controlling wood tempwith thermostat

[Rembo]

I have the eko 40, If I connect a thermostst to the wood controller will that control my tmp. I don't have control of my temp right know. Will the thermostat control my circulation pump? Does anybody know how this is supposed to work?

 

[Gooserider]

I know the manual for the controller that the EKO uses is online here somewhere - If I recall correctly, it's an RKU-201, and if you do a search on that term you will find it... That should tell you what you need to know... You can also find the manual on some of the EKO dealer websites, I know I've seen it on either the AHONA or New Horizons site... I'm not quite sure what you are trying to accomplish, but I think the controller has a hookup that will let you do it.

Gooserider

 

[rkusek]

I have the eko 40, If I connect a thermostst to the wood controller will that control my tmp. I don't have control of my temp right know. Will the thermostat control my circulation pump? Does anybody know how this is supposed to work?

Here is a link for the latest manual. [url/http://www.newhorizoncorp.com/PDF/ekomanual.pdf/]

There is a terminal on the controller to connect to the boiler circ which allows you to set what temp the pump will turn on and shut off. Make sure you are using the Danfoss mixing valve too (or similar boiler protection). The controller seems hard to undertand at first glance. I would spend some time learning how to change settings, etc. I would ignore the stuff about connecting your house thermostat directly to the EKO. From what I can tell all this will do is put your EKO in idle when the house is not calling for heat which most of us wouldn't do directly. I think that is what you may be hung up on. These pins were jumpered out from the factory on mine to keep the EKO in "RUN" mode. The EKO will still cycle to maintain the water temp setting you select.

 

[stee6043]

What are you using to get the heat to your house? Water-to-air heat exchanger in a forced air furnace? Radiators? This could potentially impact the simplicity of what you're trying to do...

 

[Nofossil]

In the simplest case, you control your zone valves with thermostats and let the EKO control its circulator and fans. You use the EKO controller's dial to select the water temp that you want (based on anticipated heat load - hotter if it's colder outside).

If it happens that no zones are calling for heat, then the EKO circ will be pumping into a closed manifold. This is not recommended, but smaller circs can do this without damage as long as the water temps aren't too high. While this is happening, there is no flow through the EKO, so temps start to climb. Hopefully, the fan shuts down and heat production slows before you boil over.

Ideally, you'd have a dump zone to get rid of excess heat in this situation. If the boiler temp setting is close enough to what you actually need, you'll be circulating almost all the time anyway. I think the EKO controller has a temp sensor input that can be used to fine-tune this approach.

This whole issue is part of the reason that people do storage. This is not a gasifier-specific problem - all wood burning appliances have to deal with this in one way or another.