At Oklahoma University, the drive for excellence has a long and proud tradition both in the classroom and on the football field. Lesser known however, is the university’s constant drive toward excellence and efficiency in its building operations. That’s why during a recent retrofit of its domestic hot water equipment, UA selected the Heat-Timer® ETS (Electronic Tempering Station) as its choice for master mixing and control. With over 30,000 students on campus, Oklahoma University has multiple on-campus dorms including the twin 12 story buildings of the Couch and Walker Centers. These buildings are a focal point of student housing located in the center of the campus. As is common in high rise dormitories, the domestic hot water system includes steam to water exchangers and a master mixing valve. UA Facilities Team Confronts A Hot Problem Over the years the domestic hot water system in these (and other) buildings at OU, have required costly maintenance and repairs while still not providing the consistent hot water delivery required for safe use. “The prior mixing valves were requiring a significant amount of maintenance,” notes Casey Yost of Federal Corporation out of Oklahoma city, who spearheaded the Heat-Timer® solution. “They were having to rebuild and replace the thermostatic mixers regularly, and the control head of the original package was failing.” This was of course, causing all kinds of uncontrolled temperature variation in the water supply as well as a phenomenon known as temperature creep. This happens overnight under low or no demand conditions where the domestic water loop could reach as high as 160F and create a scalding hazard for the first, early morning student users. To combat this issue the University maintenance department had to continually rebuild and replace the thermostatic mixers, resulting in huge maintenance expenses. Heat-Timer Rebuilds the Domestic Hot Water Solution Digitally. In this domestic hot water system rehabilitation, there were basically two main goals set by the University. The first was to replace the existing thermostatic mixers with newer digital mixing valves that provide the accuracy needed. The second goal was to limit the down time of the installation and have hot water service back to the students as quickly as possible. At the recommendation of Casey, OU decided to replace its unreliable tube bundles with the Heat-Timer® Electronic Tempering Station (ETS) The Heat-Timer® ETS product introduced in 2020, was a game changer for commercial plumbers in domestic hot water applications. Essentially the ETS encapsulates our industry standard Electronic Tempering Valve (ETV) system which has been a class leading DHW solution for many years with a strong track record in multi-family apartment buildings, hotels, elderly living facilities and college dorm applications. The ETV is a computer tied to our motorized 3-way mixing valve and sensors. Using proven software algorithms to control the mix, our solution delivers an exact, preset hot water temperature to the user, under any and all conditions. The ETV is able to perfectly detect and control the hot water supply temperature to a distribution line. The ETS assembly is a floor mounted unit that does not require valuable wall space that is difficult to find in most mechanical rooms. The ETS assembly provides the installer the near valve piping configuration, and required fittings such as isolation valves, check valves and Victaulic couplings. The ETS assembly also includes a high-temp limit valve that provides protection against delivery of extreme high temperature domestic hot water to the building in the event of a system failure. The ETV mixing valve actuator, control module and 3 temperatures sensors are included in the ETS assembly and are pre-wired for the installer. Results of the Domestic Hot Water Retrofit at Oklahoma University The initial project was for a 12 story dormitory building and the complete removal and installation of the ETS was done in less than a day. Here’s what water temperatures looked like before and after: The result of having the ETS in place is shown on the computer screen above measuring the mixed water temperature going out to the system. The graph on the left of the screen was the “before”, the huge dip was the system installation, and the flat line is the “after” with the ETS on-line.
“The big take away here is we were able to replace the tube bundles and add the ETS to create an almost completely new domestic hot water system for half the cost of replacing the original package,” notes Casey. This is the first of 2 ETS units sent to OU. Based on the installation time and performance, there is an opportunity for many more to come. But perhaps Oklahoma University’s Facility Maintenance Manager said it best: “I wouldn’t have believed how simple it was to install and how consistent our temperatures are if I hadn’t seen it for myself.” You won’t believe it either. Call Heat-Timer® Today for all your questions about our Domestic Hot Water Control solutions. Original blog posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/oklahoma-sooners-play-ball-with-heat-timer/
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Summer is a great time to maintain or upgrade the steam or hydronic heating system in your building or apartment complex. The system can be offline for days now, without angry calls from residents! The boiler room is quiet, most pipes and valves are not burn hazards, and the boiler room temperature is not pushing 140 °F.
