Thursday, January 7, 2016

Test panel ideas

This past summer into fall I spent a lot of time redoing my in-laws heating system replacing a 20 some year old bard air handler with 15KW heat pack with a trane xv95 60k and 2 1/2 ton xr14 heat pump. Custome built everything and designed from start to finish. Results have been great so far saving them an average of a few hundred dollars a month and keeping their house extremely comfortable and evenly heated, something that bard just could not do. Now that everything is done and running good, I've been eager to begin the next step of my master plan. I plan to set up basically a monitoring panel to have everything I could want on display at a glance. My father in law is on board and finds it all as interesting as I do. So here is a list of things we plan to monitor. If anyone has done something like this before, please share your experience and I'd gladly take on more suggestions of things to monitor.

Supply and return air temperature

Outdoor air temp

Dome temperature in compressor

Refrigerant temp and pressure (made provisions with "rainy day ports" at indoor coil)

Inlet gas pressure (already had one morning this week the furnace wouldn't fire, flashed weak flame, sun came up and problem was gone. Propane provider changed both regulators and added methanol to tank)

TESP, probably with Dwyer magnehelics unless someone has a better suggestion

Dwyer manometer for filter monitoring

Amp / volt meter display for both furnace and heat pump

24v LED indicators for R, G, Y, O, W1, W2, and HUM if added later this winter. X2 (defrost call ) is not being used right now so I could even add one to indicate a defrost cycle

Might look into monitoring flue temp as well

That's what I've come up with so far. My father in law works for a company who's products many of you have probably used a few times and has access to a large stash of discarded thermocouples, gauges, wires, etc. that were on their way to the dumpster before he snagged them. He also has access to other products at below wholesale pricing. He is even talking about setting up some programming to record any digital monitors (thermocouples, transducers) on his home computer. The 824 stat already does run time history. Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks

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