Water control systems

[petawawarace]

Hey guys, I am looking at a propane/wood boiler system and I would like to know what type of electronics you guys use for controlling which loops get heated when. I have some knowledge of PLC systems but I don't want to have to start from scratch.

I have a basic idea of what I need, and I will draw it out shortly, but I want to have the propane boiler and the wood boiler/storage tanks work in parallel with each other. Meaning they both will heat both the house and a detached garage. The tricky part will be that the propane boiler will be in the house, and the wood boiler will be in the garage ~ 100 ft away.

PS I am not talking about the Lambda style controllers for the boilers themselves, more for control of the radiant heat system.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[waterwizard]

I have a longwood propane and wood combination it is forced air I want to put copper coils in hot air chamber to hheat water before going to 80 gal elect HWH cause it was expensive last winter using just elect

 

[BoilerMan]

You mean with aquastats? Or pipeing diagrams? If you mean the electrical side of things most use off the shelf aquastats, zone valves, and circulators. Can you be more specific?

TS

 

[petawawarace]

I am new to this so I am not sure how the whole system works. The system has to have some "Logic Control" of some sort. I am just not sure how it is normally done. Here is what I want (some temps might not be correct). I am thinking I will have 3 radiant heating loops. One in the concrete floor in the house L1 , one in main floor of the house L2 and one in the garage floor L3

#1. If any Loop is below my set temp (lets say 20C) the valve for that loop will be opened.
#2. Once the desired upper temp (say 22C) has been met the valve will close.
#3. The system will look for heat in a certain order. First if the wood boiler (WB) is running get heat there. Second if the WB is off but the Storage Tank (ST) is above temp (say 25C) get heat from there. Third if WB is off and ST is <25C use propane boiler.
#4. Various valves will need to be opened and closed for this to work properly based on where the heat is coming from.

I know I can control this all with a PLC, but they are rather expensive and I am far from an expert in programming them. Is there something else out there that is being used???? Maybe you can do all these functions with Aquastats????

 

[TheMightyMoe]

This would be done with aquastats and pumps as zone valves.

Zone temp is 140+ pull from wood boiler / storage, if water temperature hits 135, propane boiler kicks in.

Plumb it primary/secondary. (Check FAQ ats top)

Radiant slab youll need mixing valves before zones because you don't want water above 110* going in

You need to do a lot more homework IMO.

 

[BoilerMan]

http://www.caleffi.us/caleffi/en_US/Site/Technical_library/Idraulica_magazine/index.sdo

I hope you like some reading, this is some of the best and well explained stuff out there!

TS

 

[Clarkbug]

What you are looking for is pretty standard actually, and wont need a PLC to do it (but you can if you want to).

I have a Taco Zone Controller that will control pumps/zone valves based on a call from the T-stat. I also have an STSS controller that runs off of an aquastat thats connected to my storage tanks. When the tanks are warm, the controller doesnt let the oil boiler fire. It also opens a zone valve and turns on an additional circ pump to move water from my storage to the house. If the storage is cold, the controller lets the oil boiler fire as called by the Taco controller.

The relays/aquastats are relatively cheap, reliable, and easily found off the shelf if something goes wrong.

I would say get a diagram of how you want to lay out your system first, then figure out how to control it second. Just my thoughts, having gone through this last year....