If it really works it would have been built in to the furnace already.

I just watched the video after I typed the first line, I'll stick with the first line.

I am normally a very skeptical person who believes that if something is to good to be true then it usually is. hendricus-My first instinct is to agree with you, but after looking at the information and talking to my furnace guy I am rethinking it and want more information.

There is some logic to HOW it interacts with your heating system, to make it work more efficiently, that does have possibilities.

New technology is developed every day so it doesn't hurt to give it some further study.

This isn't the only company selling these things so there has got to be someone out there that has tried it.

Quote"...... anticipated outdoor temperature. Most forced-air heating systems in the U.S.
and abroad are between 50% and 100% larger than necessary for maintaining
a comfortable temperature on most days when the temperature is not as
low as those extreme days. This excess capacity causes the burner to cycle
on and off continuously to prevent the furnace from overheating. Even on
furnaces with programmable setback thermostats or multi-zone controls, the
burner cycling is not optimized. This burner cycling pattern wastes fuel.
IntelliCon-FA saves energy by adjusting the burner run pattern to match the
systemÂs "heat load." IntelliCon®-FA analyzes the systemÂs load, or demand
for heat, by monitoring the out-flow air, or discharge-air, temperature as it
is blown out of the furnace into the house. Optionally, the return-air can be
monitored as well for additional energy savings. The absolute temperature
value of the air in-flow and outflow, coupled with the rate that the
temperature is changing, is indicative of the load placed on the heating
system. In addition, IntelliCon®-FA measures and records how many times
the burner is turned on and off and the duration of those burner cycles.
IntelliCon®-FA analyzes how fast heat is being lost in the system and, in turn,
in the space. Using this information, the optimum running cycle for
maintaining the desired heating level is calculated....."

SNAKE OIL!

Their premise is that you will overheat the furnace because the system is overdesigned and thus it will cycle more is total nonsense on a few counts:
1)a properly working furnace does not overheat, even if overdesigned. If it does you can easily fix it by proper airflow/ and/or reduced firing.
2)they cannot improve the cycling anymore than a decent thermostat where you can either set the cycle rate or the overswing depending on your tolerance for overshoot and undershoot of temperature
3)unless they are rewriting the laws of thermodynamics, the energy required to heat the house is the same for the same outside conditions and the savings can only be accomplished by an increase of efficiency from improved combustion efficiency and reduced cycling. Since they cannot improve the combustion efficiency, they can only decrease the cycling, but at the expense of higher over and undershoots of room temperature.
Finally, if the thing were any good where is the documentation from an independent 3rd party source and/or where is the GUARANTEE of 10-20% savings that "heat manager" ( a similar unit for hydronic heating) gives. Theirs is much more credible, since it involves hydronics and reduces the boiler temperatures according to the load, and improves comfor at the same time.

joeplumb-I must say that you make a very good point about the guarantee/documentation.

I first started looking at the Beckett heat manager because it was advertised in a local paper by my oil company. I have an oil boiler that is set up to heat my hot water and radiant floor heating in just the bathroom and then converts to a forced hot air system. If I understood what I was told correctly then the heat manager wouldn't work in my case.

I don't have a clue about the laws of thermodynamics. All I know is the price of oil is going through the roof and if there is a way to make my system more efficient I would be grateful to know how to do it.

joeplumb-I went back to their website after reading what you wrote and found information on testing that they did.

I don't know how to do a direct link you can click on.
http://www.intellidynellc.com/03_rprts.htm

May be this would be a better question: Does any one have any ideas on how to substantiate their claims/guarantees?

Who monitors these claims? Is there a organization (government or otherwise) that oversees these things?

for "never-give-up", the three laws of thermodynamics

1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't quit the game!

Unless you can vary the heat output of the oil burner the device cannot do anything.
This is why there are now two stage burners (for both gas and oil) to allow for using a lower heat output when the temperature is not at the design point.