Time spent in your boiler room now doing preventive maintenance and making some smart system upgrades will reduce your energy costs, and will keep you out of the boiler room at 3:00 AM during the upcoming heating season. Here are five suggestions for summer preventive maintenance on your commercial boiler equipment: 1. Start with a good cleaning A dark, dirty, and cluttered boiler room is a boiler room filled with potential problems that you can’t see. Start your summer heating system maintenance with a good cleaning. Remove anything stored in the room that is not needed for boiler operation, replace any burned out bulbs, and consider upgrading the lighting to make maintenance easier. Finally, clean the floor and vacuum out the cobwebs and dust from the equipment. While you are cleaning in those dusty corners, look around. Now that the place is clean, you can see those potential problems. 2. Give the system a thorough inspection Look for water stains on the floor, rust on pumps or valves, droopy pipe insulation, and for damaged sensors or valve controls. These are all signs of pending failures. For steam systems, also inspect the main line air vents. Again, look for water stains and evidence of leaking. Outside the boiler room walk the building, check radiators and make sure the steam radiator air vents have not been painted over or otherwise abused. If you have installed remote wireless sensors, like the Heat-Timer Wireless Sensor system, this is a good time to look into your control portal to see if any sensor in your building needs new batteries. If you don’t have a heating control and an associated network of wireless sensors monitoring your building and critical heating system functions, maybe this is the summer to install it. A Heat-Timer® Platinum series heating controller can monitor a network of wireless sensors and give you instant information about your building’s health and the operation of valves and boilers in your system. These sensors include room sensors that provide real time information on the hot and cold areas of your building, allowing the self-learning algorithm’s in our control to keep temperatures stable without overdriving your boiler unnecessarily. In addition to wireless building sensors, our control provides internet and mobile app based alarms and monitoring. From the comfort of your home, a building manager can see reports on energy usage, critical temperatures and can set or tweak all parameters associated with the efficient heating of the building. This data is available anywhere via an internet connection or on your cell phone. 3. Too hot for you? – It may be time to insulate those pipes If the pipes in your boiler room are uninsulated, or the insulation is damaged or missing, steam or hot water that is supposed to be heating your building is instead turning your boiler room into a sauna. Summer is the perfect time to insulate any exposed pipes and valves since they are all at a safe temperature. There are three major advantages to insulating the system heating pipes and valves:
4. Clean and inspect the boiler The boiler is the heart of the heating system. When properly maintained, it will provide heat reliably for decades. Neglect maintenance and it can fail in many sudden and expensive ways. Summer gives you the time to drain the boiler so that both the fireside and waterside of the boiler can be cleaned and inspected. A qualified technician should inspect and clean the burner and should also inspect, and if necessary replace, the three most critical safety systems on the boiler.
Failures in any of these systems can result in a boiler shut down or even boiler damage. If you have decided to install remote sensors this summer, the boiler is another place where sensors integrated with a Heat-Timer Platinum Heating controller can warn you of boiler problems before they become serious. 5. Upgrade your controls Finally, while the technician is servicing your boiler, why not ask them whether it is time to consider upgrading the boiler controls? If your boiler controls are more than 10 years old, you will benefit from the advances in self learning controls and internet connectivity provided by controls like the Heat-Timer® platinum series. For example, the Heat Timer® Platinum series controls come with outdoor reset and self-learning software that continuously optimizes the heating cycle for your building and climate. This reduces heating costs, while the system’s internet communication option will allow you to monitor and manage your heating system from anywhere. The Heat-Timer® Platinum interfaces with a variety of wired and wireless sensors, giving you a complete picture of how the heating system is performing, and all the hot and cold spots in your building. Summer is Hot, for Heating Controls Don’t wait until things cool off to start thinking of heating. This summer, think about these five tips to give you the peace of mind that comes from knowing your commercial heating system is not going to give you a headache this winter. Original content posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/5-tips-for-summer-maintenance-of-commercial-boilers/ As we all strive to be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, commercial buildings are under pressure to use more sustainable HVAC control systems that reduce impact on the environment, eliminate excess energy usage, and provide a comfortable environment for everyone in the building. You may have heard the phrases “connected building” or “smart building”, so what do these phrases mean and what qualifies a commercial building as being “smart”?
