/m lgb 19 with 3 of the circa 1952 zone valves passing. causing overheating where mains pass overhead. maint. staff running a/c to cool down chapel in basement! yikes! going to propose to install outdoor/central controller and leave all zone valves fully open. with judicious use of trv's to control any over heating issues, i think i could save them a pile of money on the old gas bill. have calculated all radiation and boiler is sized the load. but, considering this is all a grand experiment,it will be a hard sell to go top of the line controllers.(i am thinking of trying using 1 t-stat w/all zone valves open).just to confirm good operation of system before major infusion of $$$. thanks again, rob

Steamhead (in transit)

Is that LGB

set up for stage firing? I've learned most of these came with 2-stage gas valves on each base but not many are hooked up that way......

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Steamhead (in transit)

The stage-firing

would be controlled by a Vaporstat thru a relay so all bases would fire at the same level. This way the system could respond to zone valves opening and closing. Talk to Pat Linhardt, he's done lots of these and has it down to a science.

Stage-firing and outdoor reset are not mutually exclusive. We just added stage-firing to a large church system and it works beautifully. We will eventually use stage-firing (but not on an LGB) along with a 269 in an apartment building we're working on.

It makes sense to only send heat where it's needed- warming up cold pipes takes quite a bit of fuel. The 269 can work with indoor sensors. I'm not sure how ZVs would connect to it, but the Tekmar people would know. Since the 269 can be hooked up to a timer to set back during unoccupied periods, if different parts of the building are used at different times it may make sense to use more than one 269/timer combo, having it activate the appropriate ZV which would then fire the boiler via the end switch and staging control.



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