Anybody with thermguard experience?

[nanama72]

We're loving our new Enviro empress and it heats the rooms we want it to pretty well as long as we put a fan in the upstairs to get the air into our bedroom. However, we have a few rooms which we are not really heating, including the bathrooms which get pretty chilly and we're having a debate at home about how low we can set the thermostats since one of us doesn't want to use any oil and the other one is worried about pipes freezing. We've got a forced hot air system that we tend to only use in the summer by running the fan or air conditioning and we also have a combined hot water heating system which is a mix of hot water baseboard and radiant. Right now we're running the fans on the cathedral ceiling to keep the heat downstairs in the main living areas of the house whenever we're home. We've got another few rooms closed off for the most part. I've been reading here about thermguard and think probably for us rotating the fan around the house every so often would work great and reduce our electricity by not needing the ceiling fans on all the time. Has anyone had any problems with it malfunctioning or have anything to say about it's reliability? Has anyone installed it yet? It sounds almost too good to be true. Any experience with thermguard would be welcome.

 

[imacman]

I just ordered one, and when i get it installed and let it run for a while, I'll post a "review". It's a pretty simple concept, so I don't forsee any problems.

 

[smithmal]

I just spoke with one of the Thermguard reps and he indicated that if you have a HVAC system in place, you can also hook a thermguard up to the HVAC fan switch to help circulate the warm air throughout the house. Therefore you would need one thermguard for each zone, and one additional thermguard for the HVAC fan switch. Seems like a pretty good investment ($69 per thermguard) to reduce your heating bills.

BTW, if you type in 101657512 in the vouncher/discount code Thermguard is giving 10% off and free shipping to all Hearth.com members!

smithmal

 

[nanama72]

Unfortunately I did a test over night to test if the HVAC fan would work upstairs. It actually made the nonheated rooms drop their temp by 10 degrees while the heated area in the hall stayed warm. Tried again this morning with the downstairs HVAC and again in fan only mode did not circulate hot air but only served to cool the areas. Not sure if it's because of the way it's set up or not. Still thermgaurd may work with our 2 thermostats in the hot water baseboard areas, and that would leave us having to use some oil possibly in the bathrooms to keep them warm because of pipes since the bathrooms are on radiant only. Not sure if there are any studies on how often/how long to have the water circulate. I did read through the thermguard website, but not sure if leaving the bathrooms on 55 or so would be good enough. I'm very interested to see other folks experience.

 

[freebird77]

Thinking of getting one, and Id like to hear some more opinions myself.

 

[kyburnr]

Thinking of getting one, and Id like to hear some more opinions myself.

Ditto

 

[Wet1]

I'm definitely going to be ordering one.

 

[imacman]

As I mentioned above, I've already ordered one, so i'll let everyone know what I think after I run it for awhile. I want to be confident in it's operation before I go and lower the 'stat in those rooms upstairs that have the pipe that froze once (it runs through an unheated attic).

I guess I'll be a Pellet "guinea" Pig.....LOL

 

[bridgerman]

Unfortunately I did a test over night to test if the HVAC fan would work upstairs. It actually made the nonheated rooms drop their temp by 10 degrees while the heated area in the hall stayed warm. Tried again this morning with the downstairs HVAC and again in fan only mode did not circulate hot air but only served to cool the areas. Not sure if it's because of the way it's set up or not. Still thermgaurd may work with our 2 thermostats in the hot water baseboard areas, and that would leave us having to use some oil possibly in the bathrooms to keep them warm because of pipes since the bathrooms are on radiant only. Not sure if there are any studies on how often/how long to have the water circulate. I did read through the thermguard website, but not sure if leaving the bathrooms on 55 or so would be good enough. I'm very interested to see other folks experience.

It sounds like the cold air return is not able to get to the heat. Where is it with respect to the stove? Also, the vent in the room with the stove needs to be open so there is a path for the air to flow. In other words, the fan needs to draw air from the heated room and as it draws air, the air needs to be replaced from the register in that room. To get more air to flow, you could close vents in rooms close to the stove (already warm enough), but leave the vent open in the room with the stove. That would move more air specifically out of the room with the stove.

