The boiler rooms, or mechanical rooms, of a building can house a number of combustion appliances, such as water heaters, furnaces, and boilers, which are used for heating purposes within the building. Within conventional mechanical rooms, many control devices are used for controlling the different components therein. For example, each individual furnace or boiler may be connected to a respective control device that controls the flow of combustion air and exhaust air through that furnace alone. The control device may also effect a furnace shut down procedure during unstable conditions. Mechanical rooms can also house one or more control devices for controlling a ventilating blower and one or more control devices for controlling an induction draft blower. With the large number of control devices in the mechanical room providing various functions, coordination among the various controllers can be quite complex. Furthermore, in this regard, components and functions can be unnecessarily duplicated.
It has been contemplated to coordinate the control of the ventilating blower and induction draft blower to regulate the air flow through the mechanical room. However, until now, greater processor functionality has yet to be achieved for simplifying the installation and control of mechanical draft systems.
During installation of a conventional mechanical draft system, very little feedback is provided to the installers to indicate whether or not the components are properly connected in the system. Because of this deficiency, correcting any problems after installation becomes much more difficult. It would be beneficial to the installers to receive positive feedback to determine whether or not corrections should be made during installation.
One concern that has been identified regarding conventional mechanical draft systems is their lack of intelligent processing functionality for controlling furnaces or boilers during less than optimal conditions. In those systems, furnaces or boilers are typically shut down and prevented from operating until an error or problem in the system is corrected. This all-or-nothing approach can result in a number of machines sitting idly during times of great need. Therefore, a void exists in the prior art for allowing a system to operate in a low output state during less than optimal conditions and to operate in such conditions without compromising safety and efficiency.