Heat-Timer Mini-MOD-CNC Boiler-Switching Control
July 24, 2009 — You gotta love a company that uses Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote — "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" — on its "About Us" page. Especially when that company makes something as mundane as boiler controls. That's either deluded or pretty confident and snarky — and given that this particular product from the New Jersey-based Heat-Timer Corp. is a finalist in an engineering magazine's 2009 Product of the Year competition, well, we'd have to go with confident. (We'd have added snarky, but then, they are in New Jersey. Rim shot! Ba-dum-dum!)
Boilers, as any board member knows, are some of the most expensive things a building can run. And seeing as how having heat and hot water is nonnegotiable, it's not a place where you can cut corners. But that doesn't mean you can't save money. How? Through automatic, computer-controlled monitoring, so that your boiler is only on and at full steam, so to speak, when necessary.
The Mini-MOD-CNC control automatically matches the operations of condensing boilers (which have modulating burners) and non-condensing boilers (which have staging or on/off burners) to make the combined system more efficient. It operates high-mass boilers during peak loads and other types at part load to increase efficiency. You can sequence up to four boilers with the basic model, and up to 16 boilers with two mini-extensions that each handle six.
Features include a built-in day/night scheduler, remote enable/disable capability, domestic hot-water capability with optional priority, setback and boost functionality, and a locking NEMA-1 electrical enclosure. As Arthur C. Clarke might have said over a breakfast of Lucky Charms, "Why, it's scientifically delicious!"
Heat-Timer Corporation • 20 New Dutch Lane, Fairfield, N.J., 07004 • (973) 575-4004 • E-mail contact page here