Timer to Measure Boiler Fan Run Cycles and Fan Idle Cycles?

lsayre · Post by **lsayre** » Sun. Dec. 02, 2012 9:31 am

I'm sitting here this morning dreaming up yet another new way to calculate my AHS S130 boilers coal consumption. My two initial assumptions are that it consumes coal at the the following rates:

Assumption 1) At idle the S130 consumes 0.01 lbs. of coal per minute, or 0.60 lbs. per hour.

Assumption 2) When the fan is on and the S130 is firing it consumes 0.18 lbs. of coal per minute, or 10.8 lbs. per hour.

If a timer could record and feed back both the accumulated daily minutes for which the fan is at idle (not running), and the daily minutes for which the fan is running, the daily lbs. of coal consumed should be able to be calculated to some nominal level of precision based upon this feedback.

Is there a digital timer available that could be placed into the fan circuit and which would record and store both of the cumulative idle and firing times?

McGiever · Post by **McGiever** » Sun. Dec. 02, 2012 9:42 am

The LOGO! could do that w/ the necessary programming...it does that already to a certain degree...w/ some tweaking it would do it for that purpose.

I have no programming experience for the LOGO!. Member *vermontday* has provided that skill.

lsayre · Post by **lsayre** » Sun. Dec. 02, 2012 9:58 am

I wonder if the LOGO could even do the math for the coal consumed, and present this as a running total of pounds?

Post by **Rob R.** » Sun. Dec. 02, 2012 11:53 am

I have an hour meter wired to run whenever the stoker runs. Last year I kept a daily log of run time and used that to plot daily coal consumption for the heating season. That was interesting...but this year I haven't even looked at the hour meter...I just keep adding coal and removing ashes.

lsayre · Post by **lsayre** » Sun. Dec. 02, 2012 12:05 pm

Would the Dwyer LCT216-110 be up to this task?

Post by **Rob R.** » Sun. Dec. 02, 2012 1:08 pm

That Dwyer unit should work fine, but you can also use a $40 analog unit if you want. If the counter feature is important to you, than maybe the Dwyer is worth it. I think my hour meter is a Cramer unit...USA made.

cArNaGe · Post by **cArNaGe** » Sun. Dec. 02, 2012 1:42 pm

Rob R. wrote:I have an hour meter wired to run whenever the stoker runs. Last year I kept a daily log of run time and used that to plot daily coal consumption for the heating season. That was interesting...but this year I haven't even looked at the hour meter...I just keep adding coal and removing ashes.

I used to keep track to. By the assumption that a 5 gallon bucket weighed so much. But since I tied into my bin with a longer auger, I just check the level of coal and take out ash's. I'm always around 9 ton a year. What I need is an auto ash removal.

vermontday · Post by **vermontday** » Sun. Dec. 02, 2012 9:27 pm

While I have never used a math function on the logo timer, Siemens web site says it can do it.

However, as the program I have in the logo totals daily stoker run time, you could manually multiply coal pounds per hour to get stoker coal pounds per day usage. By subtracting stoker daily run time from total time in the day, you could get your idle time per day to calculate idling coal usage.

I check the daily stoker run time sometimes out of curiosity when I am getting something from the cellar. I recently changed from fall to winter mode by changing from 4 to 5 teeth, changed the out fire time from 30 minutes to 40, and cleaned the firebox. It dropped the dailey run time by an hour.

My daughter changes the ashes, so unless I get a telephone call from the boiler notifying me that she forgot, I am the same as Rob, I don't normally check the boiler data (or the boiler for that matter).