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egueli / ArduHeater

An Arduino-enabled controller of an electric water heater
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
6 stars 1 forks source link

A temperature sensor put in contact with the boiler's thermostat wire #2

Open xenio opened 7 years ago

xenio commented 7 years ago

Hello, I love your project, could you please tell me more about this? "A temperature sensor put in contact with the boiler's thermostat wire"

I have an electric boiler and I am looking to use your project, but I can't understand how to check the temperature of the boiler.

egueli commented 7 years ago

Hi! You have to find any point that you can confidently say it will be as hot as the water in the tank. Metal is a great heat conductor so the point will likely be metallic (but stay away from electrical wires!). In my boiler I found a metal wire ending into the thermostat, so I attached the DS2812 temperature sensor on it with some sticky tape. Note that for this you may need to open the panel that holds the electrical switches of the boiler. Needless to say, ensure that the boiler is disconnected from the mains before doing anything. And be careful where you run the sensor wires so to avoid short circuits. You can try to heat up the water, then disconnect the boiler from mains, then carefully finding the hottest point. An infrared thermometer will prevent you from scalding your fingers. If you don't see any suitable point, don't try to "make" one by modifying your boiler, it may be too dangerous!