Articles by John Siegenthaler, P.E.

For many years, I’ve been offering a free demo version of the “Hydronics Design Studio” software that I co-developed with my long-time colleague, Mario Restive. It’s there for the taking at www.hydronicpros.com.

If your office routine is anything like mine, you’re probably typing cryptic passwords into your desktop computer, laptop, smartphone or tablet throughout the day to access websites or cloud-based software that’s essential to your business.

I recently reviewed a project in which a municipal building was being connected to a district heating system supplied by pellet-fueled boilers.

The Coefficient of Performance (COP) of a heat pump is essentially the same concept as the thermal efficiency of a boiler (e.g., the desirable output divided by the necessary input).

With systems dating back into the 1800s, hydronic heating has been around a long time. As with many technologies, a modern hydronic heating system bears little resemblance to one based on the earliest design techniques and hardware.

Over the last several years, I’ve been reviewing submittals for proposed heating systems using pellet-fired boilers. The submittals come from heating professionals ranging from contractors to professional engineers. They’re required for a state incentive program that offers significant rebates to encourage growth of the biomass heating market.

Nearly all systems using cordwood gasification or pellet-fueled boilers perform best when the system includes a thermal storage tank.