I have a 4 zone hydronic radiant heat system and want to add a module which would track how long each day each zone ran. Does anyone know of a system out there that can be added on? I suppose some kind of voltage detector could trigger a timer that would send data to a central computer. Should I have patented this before I posted here?
Thanks
Replies
A simple relay to a power meter or timer would do the job.
Depends on how complicated you want to get.
You can get all kinds of timers that can run on 24v AC, 24v DC, 120 AC, and many other voltages.
What you want is an Hour Meter.
DigitaKey web site is kind of hard to use. But here is one page of there catalog with a number of them.
http://dkc3.digikey.com/PDF/T073/P2292.pdf
Get one matched to whatever volltage you zone valves work at and just connect it across the terminals.
http://www.mouser.com/catalog/632/1581.pdf
Even Northern Tools, but I have not checked what voltage they use, might be limited to 12v DC.
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/NTESearch?storeId=6970&N=0&Ntk=All&Ntt=hour%20meter&Nty=1&D=hour%20meter&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Dx=mode+matchallpartial
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
The set up would probably depend on what kind of hydronic system you have (i.e. are there electrically operated valves on each leg that one could sense as to when the current was on or off), what kind of computer (particularly, what types of inputs it would accept), and whether or not you can program or find someone else to program.
You are probably looking for a data logger that plugs into a port o your computer and has a program that either samples the device at periodic intervals or is triggered by a change in state of the device. Back in the old days, we used to set up a relay that would change one of the lines on an RS-232 computer port from low to high and write a BASIC program that would periodically read the port and then put the result in a file. I image there are much more sophisticated ways to do it these days.
You might check out the stuff at: http://www.onsetcomp.com/solutions/products/loggers/?gclid=CIaSgrX3q5ACFSBMGgodTANs8g
I haven't really looked at the site, but I did notice that at:
http://www.onsetcomp.com/solutions/guides/classic.php5
they have a data logger for sensing and recording temperature. It might be interesting to log the temperature in the various zones to see what the temperature variation in the slab and/or the room temperature.
The next item on that page says it will log voltages, so that is probably what you want for the task you specified.
Again, you will probably need to get a program to read the RS-232 port and post a result to a file or a database. There might be a suitable program somewhere on that site, or you might be able to locate one on the Internet. If you want to use one of the RS-232 devices and your computer doesn't have an RS-232 port, you can get a USB to RS-232 converter for not too much. As I said, I haven't looked at all the options on the site, so there might be devices that feed directly into a USB port. There are porbably many other similar sites for data logging equipment, this was just the first one to pop up.
Good luck and have fun...