Discuss Any way of monitoring boiler firing time? in the Gas Engineers Forum area at PlumbersForums.net

Ric2013

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Was just thinking about ways of monitoring heating system efficiency and the effect of different ways of using the house, what doors and windows are open at what times and the effect of various weather on gas consumption. We can do it for electricity at a household level, but it's fairly obvious how to save electric. The solutions to reducing heat losses are not so obvious except for the very obvious one of not heating at all.

Unfortunately, since the gas cooker is used extensively, the gas meter is not a wholly valid way of measuring gas consumption as you cannot know how much has gone through the boiler. In fairness, the cooker does release some heat into the room... but, if nothing else, the fact that the gas meter is outside means it is not a practical point of measurement.

It has occurred to me that measuring boiler firing time would have a near-perfect correlation with heat input (on an old boiler that cannot modulate).

But the simple way I can think of doing this would be to piggy-back a run-hour meter off the boiler gas valve switched live which could be accessed without removing the combustion casing (which would essentially impose an additional load on the boiler circuitry, albeit minimal, and could therefore possibly (?) count as a boiler modification even though you would not actually be changing the boiler control method in any way).

A clamp-type ammeter around the gas valve switched live could be used instead. This could be one of the early electrical energy use monitors that pre-dated smart meters. This way all you would be doing would be measuring electrical current flow to the gas valve and the energy use monitor would give a reading in watthours that could be used to calculate run hours. This might be too bulky to be able to fit.

Finally, if there were some way of logging the blue flame through the peep-hole on the front of the boiler casing, that would give a run-hour reading. Perhaps a light dependent resistor switched transister circuit connected to a battery power source and switching a relay to run a runhour meter. Bulky and messy though.

The first one would be neater, simpler, less complicated and reliable. But would it be legal?

Or has someone got any clever idea that is neat and clean and that I've not thought of?
 
Viessmann 200s tell you the load and burn time summary but will require a boiler change :D
 
Very soon there will be available domestic BMS...building management systems... I know because we are involved..initially for social housing but it will universal not long after.
These units will monitor most aspects of a domestic building...eg temp, humidity, gas, water and electricity use. at various places in the property they will also talk to the domestic appliances and see how they are performing and then crucially compare at the monitoring centre each place with others on the system and alert operators and owners to unusual readings. eg say your boiler is drawing a little too much power for the fan exhaust ..an indication of a motor on the way out..the centre will call or alert you and send an engineer before it burns out. JCB and Caterpillar already listen to their plant world wide and if eg a crawler shows is unhappy they call the operator and get the unit closed down to avoid premature damage to the unit, pending a service visit. A number of large housing trusts are well advanced with this already we have to play along just to keep up. centralheatking
 
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Get an engineer round to gas rate your boiler. That will tell you the kW/hr being used by the boiler and the consumption m3/hr or ft3/hr. It will only take 10mins to test.
I don't have a problem with knowing what the gas rate is. Think it's on the paperwork somewhere from last time the boiler was serviced but in any case it's simple enough to get the boiler to fire for 15 minutes flat without using the cooker and then read the meter, multiply by 4 and you have your cu m/hr.

What I would like to be able to measure is the amount of time the boiler is actually firing for. As the boiler was sized before the house was better insulated, for a higher room temperature than is actually being required, for DHW which isn't constantly being produced, before TRVs were fitted, and for (presumably) -1°EAT, most of the time it is well oversized for the demand that is actually required of it. As such, like most boilers, it cycles even when in use. Thus gas rate is only useful if we know the run time.
 
I don't have a problem with knowing what the gas rate is. Think it's on the paperwork somewhere from last time the boiler was serviced but in any case it's simple enough to get the boiler to fire for 15 minutes flat without using the cooker and then read the meter, multiply by 4 and you have your cu m/hr.

What I would like to be able to measure is the amount of time the boiler is actually firing for. As the boiler was sized before the house was better insulated, for a higher room temperature than is actually being required, for DHW which isn't constantly being produced, before TRVs were fitted, and for (presumably) -1°EAT, most of the time it is well oversized for the demand that is actually required of it. As such, like most boilers, it cycles even when in use. Thus gas rate is only useful if we know the run time.
Simple solutions are often best, why dont you video it, the video will record time and the idiot lights on the boiler will tell what its up to. centralheatking
 
Just because the boiler is on, does not mean it’s firing on full. A 24 kw boiler can modulate down to 2.4kw.
put your effort into insulating your house as well as possible. Then your boiler will work less.
 
Simple solutions are often best, why dont you video it, the video will record time and the idiot lights on the boiler will tell what its up to. centralheatking
Because to video the boiler pilot light (no electrical lights on this boiler) over the course of a day would exceed the battery life of the camera, and it would be very labour intensive to get a statistic from 12 hours of filming. But I like the concept.
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Just because the boiler is on, does not mean it’s firing on full. A 24 kw boiler can modulate down to 2.4kw.
put your effort into insulating your house as well as possible. Then your boiler will work less.
'On an old boiler that doesn't modulate' !!!

In any case, I think you misunderstand why I want to do this.

The insulation is already as good as it's going to get for the foreseeable future so I'm more interested in monitoring boiler usage, what the boiler is actually doing over the course of a day, and over the course of the season.
 
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If your that way (electronics) you could figure something out with a raspberry pi and you could use the flame sensor as your trigger that would be able to record times etc
 
Nest tells you number of hours the heating is on and sends a monthly report
The ideal vogue logs burner hours.
I think vaillant does as well.
 
If your that way (electronics) you could figure something out with a raspberry pi and you could use the flame sensor as your trigger that would be able to record times etc
That's an idea, Shaun. I'm wondering what you think the advantage would be over a simple mechanical run-hour counter (£15) would be. Other, I suppose, than the fact that you could set up readings to be taken automatically rather than be limited to whatever readings you can take (which would require me to be in all day to write down the readings).
 
That's an idea, Shaun. I'm wondering what you think the advantage would be over a simple mechanical run-hour counter (£15) would be. Other, I suppose, than the fact that you could set up readings to be taken automatically rather than be limited to whatever readings you can take (which would require me to be in all day to write down the readings).

Other than a fancy graph and a dc read out nothing if you can put the dial meter in easily go for that simple
 
If your that way (electronics) you could figure something out with a raspberry pi and you could use the flame sensor as your trigger that would be able to record times etc
those pie things are really quite cheap and very adaptable chking we have mucked about with them for past 2..3 years dead cheap and will do loads of things..its not my forte but my boys
know what to do...I spec what I want it to do they play ..chking
 
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