Smart buildings In a smart building, the various systems like lighting, heating, air-conditioning, ventilation, and security systems are integrated into a single system, and can be operated and monitored via the internet. Imagine a command center from which you can see every component of an office building – this is what a smart building is. The main control system enables each system to work together, gather real-time data, share information with other systems, increase efficiency, and enhance performance. Smart buildings are ideal for office managers and building managers who want to streamline their control systems and enhance management efficiency, because smart buildings use data and analytics to automatically adjust the performance of one or all systems. Heat-Timer® Platinum Series products are actually a perfect fit for your smart building. You can think of them as a subcontractor for all your heating control needs, providing data, alarms, and control points for the boilers and domestic hot water of your smart building. They can operate standalone, or can interface to your full building management system (BMS) through industry standard interfaces such as Bacnet and ModBus. Even if you’re not ready for a full smart building conversion yet, a Heat-Timer® control can save you money on energy starting today, while road-mapping perfectly into any BMS you may implement in the future. Benefits of a smart system for commercial buildings:
Smart Heating Control Systems are a key Money Saver in Your Smart Building Converting your building into a smart building doesn’t necessarily mean you need to invest in expensive equipment or replace any of your existing systems. You can take the first step by considering small upgrades to each of the major systems. For your heating systems, an upgrade to a Heat-Timer® platinum boiler control is simple because almost everything is wireless and internet based. There are even rebate programs that may be available through your utility company, making the payback on your upfront investment even faster. For more information on how Heat-Timer makes your smart building even smarter, please contact our team today. https://www.heat-timer.com Original content posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/what-is-a-smart-building/ Boiler Control Systems – Why they matter even for Small Buildings.
The cost of energy to run large heating systems like those found in office buildings, schools, apartment complexes, government buildings, and industrial buildings can constitute some of the highest expenses in your P&L statement, coming right off your bottom line. For building managers, it’s a never-ending balance between keeping your residents or work area’s comfortable, without paying too much for energy. As such it has become essential that building operations managers implement technology and systems that reduce these costs without compromising on comfort. With utility bills running into the tens of thousands of dollars a month, even a fairly small percentage decrease in heating costs can quickly pay for the cost of installation of a modern boiler control system. But what about the manager of smaller, say 20-unit garden apartment, with a single boiler in the boiler room? Will the hassle and expense of installing a commercial heating control be worth it? How will they ever install it in my old building? My boiler already has built in energy management controls and outdoor temperature monitoring, why do I need more than that? It’s all about Return on Investment (ROI) In the northern half of the country, heating costs can consume anywhere from 60 to 90% of your overall energy bill, especially during a cold winter, or older buildings with older boiler equipment or inefficient heating configurations. But in 2022, heating control manufacturers like Heat-Timer® have introduced systems that address the problems of retrofit, wireless integration, internet and mobile control, as well as maximizing heating efficiency. Modern Heating Control systems like the Heat-Timer® Platinum Series, utilizes wireless space sensors to detect building temperatures and learns the heat-loss profile of your building. The control uses this information to carefully control one or more boilers and to anticipate demand and improve heating efficiency over time. State of the art heating controls like the Heat-Timer® Platinum, cost a small fraction of what the energy savings will be over time, even in a small building. Studies have shown that a Heat-Timer® Platinum series control with space feedback can save anywhere from 15% to 30% more on fuel costs than a high efficiency boiler with just an onboard outdoor reset control, running on its own. That’s because without the ability to get temperature feedback from inside the building(units), the adjustments a standalone boiler makes in firing are coarse, and ultimately limited. We have seen many a super simply bypass the boiler control due to complaints from