It most certainly will damage it. There’s a reason the water returns at a certain temp
My idea for preventing frozen pipes
- Thread starter cesc
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maple1
Minister of Fire
How will it damage it? It won't be that much cooler than the water that's already in the boiler.
Circulating the pump without water would damage the pump. However, I don't think circulating the cold water would damage either the pump or the boiler. That being said, wires on boiler control board are likely needed to be jumped to bypass boiler and run circulating only mode. I am not exactly sure how to do that though.
Same here. We just installed heat pumps (without auxiliary heating strip, which consumes too much power and even less economically efficient than propane boiler) and also have a wood stove. When it is below 20-25F outside, the heat pumps are much less efficient and could not keep up the heat loss even when running 24/7, so we need another heating source. I am trying to minimize energy cost and also protecting the pipes from frozen.I frequently torture myself figuring out the best mix of oil, wood, and minisplit usage.
Fortunately(?) my insert is not big enough to stop the heat from coming on during the cold snaps.
Why not get a clock thermostat and set the heat to come on from 3 - 3:10am for example?
What kind of clock thermostats are you referring to? We have the fancy Ecobee tstats to control the heat pumps, but I am having a hard time to control propane boilers with Ecobee since it does not have common wire and our Taco zone valve relay board does not seem to have common connection point either.
Ours was a simple replacement of the boiler's analog tstat with a programmable one from Honeywell, like RTH2300B. It allows you to set multiple on/off times for each day of week. I am the sole operator of the insert, so the minisplits get run when I'm not home and the outside temps are solidly above freezing. No fancy tstats, press the button if you want to use them.
Thanks. Most of our old tstats can program four time periods each day with different temperature preferences. The problem is I am not sure what temperature it would require to trigger the call for heat. I guess I could set a temperature high enough (say 80F) to call for heat for one short period (5 mins?) and another temperature low enough (say 50F) to avoid heat call. But some thermostats have "smart recovery" which would initiate heat call ahead of time, causing unnecessary energy waste.
I am hoping to build a smarter solution, such as the OP's idea, using external or internal temperature sensors which I already have. I am pursuing two paths:
1. Use RPI and relay board to trigger heat call like OP.
2. Somehow managed to get a common wire and replace old tstats with Ecobee to be fully integrated with our smart home hub (Hubitat).
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You might be able to integrate or use some Z-wave technology together with this company to do some or all of what you wish. I use HomeSeer automation just a little bit, not near to its full potential.
https://homeseer.com/
https://homeseer.com/
The drastic change will crack the heat exchanger. It’s not made to have cool water running through it
sloeffle
Minister of Fire
A PID controller along with an immersible K type thermocouple can probably do the same thing. I’m doing something very similar with my geo system and OWB.
I do like the SmartHome idea since you’d be able to possibly manage it remotely.
I do like the SmartHome idea since you’d be able to possibly manage it remotely.
What do you use the PID controller for?
To manage heat call remotely, one would only need a Wi-Fi enable thermostat. But the smart home hub could do more, for example to trigger the boiler (via smart thermostat) automatically when a temperature sensor reaches a threshold.
maple1
Minister of Fire
But there is no change. The boiler is off.
Edit: there is no heat exchanger either. It's just a boiler. A big tank of water.
Just go the easy way and run glycol in the system...
Unless you have storage that is the fail safe way to protect
Lets say that you go with a programmable sytem to move the water,
What happens if there is a prolonged power outage like whats happening right now in eastern Canada and parts of the States due to extreme weather?
With no storage in play i will bet that the bill for the plumber would have paid for glycol.
Unless you have storage that is the fail safe way to protect
Lets say that you go with a programmable sytem to move the water,
What happens if there is a prolonged power outage like whats happening right now in eastern Canada and parts of the States due to extreme weather?
With no storage in play i will bet that the bill for the plumber would have paid for glycol.
sloeffle
Minister of Fire
I use a PID controller to break Y1 on my geo based off of the temperature of the incoming water. Not sure if could do something similar.
I’m not a big fan of web based thermostats ( especially ones whose parent companies are Google and Amazon ) but that’s just me. Big brother already knows enough about me, they don’t need to know any more. I do have a IOT network but it’s hub based system using all ZWave or ZigBee ( encryption communication ) devices.
@salecker idea is spot on IMHO. I’d make the system completely fail safe by using glycol. If you have an automatic backup generator then it might not be worth it.