The rooms that had the temperature drop could be seeing the air being cooled by the duct work. If it is in a attic and is uninsulated, moving air through the ducts into the rooms will just cool them down if there is no heat from the stove being drawn into the system.

Just some thoughts!

Cheers,
John

 

[freebird77]

John, I have a manufactured double wide with no cellar. I have the same common problem with my pellet stove, being in the corner of the living room, the ends of the house are cold. The house has a kerosene fired gun furnace which Im sure you are familiar with, located around the corner of the living room in the short hallway. Can you tell me where the furnace fan will draw the warm air from to recirculate it? I assume it draws the same as it normally would through the furnace filter?
Just wondering because of course, the heat in the hallway by the furnace intake is cooler then the living room, but some what warmer then the very ends of the house. I think you are in for a ton of correspondance concerning your invention and probably lots of sales. Id appreciate any more advice you could offer. Thank you. Doug in Pa.

 

[nanama72]

Thank you for your input because it explains why it gets colder with our house fan. Basically some of the intakes are near the floor in the colder rooms, and some are up near the cathedral ceiling in the room with the fireplace. It seems we'd have to shut off the intakes in the cold rooms. So that only the air from the heated rooms would go into the system. Unfortunately the intakes are just grates with no way to shut them off. We'd have to remove the grates and use something else to cover those intakes. I actually don't know since it can work as both forced hot air and air conditioning if it switches direction or if it always goes the same way and if the fan alone goes the air conditioning way. All the exits seem to be on the ground so that would favor in terms of it being going the direction of heating. It's a pretty well insulated house that was built in the 80's and there is plenty of attic insulation. The ductwork isn't insulated in the basement, but I don't even know if it goes through there when the fan is just blowing around the house not coming from the furnace in the basement. For now we're just leaving the bathroom radiant heat on 60 to avoid any freezing pipes, and so far the stove has kept them around 64 with outside temps down to the 20's.

Thanks alot

 

[bridgerman]

John, I have a manufactured double wide with no cellar. I have the same common problem with my pellet stove, being in the corner of the living room, the ends of the house are cold. The house has a kerosene fired gun furnace which Im sure you are familiar with, located around the corner of the living room in the short hallway. Can you tell me where the furnace fan will draw the warm air from to recirculate it? I assume it draws the same as it normally would through the furnace filter?
Just wondering because of course, the heat in the hallway by the furnace intake is cooler then the living room, but some what warmer then the very ends of the house. I think you are in for a ton of correspondance concerning your invention and probably lots of sales. Id appreciate any more advice you could offer. Thank you. Doug in Pa.

Hi Freebird,

You have it right...the air would be drawn in through the furnace filter as it usually is. The key is to get the air moving to the corner with the stove. Is there a vent from the heater near the stove. If so, be sure it is open and close any vents between the stove and the hallway. That should really help. Of course, you could also put a fan behine the stove to move the air out of the corner. That is what I do in my house. I have had "heated" discussions with folks at woodheat.org about heat plume that rises noiselessly and fills the house with warmth. Well....in my case, it just ain't so. In your case, if adjusting the vents doesn't bring you satisfaction, the fan can move the warm air to the heater intake.

I have also heard about pipes freezing in manufactured homes since they run them in close proximity to the heating ducts. They assume, and rightly so, that when the house as designed (no heating stove) gets gold, the heater kicks on. With the heat on, the pipes stay warm. When you throw a heating stove into the mix, the forced air heating system seldom comes on. The pipes near the ducts don't get heat and they freeze. ThermGuard helps with this as well since you can tell it to turn on the heating fan only (not the heater) from time to time to keep the pipes in the manufactured from freezing when it gets really cold outside.

Cheers,
John

 

[freebird77]

John,
Thanks for the advice. Im going to look into this some more, and make a decision about the Thermgaurd. Keep warm, Doug

 

[bbells]

This posting said to type the code in the discount field...
But I can find no way to order the product on the website only calling in. Is there another site for online ordering?
Thanks!

