need help controlling blower

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
Status
Not open for further replies.

jeepin in maine

New Member
Dec 3, 2007
68
southern maine
can anyone offer some advice on how to control a furnace blower so that it shuts off and comes on in accordance with duct temp or on a a timer or something?i've converted my smoke dragon into a furnace and have got it working pretty well(only about 5-8 degree difference between basement and main floor now versus 12-20+ difference i had).my only complaint is that the blower is manually controlled(on-off by me),and that some times when the stove is damped down for the day(at work) or during the night the blower could really use to cycle off and on to keep the duct temps up.the blower is just a conventional multi speed furnace blower(red-low,orange-low-med,blue-med-high,black-high) that i run full time on low.any advice would be appreciated..........jeremy
 
Can you hook it up to a room thermostat and control it that way?
 
eric....not sure how well the thermostat would work.the main floor maintains a pretty constant 69-72 degrees.i'm basically just looking for a way to keep the duct temps more consistent and not have the blower running 24-7.when the stove is damped down(at night or while at work)the ducts have a tendancy to cool off a bit due to air moving thru it constantly and the fact that with the stove turned down its making less heat.if the blower would shut down when the duct air starts cooling i think it would allow the stove to recoup some of its heat before starting to blow air again.

zuki.......any idea what the high limit is on those?gonna hit lowes and depot and check em out

could i use like a honeywell type controller from an oil furnace?if so....any idea how to make them work?i'm pretty new at this stuff.
thanks for the replys.............jeremy
 
A Honeywell L4064B may work for you. The unit is mounted on the duct, and it's element protrudes through the sheetmetal, the way the old oil burner stack switches mount. The temp range should be sufficient enough for your application. The lowest setting is around 50F and the highest is arount 180F (I think).
 
There's also a L4017A which may work, a guy on eBay is selling 40 of them for $12 ea, it uses a capillary tube instead. There is also someone selling a new "cam-stat" brand similar to the L4064, he's selling that one for $10.50 with $5 shipping.
 
It sounds like you are using a blower to transport heat out of the basement, or furnace room. when the furnace is low or off, you don't want to blow cold air around.
If you put a stat in the air duct, then turn off the fan, the reading will become invalid. It sounds to me that the best way to set it up would be to have the stat set up for cooling mounted in the furnace room, or near the furnace. When the room becomes hot, the fan will come on to distribute the air around to the rest of the house. The trick will be getting it not to short cycle. A programmable differential would help out. A simple stat won't have this feature. One that I can think of that does is the Tekmar 101 control. You could even mount the probe on the boiler or stack and control the fan on that.
good luck!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.