Which Type of Control Will Provide the Best Energy Savings?

Recently we had a customer call us and ask a simple question about oil fired boiler controls. As the owner of home that he only used occasionally in the winter his question was "Will an outdoor reset control help me to keep my heating costs down since I only use the house from time to time in the winter?" Our first impulse was to tell him that yes, indeed this type of control was ideal for his situation, but there are other alternatives that might work better. While it is true that the majority of energy saving devices will in fact save you money, they can only do this if you actually buy the right device for the purpose you want it to serve. In order to answer this question fully and supply the right control you need to have a little more specific information.

Remember, just because you spent a lot of money on a control does not make it the right one for the job in question. The three most important questions that must be answered are "what type of boiler do you have?", "what type of fuel are you burning?" and "what range of water temperatures is your system designed to run at?" These are very important questions that must be answered before you can go any further in your quest for the right control.

For example if you are running a gas fired, low temperature condensing boiler system that keeps the heat going at low water temperature , an outdoor resetting control is likely to be the perfect control. On the other hand if you are running an oil fired boiler and your heating system needs to run at higher water temperatures you may need to use a different type of control.

Oil fired boilers tend to cycle on and off more frequently as they run with a much hotter fire, this makes it harder for the system to move the heat away from the boiler as fast as it is produced. Cycling rapidly like this is not considered to be very fuel efficient; in fact it can create a lot of waste that costs you far more than it should. You should install a Beckett Heat Manager on your boiler system; this control keeps your burner on for longer periods of time reducing the amount of cycling. Not only does this cut down on your operating expenses, but actually costs significantly less than an outdoor resetting control unit.

If you are handy with simple hand tools you can install a Heat Manager yourself and within the first month it will have paid for itself. The most important thing to learn here is that b using the right part for the job you can save yourself a lot of time, fuel and money that can be spent elsewhere on another worthwhile project.