It sounds like they're trying to sell some kind of combination Outdoor Reset module and modulating burner. Do they even make outdoor resets or modulating burners for forced air systems?

If it sounds too good to be true...

This is what I have found out so far and trust me most of it is over my head. (In my own defense it is not because I am stupid. I have MS and right now it is it is attacking my brain in a way quite like Alzheimer. Not looking for sympathy or comment. I just don't want to be jumped on because "I just don't get it".

I have my contractor looking into all this now. He has talked me out of things before so after study if he doesn't think this will work he won't do it.

This type of system may not work in my case anyway as my system is split in too many ways. The boiler heats my hot water and the hot water heats one room with radiant floor heat then converts to forced hot air for the rest of the house.

I had him look into systems like the Tekmar 260 (which it turns out he has at his shop) and it won't work for me because of the change to forced hot air. For those who haven't heard of the Tekmar 260: It is an outdoor reset control that automatically regulates boiler water temperature according to the outdoor temperature.)

I thought that the Intellicon-FA might be a possibility because of the conversion to forced hot air. My contractor now has that and a similar system for a boiler in his shop and is studying both types and their claims. He is doing this along with his supplier, which has been in the business for over 20 years. Again, I trust that he won't try to sell me anything that he doesn't believe in himself.

Further information I have gained: These fuel economizers, if they are to work, would be most effective on older, less efficient heating systems and in colder climates. It will also depend on each individual set up. In my case it is not looking to promising because of the split system.

I will know more maybe the first of the week as to what my contractor thinks.

Gas modulators typically use burner segments interleaved so that a portion can be turned on instead of the entire flame bed.

I have only seen very large oil units and those had multiple guns.

There are ways to build very sophisticated heating and cooling systems for very tight control.
They are not used in a residential setting very often because of all the extra equipment they require.
You might easily spend more on repairs than you could ever hoe to save in energy costs.

The basic home system is a bang-bang system.
Heat on, heat off.
The burner produces a single output rate when it is on.
Without a way to either store excess heat or change the burner output there is not a lot you can do.

If you look at a two speed A/C condenser, what you commonly see is simply two compressors of different capacities and some electric valves to switch between them.
They also tend to be pretty pricey.

The systems I am looking at are not sophisticated in the way you first mention. It would still be the "bang-bang" system. What it does, as I understand it so far, is automatically adjust the burner run pattern to match the systems heat load.

There is not a lot of extra equipment required for what I am looking at. A small box with a microprocessor that, according to the system and the installer's expertise, takes around 30 minutes to install. The first one I looked at was under $300.00 not counting installation. Considering the price of a tank of oil the payback time would be relatively short.

Again, as I understand it, a system with an outside reset control is also essentially a box with a microprocessor.

Never-give-up, on a different note my older sister has been dealing with MS for about 15 years. It broke my heart to see her progressively decline physically and mentally. About five years ago we were pretty much preparing for the worse. Thanks to a very persistant set of doctors and a positive attitude by my sister throughout her ordeal they finally hit upon a combination of medication and therapy to almost totally reverse her condition. She no longer has a need for a walker and when she and my brother in law were up last summer we actually went for a long hike in the woods to hunt for mushrooms. She's pretty much doing everything she was 20 years ago, slower but at 61 years old thats going to happen anyway. When you watch her actions you can see little signs of what that horrible disease took away but we live with that. And better yet, she's going to live. I often wonder about some of the screen names people use in here and how they came up with them. I have no problem figuring out yours. My sister can use that one too. Best of luck to you and rest assured progress is being made all the time. Never, "ever" give up. Good health and improvement to you this coming year and always. JB

"What it does, as I understand it so far, is automatically adjust the burner run pattern to match the systems heat load."

That is what a plain old thermostat does.
Turns on the system when cold, turns off when warm.

"automatically adjust the burner run pattern to match the systems heat load" is just a fancy way of saying it.