residents, making the boiler/s operation even less efficient. Without direction from a smart control that actually knows what’s going on with temperatures throughout the building, the so-called “smart boiler,” will fail to satisfy the human factors associated with heat management. Save Money, Be Green While this has been all about maximizing energy savings, there’s more to to be gained by implementing a state-of-the-art heating control system. The environmental benefits are significant, as is any investment that reduces energy usage. This in turn lowers emissions and waste, contributing to a lower carbon footprint. Then there’s another kind of green benefit: government subsidies. To offset the initial investment of introducing energy efficient heating systems to your buildings, there are often state and federal rebates to support these types of eco-friendly investments because they take pressure off the energy grid and are part of various state run “green” initiatives. Like New York City’s Local Law 97 which legally requires your commercial building to reduce its carbon footprint over the next several years. Motivating, isn’t it? Heating Control Systems By Heat Timer® With energy prices skyrocketing, it has become easier than ever to justify the cost of a modern heating control system, whether your building is large or small. Call your local Commercial HVAC contractor today. And ask them about Heat-Timer® Or contact us directly. For questions or information visit https://heat-timer.com Original blog posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/boiler-control-systems-why-they-matter-even-for-small-buildings/ In the face of a worldwide push to keep increases in global temperatures below 2C, NYC is doing its part through the passage of Local Law 97. The purpose of LL97 is to reduce NYC’s carbon emissions in its largest buildings by 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050.
The new law directly affects owners of both commercial and residential buildings over 25000 sq ft. in size including rent controlled buildings with less than 35% rent regulated units. Comprehensive information on LL97 can be found at the New York State website. It is the responsibility of every building owner or manager for directly understanding whether their buildings are affected and if so, ensuring they comply. What do you need to do? If you have determined that your building is affected by Local Law 97 you will have to file an annual Greenhouse gas emissions report. This report will explain the building status with respect to LL97 and if your building exceeds the maximum allowable greenhouse gas emission level, you will be subject to an annual penalty. This penalty will be based on a direct calculation of the difference between allowed carbon emissions and actual carbon emissions. For large building owners, these fines can easily be thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars if non-compliance is significant. A property manager can find out if their building complies with the upcoming 2024-2029 emissions caps, or the much tougher 2030-2034 caps, today. For the most part the buildings covered by this new law have already been subject to New York benchmarking laws LL84, and LL133, so property managers have been required to calculate and report energy and water usage to the city for several years now. With the data collected from the benchmarking surveys the property manager can use an online Carbon Emissions Calculator to determine if they comply. How Heat-Timer® Helps NYC Building Owners Comply. To put it simply: reducing greenhouse gasses means reducing energy usage, period. If you can reduce your heating energy usage by ½ or more you will have gone a long way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and complying with Local Law 97. Heat-Timer® products help with this in two primary ways: Reduction of Heating costs – For large apartment or office buildings, the installation of an internet enabled Heat-Timer® Platinum control has been shown to reduce energy consumption by anywhere from 25% to 50%. Even apartments with older Platinum controls can upgrade them to internet based wireless controls without having to purchase a new control. With the addition of just these capabilities and the use of our wireless space sensors, similar reductions in energy consumption are possible. The best part is that rebate programs offered by NY Utility companies will often pay for part or most of your equipment and installation costs. Compliance With The New Minimum Apartment Temperature Requirements – The following notice is posted on the NYC website at the start of every heating season: “The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) today announces the beginning of New York City’s eight-month-long “heat season,” during which all residential building owners are required to maintain indoor temperatures at 68 degrees when outdoor temperatures fall below 55 degrees during the day. Indoor temperatures