I just spoke with one of the Thermguard reps and he indicated that if you have a HVAC system in place, you can also hook a thermguard up to the HVAC fan switch to help circulate the warm air throughout the house. Therefore you would need one thermguard for each zone, and one additional thermguard for the HVAC fan switch. Seems like a pretty good investment ($69 per thermguard) to reduce your heating bills.

BTW, if you type in 101657512 in the vouncher/discount code Thermguard is giving 10% off and free shipping to all Hearth.com members!

smithmal

 

[bridgerman]

Hi bbells,

I just checked and the big red buy-it-now button is on the web site and the voucher/coupon field does come up on the shopping cart. If you are still having problems, please email me:

[email protected]

Thanks,
John

 

[bbells]

Thanks!
I just ordered it. The Button didn't appear in Firefox at first, but did after I reloaded. Please ignore the phone message from 612-205-.....

 

[bridgerman]

Thanks!
I just ordered it. The Button didn't appear in Firefox at first, but did after I reloaded. Please ignore the phone message from 612-205-.....

Hi Bbells,

You were next on my list to call.

Cheers,
John

 

[bbells]

Ok, I just installed the Thermguard fan controller and here are my observations:
1) Reason I got it: Details: Baby countryside corn stove, 2500 square foot house. Minnesota. The reason I bought the Thermguard was because my house had cold rooms causing the furnace to go on even when the corn stove was running and parts of the house were 80 degrees. Previously I disconnected a cold air vent on one end of the house and added a fan that would blow warm air from the basement up to that end of the floor above through that vent. That barely worked and was noisy. Next I thought about turning the furnace fan on low 24 hours a day. But, I thought this would cause too much wear. The goal was to circulate the warm air from the corn stove so the basement (where the stove is located) wasn't 80 degrees while the rest of the house was 55-65.
2) Installation: The Thermguard unit was conveniently small and easy to hook up. Just 2 wires connect to the fan wires on the thermostat. I checked the colors of the wires at the thermostat, then installed the unit downstairs by the furnace to those wires. In my situation there was a slight problem: The central air switch was using one of the fan wires on the thermostat. This caused the AC to go on when the Thermguard turned the fan on (the instructions said this could happen with some thermostats). I shut down the circuit breaker for the AC, but there was still a hum in the AC box when the fan went on (I assume a relay was being switched, but couldn't trigger the AC because while the system had power to the relay via the thermostat, the AC didn't have power to turn on). So, I simply disconnected one of the 2 thermostat wires going to the AC (between furnace and AC box - I will add a switch to the wire later). This stopped the humming in the AC box and stopped the AC from going on. Obviously this meant I didn't need to shut off the circuit breaker for the AC. I then followed the steps for setting the unit up. I started with the default timing of 5 minutes on in every 1/2 hour.
3) Results: The results were immediate. Almost instantly the temp evened out throughout the entire house. Yes, it was still warmer down in the room with the corn stove, but luckily I had a cold air vent right next to the stove to suck in the warm air. An unexpected result was that we needed to turn down the feed on the corn stove and open some windows because the house got almost too warm to sleep at night. It is obvious the Thermguard will easily pay for itself in the first month or 2 of operation since I doubt my furnace will be going on until January when the temps get 20-30 below zero. And I have no connection with Thermguard, just like products that actually do what they say they will do and do it simply and effectively.

 

[Jakethepup]

Might be a dumb question but happens when therroastate calls for propain heat and the thermgrard is already running the furnace fan blower , My furnace also has a small fan at start up that pulls out any propain gas this is in the chamber for it to lite the furance heat and since the thermguard is already using the blower, will this cause a problem? I know when it get real cool the furance will have to run to keep the temp around 68 even with the insert, I am just hoping that the furance will just have to fire up less often. I have just been turning on the furance fan on once in a while but I thought it would be nice in the middle of the night to have the Thermguard turn on a while to keep the house of a more even heat.

Thanks

 

[bbells]

I have a high efficiency propane furnace and it works fine. The fan for circulating air in the house is not the same blower that is used to clear the chamber in energy efficient furnaces - It would be illegal and dangerous for anyone to design a furnace in that way. Therefore, there is no affect on the furnaces ability to start and run when the thermguard unit is attached to the circulating fan. It only turns the circulating fan on and no other part of the furnace.