Just get a run of the mill digital thermostat that can reduce the temperature when no one is home and at night.
Should be less than $40.
At least some of them even measure the recovery time and then adjust the heat turn on time to meet the desired set points.
They work OK when the weather changes slowly, but can get fooled by sudden changes that affect the recovery time.

Hi Folks. I was Googling to try and find out whether others thought the Intellicon device really worked since I am interested in purchasing one, and I came across this very interesting thread. I had the exact same question, since I don't want to invest the money if I can't clearly understand how it will save me money. I'll share two things I've found out that make me believe it works:

1) I called my oil company (Standard Oil here in CT) and spoke to a tech about this (not a sales rep), and he said he tested this in a warehouse of theirs, with 2 days on, 2 days off, 2 days on, 2 days off, as well as a week on, and a week off. After he had normalized for "degree temperature days" (which he explained is a way of adjusting for colder days needing more oil than warmer days) he said he saw a real 10% savings on oil consumption. When I asked him point blank if he really thought this worked, he said yes. That gives me some comfort, though it's anecdotal evidence.

2) From everything I've read on Intellidyne's site, and my own basic understanding of oil furnaces, it seems to me that there are probably real savings here. Here's an example illustrating why I say that: A heat call comes in to the furnace because a room is below the temperature at which it's thermostat is set. The Intellicon fires the furnace, heating the heat exchanger to let's say 155 degrees running temperature. My thermostat (Aprilaire) documentation says that it will run the furnace until the call for heat ends. That means the furnace and blower are both working for the duration of heating call, keeping the heat exchanger at 155 degrees during the heat call. With the Intellicon, once the heat exchanger reaches 155 degrees for a few minutes (indicated by the air sensor not changing temp for a few minutes), the furnace and blower turn off. Let's further assume that the Intellicon has calculated that the ideal re-activation point is when the heat exchanger falls to 145 degrees (this makes the math easy, but you can make your own assumption). The furnace (and I think blower) is off during this time, saving oil. Once the heat exchanger cools to 145, the Intellicon tells the furnace to fire up again until the heat exchanger hits 155 for a few minutes, and the cycles continue until the heat call from the thermostat ends. In other words, though the furnace only has one temperature (155 degrees) because it's on/off by nature, by cycling it _during a single heat call_ it effectively makes the average heat exchanger temperature only 150 degrees (i.e. off at 155, on again at 145, assuming monotonic heating rates = (155+145)/2 = 150 degrees average temp). So the furnace is effectively running cooler, saving oil. The offset is that the heat call from the thermostat will be on for a longer period (since the cooler average temp of the heat exchanger means the room heats more slowly). So the big question becomes: will the added length of the heat call period offset the savings of having shut off the furnace periodically during the heat call? Only if the heat-call-period-extension is "too long". Their answer, which I think is right, is that while the heating call cycle will lengthen, it won't lengthen by "too much" and will still save oil consumption overall, because the rate of heat loss during the periodic furnace shut-offs is slower than the speed at which the room warms up when the furnace is blasting.

Bottom line, I think I've convinced myself that this works, and given the oil prices and how much I anticipate using this winter, I will probably make back the $250 in this season alone, if not sooner. There aren't many investments with a 1-year payback!

I'd welcome any feedback if others disagree with my analysis.

-Chris

My experience is that properly engineered equipment works most efficiently at full rated load. I'd expect that would also apply to fuel burners. I don't see where this device would have any effect on wasted heat up the flue which is really the only place you can save energy. The claim of the heat exchanger running too hot seems faulty reasoning since the hotter it runs, the faster it can transfer heat. The greater the temp differential, the better the transfer rate. Think of a piece of red-hot metal..how fast it loses it's 'red hotness' but how long it will stay warm. With A/C equipment, the condenser fan has an easier time getting rid of heat the hotter the coil is. I would think by lowering the heat exchanger temp on a furnace, you are lowering the transfer efficiency. If there were savings there, the furnace would have been engineered to run at the lower temp in the first place. Furnaces aren't some new technology. I'm sure somewhere out there there are studies you could find that document heat transfer in furnaces and what the 'sweet spot' of heat exchanger temperature is. The high efficiency gas furnaces achieve their goal by reducing the lost heat up the flue but do it by extracting more heat in the heat exchanger. This results in the need for a fan-assisted exhaust since you no longer have the extra heat going up a chimney to provide a draft for the combustion gasses.

