Logging boiler operation

kildarejohn · 25-02-2015 2:21pm #1

Can anyone suggest a simple and cheap way to log boiler operation? (other than sitting beside it with a watch and writing down when it starts and stops).
Something that costs less than €20 and can be wired up in less than 20m mins.

Wearb · 25-02-2015 2:42pm

You have set very tight constraints. I don't know of a way of doing it to meet your budget and time constraints. Maybe somebody else will come up with something.

Do you want to log How long heating is requested or how long the boiler is running for?
Gas or Oil?

kildarejohn · 25-02-2015 9:07pm

Wearb wrote: »

You have set very tight constraints. I don't know of a way of doing it to meet your budget and time constraints. Maybe somebody else will come up with something.

And if the budget was say €100 would you have a suggestion?

Wearb wrote: »

Do you want to log How long heating is requested or how long the boiler is running for?
Gas or Oil?

Ideally I would like to log both when "on demand" and when burner actually firing - the first to determine heating usage pattern of household & the second to estimate rate of oil consumption.
Gas or Oil? - should work for either. It would be easier with the type of boiler where gas flame is visible as you could aim a camera or photo sensor at it.

Billy Bunting · 25-02-2015 10:36pm

would you like it to make tea in the morning.

Dtp1979 · 25-02-2015 10:38pm

Billy Bunting wrote: »

would you like it to make tea in the morning.

I'd say Ariston are working on that

Wearb · 25-02-2015 10:53pm

kildarejohn wrote: »

And if the budget was say €100 would you have a suggestion?

Yes, but I am not sure that I want to explain the wiring. Give me a while to think about it.

Ideally I would like to log both when "on demand" and when burner actually firing - the first to determine heating usage pattern of household & the second to estimate rate of oil consumption.
Gas or Oil? - should work for either. It would be easier with the type of boiler where gas flame is visible as you could aim a camera or photo sensor at it.

Which?

Irish Steve · 26-02-2015 2:20am

Some clarification of the end result, do you want to know the times the system is operating, as in a chart of active against off, or just the total elapsed times of boiler on and burner on times, as the 2 are very different

If you just want to know that the boiler/pump was active for (say) 40 hours, and the burner was using fuel for (say) 25 hours, that's relatively easy, if you want to know the actual times it was operating, that's a whole different can of worms that will need a micro processor and some fancy programming to give that level of detail.

CJ Haughey · 26-02-2015 3:19am

MacGyver could not pull this one off, even lidl don't sell such an item op. You need to expand your budget.

K.Flyer · 26-02-2015 4:04am

Can you be a bit clearer on the results / data / stats, that you are trying to achieve and for which type of appliance.

kildarejohn · 26-02-2015 7:04pm

To answer various queries following my OP-

Gas or Oil? - I want to try this first on my own boiler, which is oil, but I would prefer a solution that works for gas also as I could try it for family & friends

What data do I want? 1)Primary question is how long in total burner fires per day. As noted by several posters this is simpler to measure than getting an actual listing of operation per hour over a day.
2) But if the result for Q1 is not as expected then it would be good to be able to analyse the data to determine when the higher usage occurs.

The questions raised, plus a PM, encouraged my thought process, and I have 3 possible solutions -
A. Measure total usage per day by wiring a standard cheap plug-in timer switch in parallel with the burner. The hours the timer advances in a day equals burner firing time
B. Zero cost solution; wire a light bulb in parallel with burner, Point a digital camera on tripod at bulb; use time-lapse function to auto take 1 pic every minute (does my camera have that function??). Upload pics and analyse on PC
C. Most expensive solution; buy a digital power monitoring unit with USB upload facility (e.g. Owl at c. €50). Use it to log power in a dummy load (the lightbulb as in

Billy Bunting · 26-02-2015 7:23pm

kildarejohn wrote: »

I want to try this first on my own boiler, which is oil

So to help, when was the boiler last serviced and what results were recorded on the print out of the FGA left with you by the Technician ?

Irish Steve · 26-02-2015 7:40pm

In simplest terms, two time elapsed meters, one wired to the supply to the boiler, and the other wired to the wires that provide power to the burner after the boiler thermostat will give a breakdown of active and burner time, which will give you an indication of usage and fuel consumption, and it's relatively easy to derive the fuel consumption for the device if you have the burner or jet sizes.

time elapsed meters/counters can be sourced from a number of suppliers, the one that comes to mind as being simplest would be Radionics, though they will not be the cheapest source of such counters.

I've used similar here for many years on an oil burner, and it's useful in that I get an indication of how much time the burner runs, and knowing the jet size, the oil usage that results from that time, and the total boiler time gives an indication of how hard the season has been.

Logging boiler operation

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