must also be a minimum of 62 degrees overnight, regardless of outdoor temperatures.” This can be a very difficult area to stay in compliance with because building owners to not have ready access to temperature readings to head off complaints. Many times they will need staff to enter apartments for temperature testing with a thermal gun, but many times the call to 311 has already been made. This challenge can be made much easier with the addition of wireless apartment sensors communicating to your remote operable Heat-Timer®. Not only will the sensors provide the feedback you need to validate or invalidate a heating complaint in real time, but they will also allow you to go back as far as (13) months into the past to chart and track the temperature of any temperature sensor. In practical terms, the wireless sensors will also allow the end user to set a smart ambient average command for both daytime and nighttime that the Heat-Timer® will maintain, allowing building owners to satisfy heating needs of cooler apartments, while overheating others as little as possible. In doing so, the Heat-Timer® also reduces boiler run times, and overall heating expenditures. More efficient Domestic Hot Water Delivery – Heat-Timer® Products help building owners provide the most energy efficient operational compliance with NYC law possible. Products like our Electronic Tempering valve or our pre-plumbed Electronic tempering station make a lot of sense even without the added motivation of LL97 driven energy savings. This is because landlords in NYC are subject to heating and hotwater rules established by the city housing department, which direct allowable temperatures of water delivery during heating season. From the actual spec we have the following: “Building owners are legally required to provide hot water at 120 degrees year-round. The Heat-Timer ETV Platinum Plus can also be upgraded for remote access for real time temperature readings and real time alarming if the DHW temps fall out of compliance, both high or low.” Let’s face it: building managers hate to get on the city’s radar and those 311 calls have ruined many an owner’s weekend. With Heat-Timer’s domestic hot water controls and remote boiler controls minding the store, most of these issues can be prevented and resident comfort can be maintained. For more information on how you can obtain rebates that offset the cost of Heat-Timer® equipment and installation, please call our team today. Original content posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/what-is-nyc-local-law-97-and-how-do-i-comply/ For other USA based manufacturers like Heat-Timer, the departure of 2021 is certainly a mixed blessing. While we did not collectively put COVID concerns in the rear view mirror as hoped, we all nevertheless found a way to manage our businesses safely, and keep the greater US economy largely humming.
At Heat-Timer® we are driven by the market’s desire to save money on heating bills and boiler maintenance. That pretty much describes everything we build, and why we build it. It turns out that this need doesn’t change so much in the middle of a pandemic, in fact a renewed focus on the bottom line has been nothing but motivating for many new customers who decided in 2021 that taking the plunge on the worlds most sophisticated heating control, was an investment worth making. In 2021, Heat-Timer did not rest on it’s laurels either. We took the plunge too with renewed focus on updating our products and our product line in response to market feedback and better operational efficiency. We solidified our status as a USA based manufacturer and did not suffer the supply chain woes of so many of our competitors who are building their controls offshore. Generally speaking, we’re quite excited about what we accomplished in 2021 and we think our customer base will be excited about it in 2022 and beyond, stay tuned. In a year like 2021 however, no discussion would be complete without a huge thank you to our loyal client base. Heat-Timer® made many new friends in 2021, and old friends came to us for internet upgrades that improved their bottom line even more. These tried and true heating professionals don’t even consider other heating controls, and they continue to be our best advocates out in the field when it comes to commercial, internet based heating solutions. We thank them for caring and for carrying our message forward to new applications all over the country. We wish everyone a very happy 2022 and a sincere wish for health and prosperity for us all. The original blog posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/2021-thanks-for-the-memories/ In the 1920’s, there is no doubt that steam heating was king in apartment buildings and high rises throughout New York and other parts of the country. The boilers were all fired by coal which was abundant, and cheap, if not a dirty and back breaking affair when it came to shoveling it into the boiler or cleaning out the ashes.