 

[imacman]

Might be a dumb question but happens when therroastate calls for propain heat and the thermgrard is already running the furnace fan blower , My furnace also has a small fan at start up that pulls out any propain gas this is in the chamber for it to lite the furance heat and since the thermguard is already using the blower, will this cause a problem? I know when it get real cool the furance will have to run to keep the temp around 68 even with the insert, I am just hoping that the furance will just have to fire up less often. I have just been turning on the furance fan on once in a while but I thought it would be nice in the middle of the night to have the Thermguard turn on a while to keep the house of a more even heat.

Thanks

The purpose of the ThermGuard is to be able to lower your thermostat to a very low setting (I have mine on 50), and the ThermGuard will come on occasionally to circulate a little water (or warm air) and heat to keep pipes, etc, from freezing. It's not meant to be turned on while you have your heating system running normally. This should eliminate you having to turn on the furnace fan once in a while...it does it for you.


BTW, I installed mine last week, and I tried it last night and it worked just as advertised. Easy to install and program.....pretty foolproof in my situation.

 

[bridgerman]

Might be a dumb question but happens when therroastate calls for propain heat and the thermgrard is already running the furnace fan blower , My furnace also has a small fan at start up that pulls out any propain gas this is in the chamber for it to lite the furance heat and since the thermguard is already using the blower, will this cause a problem? I know when it get real cool the furance will have to run to keep the temp around 68 even with the insert, I am just hoping that the furance will just have to fire up less often. I have just been turning on the furance fan on once in a while but I thought it would be nice in the middle of the night to have the Thermguard turn on a while to keep the house of a more even heat.

Thanks

Hi Jake,

The thing to remember is that the combustion chamber (where the propane burns and makes heat) is seperate from the house air supply. That is why there is a heat exchanger. You need the fumes from the burning gases to go outside through a vent. If there is any kind of mechanism that evacuates propane, it is completely unaffected but the house blower running. Also, ThermGuard shuts off when the thermostat calls for heat because the house is too cold. It restarts its timing cycle once the heater turns off. That way, no energy is wasted turning on the blower if it was just on with the heater.

Cheers,
John

 

[bridgerman]

Thanks for your review bbells. You have encapsulated the essence of the problem and solution.

Macman....thanks for waiving the banner and chargin' up the hill.

Cheers,
John

 

[Jakethepup]

Thanks everyone for their input, and I sure don’t mean to hi-jack the thread but I still have a few questions about this device.
First let me state that I in no means am I trying to belittle or over simplify this device, just trying to make sure I understand the basic operation. I would in no way want to make a member upset over this statement, or the manufacture or the engineer of this product. One of the question I have it sound like this device in a simple term is nothing more than a timer, is that correct? Not saying that this device does not have more functions than that, just in a simple form of operation.

From what I have read here on the forum and when I looked at the website it appears that this device would work with my propane furnace. So I need to ask a few questions about operation and the ease of operation.

It appears that the device will hook up above or below the thermostat meaning the physical location, or it could also be hooked up down in the basement where the furnace is located is that correct?

It also appear that the timing can be changed how long the furnace blower will run per hour is that also correct?

I have a programmable thermostat; will all the functions on the programmable thermostat still work like normal, will, the thermostat continue to control temperature change through-out the day?

When the device is installed will I still be able to manually turn the furnace fan on and off via the thermostat? If the device turns the furnace fan on, and someone wants to turn it off will the manual switch on the thermostat over ride the device?

If I get one, I would put it above or below the thermostat, however my wife may not want it hanging on the wall, I have not asked but I know her everything has a place and not sure if she would want it hung on the wall, so if I had to install it down in the basement, will the above questions still work with the device located in the basement? Also if it not real simple, my wife will just toss her hands in the air, and get pissed off if it changes anything she does not understand. So it has to be real simple. Not saying she is simple minded she does not like changes. It took years before she would play a DVD because she liked the ease of just putting a tape in the vcr and push play.

I think it would work ideal in my house, next to the fireplace on each side next to the ceiling are two return ducts and when I turn the furnace fan on, it will pull the heat right out of the den where the insert is.

