Friday, November 14, 2008
Patent Awarded for Furnace Fan/Boiler Circulation Timer
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT:
John Walsh
Bear Mountain Design
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(406) 587-6160 F
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http://www.bearmountaindesign.com
Patent Awarded for Furnace Fan/Boiler Circulation Timer
Bozeman, MT, September 29, 2008 – Bozeman engineer John Walsh has been awarded a patent for his energy savings device called ThermGuard. When Walsh came up with the design for ThermGuard in 2002, little did he realize that 6 years later, in the midst of an energy crisis, his product would take on a whole new meaning.
“As the price of heating your home with gas, electricity, or oil, seems to increase without limit, it is important take advantage of alternative heat sources” Walsh says. The problem with a heat source such as a wood or pellet stove is that one area of the house gets very warm and the other areas feel chilly and this can cancel out why you were using an alternative heat source in the first place. He sought a way to comfortably heat an entire house with low cost wood or pellets and minimize hot or cold spots. “I knew that if I could move the heat trapped around the stove to the rest of the house in an economical fashion, it would not only make the home more comfortable, but it would save money on the heating bill as well.” He experimented with multiple design ideas and finally settled on the current design of ThermGuard.
ThermGuard’s patented technology is a microprocessor-controlled timer for your thermostat. It is about the size of a small box of wooden matches. ThermGuard has two programmable components: One is the interval to wait between turning on your furnace fan and the other controls how long to leave the fan on once it is running. ThermGuard needs no batteries and has the ability to remember your program when your home loses power. Walsh installed a prototype in a friend’s home with a forced air heating system. Within minutes, the home became more comfortable and less heat was required from the conventional heating system. The use of ThermGuard resulted in warm air from the stove circulating through the rest of the home via the heating ducts. Temperatures in the remote rooms of the home increased dramatically making the home more all-around comfortable.
“The beauty of this product is that it is so easy to use.” Walsh explains that ThermGuard is very simple to install and operate. There are only two wires and it doesn’t matter which wires connect to which terminals of the thermostat fan switch. ThermGuard also requires no periodic maintenance, since no batteries are required. A single button with 2 lights is used to program the system. ” With the high cost of energy today, people need to get the most out of their alternative heating sources,” says Walsh. The ThermGuard is so effective that many stove dealers are including one with each stove they sell.
ThermGuard can also be used in homes with radiant heat to keep the heating pipes from freezing. Heating homes with an alternative heat source can cause long periods where the boiler doesn’t move hot water through the heating system. As a result, the heating pipes can freeze when they approach outside walls. ThermGuard can be programmed to send hot water through these pipes periodically and keep them from freezing.
In another application, mobile homes can benefit from ThermGuard. Most mobile home manufacturers run their water pipes in the heating ducts. The warm air from the heater keeps them from freezing. When an alternative heat source is used, the furnace is idle, causing the pipes in the ducts to freeze since there is no warm air. ThermGuard can be programmed to take the heat from the alternative heat source and run it though the ducts and thus keep the pipes from freezing.
Walsh’s background is in electrical engineering and has 20 years of experience in electronic product development. Walsh was a VP and General Manager of ILX Lightwave of Bozeman, MT, in charge of design, manufacturing, and marketing of electronic and optical instrumentation products. “When the telecom market sector crashed, I found myself unemployed.” says Walsh. “I immediately started my design of ThermGuard because I wanted to stay in Bozeman”
When asked about his philosophy concerning environmentally responsible products, Walsh feels strongly that we should use renewable resources wherever possible in our lives. He quotes his favorite web information source woodheat.org: “Spend a buck on oil, natural gas or electricity and you feed a corporate giant. Spend a buck on firewood and you feed a neighbor. Save a buck by heating with wood and you can spend that buck in your community. Heating with wood makes you richer in ways beyond counting.”
Details about ThermGuard can be found at http://www.bearmountaindesign.com. ThermGuard is a registered trademark of Bear Mountain Designs, Inc
ABOUT Bear Mountain Design – Bear Mountain Design is a Montana Corporation founded in 2002.
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