"With the Intellicon, once the heat exchanger reaches 155 degrees for a few minutes (indicated by the air sensor not changing temp for a few minutes), the furnace and blower turn off."

I hope by "blower": you mean the oil gun and NOT the circulating air blower.

All the on off cycles will put more wear on the system.

It is at attempt to create a pulse type function in a system NOT designed for it.

There will be more crud build up with an oil system by this short cycling, and faster corrosion in a gas system not designed for this type of operation.

Furnaces have a minimum operating temperature to ensure they are running hot enough to drive off water formed from burning the fuel.

If you want to shorten the life of a gas system, run it at a lower temperature with repeated short cycles.
The corrosion wear will greatly increase.

The pulse furnaces (and condensing furnaces) are designed to deal with this by using more corrosion resistant materials.

I have put designed and installed a number of indirect systems and they can both control temperature tightly and reduce fuel use.
The biggest improvement cones from having a way to store heat while allowing the heating system to run at its full output when input is required.

For heating an indirect storage tank is used.
The boiler heats the coil in the tank.
This allows the boiler to run at its full output and store the heat in the water in the tank.
The water temperature is controlled by a thermostat based on the outside temperature.

For cooling a tank is used on the high side of the system and a multiple valves and staging of the evaporator coil are used to adjust the cooling capacity.
The compressor simply makes sure there is enough refrigerant in the storage tank.

These systems can control temperature (and directly control humidity if desired) but are very expensive to design, install, and maintain.

They see use in places with very exacting temperature control requirements like metrology labs or extremely precise machine shops.

They are also used in some manufacturing processes to control temperature.

Thank you both garymunson-2008 and brickeyee for your replies. You both gave me a lot to think about and I'll try to answer your specific questions where I can. After reading your posts I began to wonder about whether I would be getting oil savings, but trading it off for a broken furnace in a few years, thus mitigating all the savings. So I called my HVAC control company (Aprilaire) and spoke to a technical rep there to find out what their view was on this device. While the guy I spoke to hadn't heard of the Intellicon device, he agreed with my understanding of how the basic thermostat/control unit worked (and you're right garymunson-2008 - I said that the whole system stops when the Intellicon kicks in, but in fact the main blower continues to run for a few minutes afterward). The Aprilaire rep didn't think this was really a control panel issue since it just cuts into the furnace firing circuit, but rather that it was more of a furnace question. So I opened up my furnace, and noted that it was manufactured by Beckett. I called them today, and spoke to a technical rep there named Dan. He also wasn't really familiar with the Intellicon, but he continually asserted that the furnace was "built like a tank" and would not have undue wear from repeated cycling (the aptly named "pulse" functionality). I asked him point blank whether there would be any problem with driving off water from the oil combustion, but he said that the oil furnaces run so hot that it wasn't an issue. He felt that a gas furnace would have a lot more problems with this technology, but the oil furnace wouldn't have any problems with it. Furthermore, he asserted that Intellidyne LLC (the makers of the Intellicon) also make furnaces, and wouldn't put a product into the marketplace that would damage their reputation (as this would if it broke furnaces regularly). I didn't realize Intellidyne LLC made furnaces, and I don't see anything about that on their website, but I'm not in the business and I know they do sell their hot water heater device rebranded as Beckett, so it's entirely possible that they make furnaces too.

