Last updated Sunday January 5, 2014
Digital Temperature Probes
As with any home improvement, there is an environmental burden that goes along with it.
I found it ironic that in order to install something as green and environmentally friendly as a geothermal ground loop, lots of dirty fossil fuel was consumed during in the drilling/construction process.
To install a geothermal ground loop at my house, the energy burden breakdown was as follows:
They even came with their own button batteries. I attached the probes to various pipes of which I was interested in knowing temperature. A thick layer of foam insulation over the pipe allows the probe to report an accurate water temperature without being effected by the ambient air temperature.
Using old hard drive magnets I can stick them on any metal surface with ease.
They worked so well, I have since bought 6 more.
In addition to the 6 parameters I was already monitoring, I can now view:
- Return Air Temperature In
- Air Temperature Out
And 4 temperature parameters related to the DWHR unit:
- Drain water temperature In
- Drain water temperature Out
- Culinary water temperature In
- Culinary water temperature Out
And a couple more for my Attic Air Clothes Dryer experiment.
- Attic Air temperature in
- Dryer Air temperature Out
They only down-side to them is they only display in Celsius (being raised in the good old anti-metric USA, I still struggle thinking in Celsius). You can't view the temperatures remotely or do any kind of data-logging.
But they are extremely handy for at a glance seeing what every piece of the pie is doing.