But in the 1930’s the cost of coal soared and the switch to oil heating was on. Oil was cheaper, cleaner to deal with (relatively speaking), no damper regulator was required to control the fire, and it worked with this amazing thing called a thermostat, that controlled the firing of the boiler automatically! Magic! The problem was that in all those buildings designed with vent-work for coal heated systems, oil (and gas) heating behave differently. Coal burns for hours and hours, creating a slight pressure that is constant. With this near-constant pressure, steam was always pushing at the air, nudging it from the main vents and the radiator vents. The only time the pressure dropped was when the coal fire died down which it only did very gradually (if at all). But with oil heating, the thermostat could shut the burner off almost instantly when target temperatures were reached. It shut the burner off before most of the air was out of the steam mains, preventing the ready flow of steam into the system leaving buildings with hot and cold spots. Fast forward 90 years, and steam heating is still going strong in many older urban buildings across the country though almost all have converted to oil or natural gas or city steam heating at this point. The original problems of coal fired buildings were solved by many innovators with the introduction of concepts like “dry steam,” enlarged main vents, and master venting. With these innovations steam was able to move through these old buildings at high speed, and the resulting systems were balanced with only a few ounces of pressure at the boiler, and the burners did not short cycle. Taking Steam Heating Efficiency to the Next Level While hot water may be the preferred heating method for new buildings, recent studies show that over 82% of NYC buildings over 50,000 square feet use a form of steam heating*. Getting these steam systems to work efficiently was (and still is) a long and slow evolution, but now these systems can be made to work well with both fuel oil and natural gas sources. The challenge is that for a given heating load, a steam-based system will consume much more fuel than a hot water system even though it uses both a boiler and external pumps, producing more greenhouse emissions as a consequence. Thus the next frontier for steam systems, is undoubtedly boiler control using an advanced heating control like the Heat-Timer® Platinum Series MPC, to take boiler and fuel management to the next level while maintaining comfort. What does the Heat-Timer® Platinum MPC Do? The MPC Platinum control Series can be configured to operate a steam boiler or a steam valve to using both steam outdoor reset and multiple wireless space sensor feedback. Utilizing the steam cycle concept and the outdoor temperature, the control varies the duration of the steam supply to the building in a cycle based on the outdoor temperature as well as aggregate analysis of space sensors in all areas of the building. The advanced computer hardware and software in this heating control actually “learns” the thermal loss characteristics of all areas of the building and its control software synthesizes this into anticipatory boiler control signals that run them far less often and more evenly than any other heating control system available today. The control also acts as a reporting hub for other sensors like feedwater, sump pump and stack sensors, allowing even better management of alarms and heating issues, heading off problems before they become big problems. Another major benefit of the internet enabled Platinum MPC, is its complete ability to be monitored and controlled remotely. Preprogrammed alarms hit your email inbox or phone text message. All heating set-points can be easily changed through our internet portal, or mobile app. Reports and tiered alerts can be configured to be delivered to both technicians and management. Standardize your property portfolio around Heat-Timer® controls and you can have one central website portal that shows you all your building locations, boiler rooms, and boilers. Best of all, the control is future proof in the sense that it embraces industry standard BACnet and Modbus protocols for integration to a 3rd party building management system. Customers using the Heat-Timer® Platinum MPC Control with Internet features have shown monthly savings of 15% to 30%. For a mid-sized apartment building, that can translate into tens of thousands of dollars a month, as well as allowing you to preserve and extend the life of your steam based heating system in a way that is much greener, and lowers carbon emissions significantly. Bring your steam heating into the 21st century. Contact a Heat-Timer® expert today. A special thanks to Dan Holohan of Radiant & Hydronics for his wonderful history of advancements in steam heating. You can read his treatment here. * From the Greener Greater Buildings Plan at http://www.nyc.gov/html/gbee/downloads/pdf/greener_greater_buildings_plan.pdf Original content posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/single-pipe-steam-heating/ Heat-Timer Corporation, a leading manufacturer of energy management systems, boiler room controls and domestic hot water solutions, has been approved by NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) as a RTEM (Real Time Energy Management) System Provider. RTEM systems transform the way you manage, consume and buy energy by consistently monitoring and retrieving your building’s performance data into one location through a cloud-based system. Approved NYSERDA vendors can provide, install and repair these systems to building owners and leaseholders in the state of New York.