When I spoke to my oil company rep about the effectiveness of running the furnace at a lower temperature to save money, he agreed that if I could manually set it lower in the controller then that would drive savings (though my particular controller doesn't actually have that flexibility), but the problem with that approach is that on really cold days the system wouldn't generate enough heat because it would have a hard limit at my manual lower temperature setting, rather than being able to run at full throttle. I could go down to the basement and increase the limit temperature on the furnace whenever it got too cold, but that turns thermostat maintenance into a manual chore, and I'd be guessing at an optimal set point, whereas the Intellicon is supposed to do it automatically. By making the effective furnace outflow lower temperature whenever possible, I believe (assume?) this results in lower temp furnace exhaust, which would drive some probably small but real savings.

Regarding the oil buildup in the system: I will have it inspected and cleaned yearly anyway, which I think should eliminate this risk.

So I guess I'm still leaning towards getting the Intellicon-FA. (1) My oil guy says it worked in his empirical tests to save oil, and I'm mostly convinced that the process described by Intellidyne would do that, (2) my thermostat/furnace-control guy reaffirmed my general understanding of the mechanism but didn't espouse an overall opinion one way or another, and (3) the Beckett rep thought that this wouldn't do any damage to the furnace itself and was (to use his words) "an investment in the system".

I realize that there is a different dynamic for hydronic systems, or for gas-powered forced air systems, but given my oil furnace FA system, I think this probably does work as advertised.

The tricky issue now is how to accurately measure whether it's providing savings. The LED display gives a reading of the savings it has provided, but that's a bit like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. I don't have a very accurate way of measuring oil use short of asking how many gallons were provided in the last refueling, and even so that doesn't account for changes in thermostat settings over the period, nor hotter/colder days requiring less/more oil to maintain the same temperature. That's primarily why I'm trying so hard to convince myself that this is a good investment on the merits - because I won't be able to conclusively prove it after the fact from what I can tell (unless anyone has a recommendation).

Thank you all for your time and advice, I do find this truly helpful.

Regards,

-Chris

Check out this link regarding 'degree days; as a help to determine fuel use/savings.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/2004-12-16-heating-degree-days_x.htm

Again, I go back to the idea that the engineers design around a particular heat exchanger temp that would yield the best efficiency. To me, all the Intellicon device does is lower the effective heat exchanger temp and if that were a solution, it would have been engineered to run at that lower temp in the 1st place. Just as A/C equipment runs best at about a 20 degree differential at the evap coil (I'm much more familiar with A/C since I live in cent FL), I would think heating equipment has a optimal differential also although I'm not familiar with it. Taking the Intellicon's idea to an extreme, you could lower the heat exchanger's differential to one degree. Certainly you'd use much less fuel but the house would never get warm. Increasing the differential one degree at a time would eventually get to the point where the house was comfortable but would also increase fuel use at each step. As you continued to increase the heat exchanger temp past that point, you'd begin to get into the area where the unit could begin to cycle. Here's where the difficulty begins really estimating the savings. I still think that over the years plenty of research has been done regarding heat exchanger efficiency and that something on the order of the Intellicon unit would only move you away from the engineered temp.

Gary

Gary,

Thanks for the link and the follow-up. The link is very useful for understanding what a heating degree day is (which I didn't know), and importantly how to calculate it. Unfortunately, what it can't capture, is whether I've set the thermostat higher or lower during the different comparison periods. So while this is definitely a step in the right direction, I don't think it will answer the question with the finality that I had hoped for. Perhaps it's unanswerable without extensive (and expensive) measuring equipment.

