10 F water temp diff between EKO40 dig. readout and analog gage on supply side plumbing

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Northwoodsman

New Member
Hearth Supporter
May 21, 2008
99
Northern MI
I have made it through my first winter with my newly installed EKO40 system with 1,000 gallons of storage.

I have learned a lot about this system and have been very, very satisfied with its performance and low wood consumption. I have been so impressed with its performance and the whole gasification/storage concept that I am now a dealer in Northern Michigan for both EKO and Tarm Boilers and can't wait till this fall (www.upnorthenergy.com). One thing I have found is that many people/business's who are selling these boilers are clueless when it comes to providing the hard core engineering support that these systems require. Being a degreed mechanical engineer, this if right up my alley!!!!

However, one issue I had all winter (and chose to ignore at that time) is that my EKO40 digital readout is always 10F higher than the actual water temperature going to my storage tanks (I have verified this with both the analog gage on my pipe going from the boiler to storage and the digital Azel Technologies gages on my storage tanks themselves).

I tried the resistor thing on the boiler probe but that took the temp on my EKO40 even higher (due to the increased resistance).

I am thinking about locating the sensor that is on the EKO40 itself to a location somewhere near the analog gage that is on my supply side piping (maybe even put it into a well type fitting).

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks,

NWM
 
I don't know whether you want to look at the inards of your controller, but if you do, there often is a potentiometer on the control board that is used to adjust/calibrate the temp sensor. If so, you can adjust this to slightly reduce resistance to raise the temp readout or vice versa. If you choose to adjust a potentiometer, be sure to mark its exact original position so you can return to that if things don't work out as expected.

I've rarely found two sensors to produce the same reading, and if I can get within 2% I figure that's pretty good.
 
I have an analog temp/press gauge right on the hot supply line at the top of my boiler and another gauge on the supply line out to the house. Counting the air trap and the expansion tank there is only about 8' of plumbing between the gauges. For the first two winters there was about 7 deg between the analogs and now they are almost identical most of the time. My controller is the older model which reads in Celsius/centigrade but after the Fahrenheit conversion is only about 2 deg more than the analogs. Where you position your controller sensor will make a difference in the reading from what I have heard but as long as your analogs are accurate I would look for a calibration pot in the controller first.
 
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