NYSERDA offers objective information, innovative programs, technical expertise and support to help New Yorkers increase energy efficiency, save money, use renewable energy, and reduce the overall usage of fossil fuels. As a public benefit corporation, NYSERDA has been advancing energy management solutions and working to protect the environment for over 40 years. As an approved vendor under NYSERDA, Heat-Timer has access to their new construction initiatives, cost-share funding, technical guidance documents, case studies and other promotional materials to successfully serve as RTEM system providers for residential and commercial buildings in NY. For landlords and businesses looking to take advantage of RTEM systems in their multi-family buildings and commercial office buildings, NYSERDA is offering between a 20-33% cost-share incentive for RTEM project expenses. This would include the actual hardware, installation and at least three years of ongoing support and maintenance from RTEM vendors, like Heat-Timer. When to consider RTEM for your business or property RTEM systems can be a great enhancement to your business or property in New York, if you are looking to…
To find out more about how Heat-Timer’s new certification applies to your RTEM needs in New York, please give us a call today at (973) 575-4004. You could also visit our website to learn more about how our Heat-Timer Platinum Series Control can reduce costs and improve the overall user experience for your building’s energy management system: https://www.heat-timer.com/energy-management-systems/ Original blog posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/nyserda-certified-rtem-vendor/ As HVAC professionals begin getting their sleepy boilers ready for the upcoming heating season, they know that the first few weeks can be hectic, as dormant boilers are lit and unexpected startup problems pop up all over. It’s typically a time with some long days and a steady stream of calls from residents and building operators.
Professionals who’ve been doing this for a while, know that even if a boiler has been professionally inspected and serviced during the summer months, idle heating systems are still susceptible to both sediment and corrosion. Sediment settles out of the cold motionless water and compacts in pumps and valves, and of course as Mr. Young famously said, “rust never sleeps.” The physics of heating system inactivity conspires to create a rich set of winter startup problems for commercial heating professionals. As a premiere manufacturer of advanced heating control systems, the experts at Heat-Timer® have seen their share of these startup problems, and taught building managers a few tricks for using our controls and room sensors to diagnose these issues. 1. Preventing Pump Problems. Because of this summer’s accumulation of sediment and rust, pumps are one of the first things that a technician checks when they turn on the boiler. Often a pump won’t start because the impeller is embedded in sediment. If the pump does start, it may leak through dried out seals. This often leads to a pump disassembly, cleaning and rebuild, or full pump replacement. This expensive fall pump ritual can be prevented with a little exercise. A pump lead lag controller like the Heat-Timer® PLL can exercise boiler pumps by running them for a short period every week during the off-season, keeping seals wet and flushing out sediment. The Heat Timer® PLL also has low flow alarms which when interfaced to a Platinum series controller, can alert the boiler service company or building manager that there is a pump failure at any time during the heating season. Often these problems can be diagnosed and resolved without a visit to the boiler room, thanks to our BuildingNet® interface or mobile phone app. 2. Oil Fired Boilers – For oil fired boilers, clogged fuel filters can be another start-up problem as a summer’s accumulation of black sludge is stirred up and sucked into the filter when the oil tank is filled in the fall. This can cause hard to diagnose boiler lockouts as the burner is intermittently starved for fuel unless that oil filter is monitored with a vacuum sensor like Heat Timer’s Oil Filter Monitoring Kit. An oil filter monitor connected to a Platinum controller can give a building manager plenty of warning that a fuel filter needs to be replaced, so that it can be changed at the next regular boiler service, rather than during a late-night emergency call after a boiler lock-out. 3. Plumbing Decay – While pumps and filters are the obvious problem areas during boiler start up because they are right there out in the open, there are invisible problems in the boiler room too. Pipes, condensate tanks and the boilers are eternally and invisibly rusting from the inside out. Boiler tube leaks are common start-up problems on older boilers. Iron pipes can suddenly develop pinhole leaks. Steam traps can fail to close properly. Even when these leaks are as obvious as a puddle on the floor, it can be days before someone goes into the boiler room and notices it. On the other hand a leak from a steam line or steam trap can be hard to see even if a service technician is looking for it, and water leaking from inside the boiler may evaporate and go up the stack, but not before causing further corrosion problems in the burner and the flue ducting. Fortunately, the days (and nights) of discovering water leaks only after the sump pump alarm goes off are long gone. Sensitive boiler feedwater meters connected to BuildingNet® through a Platinum controller continuously measure boiler make-up water usage. Building managers can