I do strongly sympathize with your point about an optimal efficiency temperature for the furnace. I've also heard many times that AC units really are most efficient when they're producing air a "little" cooler than the ambient (which I thought was about 10 degrees, but I can be had at 20). It seems logical that a furnace would have the same kind of characteristic. I don't know how to convincingly argue otherwise, but I will say that when I discussed this item with the Beckett tech rep, he didn't even broach this issue (shame on me for not explicitly raising it, I was too busy testing whether the pulsing function would shorten the life of the furnace), which it seems he would have. This does make me wonder about whether the same guys who make the furnace (e.g. Beckett) also make the heat exchanger. They probably do, but it's not obvious to me, and if they were made by different companies, that would give some room to argue that the two devices aren't always optimized for each other. I'm aware that it may appear that I'm reaching to justify this purchase, but I'm really just trying to convince myself that there are real savings.

Stepping back for a moment, I think the risk of implementing this solution is potentially two-fold:

1. I don't actually get any oil savings, resulting in my having wasted $250 on the Intellicon-FA, and the hour it takes to install
2. The pulsing function breaks the furnace sooner than expected, resulting in a huge expense of replacing it in a few years.

I guess I'm willing to risk #1 since it's a small amount of money relative to potential savings (though I dislike taking bets as a general rule), and the Beckett rep convinced me that #2 isn't really a risk.

I suppose your point could be a #3, which is that ultimately I wind up using MORE oil because the heat exchanger isn't running at optimal temperature and is less efficient overall. I guess I fall back on the empirical testing that my oil company performed, but without knowing the details of their methodology I can't be sure that this isn't a possible outcome.

I think at this point I have all the information I'm going to get to make this decision. I'm probably going to go for it, but regrettably I won't be able to really validate the savings to know whether the decision was a good one after-the-fact (so there's nothing really for me to convincingly report back, which I would be very inclined to do given the feedback I've received in the forum).

Without starting a new thread, I am separately beginning to do research on geothermal, which may come in handy if my furnace fails a year or two before it "should" because of this device... hahaha

Thank you again for all of your feedback, this has been terrifically useful.

-Chris

Okay, just one more follow-up for any of you who have been tracking this thread:

I just called Intellidyne LLC to get their perspective on the Intellicon-FA and how it generates savings. They gave what I think is a very reasonable explanation (given that I'm not in HVAC but have now steeped myself in it as much as any layman) and I think what they described is "right enough" that I'm going to make the plunge.

The way the rep explained it to me was as follows:

Imagine a tube with a flame in it. The tube is sealed off from the flow of air in the HVAC system but exhausts out of the structure, (the HVAC circulating air runs over the tube). As the furnace flame burns, it will heat the tube. Exhaust from the burning flame exits the house through the chimney (since there are dangerous fumes in burned oil). The two airflows (combustion exhaust and HVAC circulating air) never physically join anywhere. During normal furnace operation the airflow over the tube cools it at the same time the furnace flame is warming it - this is what generates the warm air used to heat a room. However, the metal used in the tube is made of a material that has a maximum temperature, despite how long the furnace burns. That excess heat is simply vented out the flue since it has nowhere else to go. On really cold days, more of the tube temperature is wicked away via the HVAC airflow, but on warm days the excess heat is simply exhausted out the chimney. The reason why this waste occurs is because the heat exchanger by design has a maximum temperature, no matter how long the flame burns. The Intellicon saves oil by pulsing the furnace on/off periodically to keep the tube at its maximum heat without keeping the furnace lit the whole time. Because the heat exchanger tube has a maximum temperature, the actual discharge air of the HVAC system is no different with or without the Intellicon.

The tech implied that while they didn't love the extra cycling of the furnace, they had done a year of testing on this and didn't find it to be an issue. He also said there weren't any issues about crud buildup in the system due to partial or incomplete oil combustion, since it wasn't cycling once every few seconds but rather once very few minutes.

So I'm going to go for it. I may try to get a few months where nobody can change the thermostats in order to be able to calculate whether this thing truly saved money (and adjusting for degree temperature days of course) but that's going to be a hard sell.

I really just wanted to post back to the forum so that anyone else considering this device would have a good set of reference data to make up his own mind.

-Chris