Does anyone make a nice simple control box that would take care of all the wiring involved? My system works, but is overcomplicated, and I don't have much faith in it. I'm talking Tarm wood boiler, zone valve, 500 gallon propane storage, superstor water tank, and oil boiler.
controls
- Thread starter chuck172
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What are you using for control now?
I currently have a basic control system that consists of a few relays, Taco circ relay board, Taco zone control board, and aquastats. I have 3 Taco EBVs used to switch between 4 states: tarm heats tank, tarm heats zone(s), tank heats zone(s), and oil heats zone(s). There is also a Taco 0010 that feeds into the Tarm and a Taco 007 that pushes heat out of the tank. My signal inputs are: Heating zone end switch (on if any zones are calling for heat), tank aquastat, and tarm output aquastat. Outputs of the control are: state of the 3 EBVs, and state of the two circs. The heating zones circs are controlled from a pre-existing taco relay board. It's kind of cool because it accomplishes basic control with all simple off the shelf parts, mainly just relays in various parallel/serial combinations to get all of the ands/ors that I need. The biggest drawback is that there ought to be some smarts on how it interprets the tank temp, for instance when charging the tank i want the aquastat to be at 170 to 180 so that it keeps heating the tank, but when using the tank to supply heat i want it to be set at around 140 to 150 so that it keeps supplying heat. Once I finish my nofossil inspired arm board I will be able to do some clever controls like that. But for now the relays system work pretty well.
I currently have a basic control system that consists of a few relays, Taco circ relay board, Taco zone control board, and aquastats. I have 3 Taco EBVs used to switch between 4 states: tarm heats tank, tarm heats zone(s), tank heats zone(s), and oil heats zone(s). There is also a Taco 0010 that feeds into the Tarm and a Taco 007 that pushes heat out of the tank. My signal inputs are: Heating zone end switch (on if any zones are calling for heat), tank aquastat, and tarm output aquastat. Outputs of the control are: state of the 3 EBVs, and state of the two circs. The heating zones circs are controlled from a pre-existing taco relay board. It's kind of cool because it accomplishes basic control with all simple off the shelf parts, mainly just relays in various parallel/serial combinations to get all of the ands/ors that I need. The biggest drawback is that there ought to be some smarts on how it interprets the tank temp, for instance when charging the tank i want the aquastat to be at 170 to 180 so that it keeps heating the tank, but when using the tank to supply heat i want it to be set at around 140 to 150 so that it keeps supplying heat. Once I finish my nofossil inspired arm board I will be able to do some clever controls like that. But for now the relays system work pretty well.
I'm using a Taco 501 relay box, two honeywell relay switch boxes, a few 24vac. relays, a 110 vac. relay, that's what I mean. Isn't there a simple compact control box that is specifically marketed for our application?
chuck172 said:
Nope. It's a very specialized market, and each installation is a bit different, so a "one size fits all" box would not be overly practical.
That said, hopefully as more folks move to alternative energy, manufacturers will see the need and fill it with controls that can be customized for different layouts by simple programming (ie, the control would have half a dozen standard layouts in its memory, and you would select the one that matches your system).
Joe
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