use BuildingNet’s trending tools to visualize long term changes in boiler water usage week to week or season to season, helping identify water leaks while they are still small and inexpensive to fix rather than after they have flooded the boiler room, shutting down the boiler and damaging equipment. Heat-Timer® Controls Save Money and Maintenance Headaches. There is a lot to keep an eye on in those first few weeks of boiler operation, especially if you are responsible for multiple buildings. Knowing that your boiler controller has your back, monitoring everything going on in the boiler room can make waking up the boilers a lot less stressful. Heat-Timer® has been helping boiler service professionals wake up the boilers for over 80 years with a deep toolkit of controllers, sensors and alarms. If servicing the boilers keep you awake at night, consider upgrading to Heat-Timer’s Platinum controller with a BuildingNet® remote interface. Original content posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/service-your-boilers-before-winter-arrives/ The world’s most advanced Heating controller got even better and more capable with the introduction of the Heat-Timer® Platinum Series. With Internet connectivity available as an upgrade, building owners and managers are now able to monitor, and adjust their heating controls from the comfort of a mobile app, or via our website accessible to any device connected to the internet. The software is designed to present information integrated from many different Platinum controls, housed in many different boiler rooms, buildings, or multiple addresses. If you are a building management company with many buildings in your portfolio, it is possible to see all your properties neatly organized into a hierarchy that allows you to drill down into individual controls, or get summary reports on your buildings or properties. You can also set alarms that notify you of a wide variety of conditions in the building before they become critical. All remotely accessible, with frequency and thresholds all perfectly under your control. While all this software and connectivity is impressive and a massive convenience, many users of platinum controls don’t realize that internet connectivity is only half of the BuildingNet upgrade. The rest of the upgrade goes beyond the internet, and deep into your building where the real money is being wasted. BuildingNet Connectivity also enables wireless sensor connectivity inside your building The real value of BuildingNet in terms of payback, comes from the internal network of sensors that it enables inside your building. This is the second half of the connectivity provided by the upgrade, and is not an IP network but a completely separate wireless network. When you upgrade your Platinum control to BuildingNet, you also enable a proprietary internal 900MHZ wireless network, similar to those used in your home for wireless handsets on your landline. By using our MSI Hub and wireless repeaters as necessary in your building we are able to create a sensor network that feeds our platinum controller real-time information on hot and cold spots in the building. The sensors used to send this information are known as our Wireless Space Sensor. Why Does Using Space Sensors Save Me So Much Additional Money on Fuel Costs? The short answer to this question is simply that by having specific building data points, more precise boiler control is enabled. Every building loses heat differently, sun/wind exposure, drafty windows, etc. The control is now able to learn the heat loss characteristics of your building adjust itself automatically. Please note that this is all in addition to the data provided by standard outdoor reset features which are important, but not enough to get building owners that last 20 or so percent of fuel savings through improvements in the efficiency of managing boiler firing cycles. Typically, installers will specify a certain amount of room sensors based on the layout and configuration of your building. Once enabled, these sensors send back temperature information that allows our control to create detailed performance curves for every area of your building. These curves inform the control with data on heat loss and hot spots in every area of your building. With a more detailed understanding of building heating profiles, our controller software can keep all areas of your building comfortable for the least amount of money possible. All while increasing tenant comfort!
Consider Upgrading Your Platinum Control Today There are even more powerful functions and features available through BuildingNet than we can cover here. For instance, there are other wireless sensors, like water meters, gas sensors, boiler lockout, flood alarms, and more, that are enabled by the BuildingNet upgrade and then visible via the website or mobile app. With BuildingNet, you have a true building management system, for your heating system and related components, without the huge expense of integrating one. If you own a Platinum control or are considering one, Heat-Timer® strongly recommends the upgrade to BuildingNet. To learn more, visit our website at: https://www.heat-timer.com/ Original blog posted on https://www.heat-timer.com/understanding-remote-connectivity-buildingnet/ |
AuthorHeat-Timer® corporate office and manufacturing facility is conveniently located in Fairfield, NJ. Here, Heat-Timer® manufactures its electronic controls, sensors, valves and actuator products using specialized computer controlled equipment and automated testing systems. Archives
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