Sorry for all the questions, but I need to make sure I ask the proper questions so if I purchase one I won’t be in the dog house.

 

[bridgerman]

Thanks everyone for their input, and I sure don’t mean to hi-jack the thread but I still have a few questions about this device.
First let me state that I in no means am I trying to belittle or over simplify this device, just trying to make sure I understand the basic operation. I would in no way want to make a member upset over this statement, or the manufacture or the engineer of this product. One of the question I have it sound like this device in a simple term is nothing more than a timer, is that correct? Not saying that this device does not have more functions than that, just in a simple form of operation.

That is corrrect. In its most basic form it is a furnace fan timer or a boiler timer. The same function could be implemented using an Omron timer and a large plastic box and 110V wiring as shown in this from the iburncorn.com web site:

http://forum.iburncorn.com/viewtopic.php?t=8310

I think his total cost would be in the $170-$180 range and would not be something you would want to hang on your thermostat....especially if you have a wife! No offense to the designer of that unit. Optimizing Thermguard for ease of use and compact size was a challange.

From what I have read here on the forum and when I looked at the website it appears that this device would work with my propane furnace. So I need to ask a few questions about operation and the ease of operation.

It appears that the device will hook up above or below the thermostat meaning the physical location, or it could also be hooked up down in the basement where the furnace is located is that correct?

That is correct, it can connect anywhere in the system...not just under the thermostat.

It also appear that the timing can be changed how long the furnace blower will run per hour is that also correct?

The timing for the "off" time is in 15 minutes intervals....so it could be as short as 15 minutes off or up to 24 hours off. The "on" time is programmable in one minute increments, up to 60 minutes on.

I have a programmable thermostat; will all the functions on the programmable thermostat still work like normal, will, the thermostat continue to control temperature change through-out the day??

Absolutely...the only problem that can sometimes occur is that some thermostats turn on the AC compressor when the fan switch is driven by ThermGuard. This can be worked around by turning off the AC circuit breakers during the winter.

When the device is installed will I still be able to manually turn the furnace fan on and off via the thermostat? If the device turns the furnace fan on, and someone wants to turn it off will the manual switch on the thermostat over ride the device?

Yes, all thermostat controls function as though the ThermGuard wasn't there at all. If you turn on the fan switch, it shuts off the power to ThermGuard and it just sits there waiting for the fan switch to be manually turned off before it begins timing again. That way, if the furnace actually turns on, ThermGuard doesn't turn on the fan until the right amount of time has transpired.

If I get one, I would put it above or below the thermostat, however my wife may not want it hanging on the wall, I have not asked but I know her everything has a place and not sure if she would want it hung on the wall, so if I had to install it down in the basement, will the above questions still work with the device located in the basement?

Yes, as mentioned above, ThermGuard can be placed anywhere in the system. It just needs access to the fan wires to the thermostat. The R and G wires.

Also if it not real simple, my wife will just toss her hands in the air, and get pissed off if it changes anything she does not understand. So it has to be real simple. Not saying she is simple minded she does not like changes. It took years before she would play a DVD because she liked the ease of just putting a tape in the vcr and push play.

Once you establish the settings you want, you can turn off the ThermGuard and never have to program it again. It has non-volitale memory internal to the computer and remembers the program even with the power is switched off or you have a power failure in your home. Your wife would simply turn it on when she wanted the house to heat evenly with your stove. Now, all this being said, it is very easy to program. You press and hold a single button until the green light comes on. You then tap the button for the number of 15 minute periods you want to wait between having the fan come on. You then wait until the red light comes on. Tap the one button again for the number of minutes you want the fan to be activated. That is it. I always have the instructions on the web site in case you forget and the web site address is printed on the front label in case you forget that.

I think it would work ideal in my house, next to the fireplace on each side next to the ceiling are two return ducts and when I turn the furnace fan on, it will pull the heat right out of the den where the insert is.

Sorry for all the questions, but I need to make sure I ask the proper questions so if I purchase one I won’t be in the dog house.

Thanks for all the great questions Jake, I'm sure others may be lurking and have similar thoughts.

John