Indirect Water Heaters

I have a brand new indirect water heater in my house, where the gas boiler is used to heat the unit.

I havn't put much thought into automating this, but I can see where one can save on gas lowering the aquastat during the day where everyone is out of the house and at night when everyone is sleeping and then putting it in the "normal" setting when people are home.

I doubt any manufacturer even creates an aquastat that can be controlled in this fashion.

Ha anyone automated something like this before? Good/bad idea?

With the basics of how an indirect water heater works, as well as most being super insulated, from my last conversations with a vendor, automating isn't really necessary as they do not typically cause the boiler to fire excessively to maintain temperature, they're only causing the boiler to truly fire when needed.

I remember going into great detail with a vendor and a particular part-specific install I was working with them on and remember it really was deemed unnecessary by all the parties involved, however YMMV.

DELInstallations said:

With the basics of how an indirect water heater works, as well as most being super insulated, from my last conversations with a vendor, automating isn't really necessary as they do not typically cause the boiler to fire excessively to maintain temperature, they're only causing the boiler to truly fire when needed.

I remember going into great detail with a vendor and a particular part-specific install I was working with them on and remember it really was deemed unnecessary by all the parties involved, however YMMV.

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I have heard similar things. The insulation on many of these units is such that so little heat is lost in an 8 hour period that shutting it down achieves very little. If you were going on vacation it would probably make sense to shut it down, but manually doing it on those infrequent occasions is reasonable (or maybe you vacation so often that it needs to be automated ^_^ Also, consider if you are heating or cooling your house. If you are heating your house, then the heat lost from the water just goes to heating the house which you are doing anyway.

Some boilers need to be set at a constant level, like 175 degrees F, to avoid condensation and othe issues.