Wattmaster WMS 1715 Health Ways Replacement

[orion242]

I'll give them that. Would say about half we ran into had failed in one way or another. Still, given the age rather impressive.

Lucky for us the MC bastardizing the system replace a wad already with newer stuff. Pretty sure its two clock motors, so one rpm. Count the threads between limit switches and you get an idea of the stroke time. Verifying they could complete a full stroke both ways was rolling up labor to no end. Was an occupied retro, so whatever got cut over that day needed to be back in operation by following morning at the latest. Just swapping them out as install found them proved to be more cost effective in our case after dealing with the first 25 or so of them. Couldn't just work with 25 at a shot like you could with new construction.

[hvac69]

Were the controllers the ones with sliders for CFM settings and such or was that early KMC analog controllers I am thinking about?

[bigguy158]

They are 90 degree but only have air proving switches for the electric heat that I can see. The manual says they will show CFM if they're pressure independent but I don't think any of them are. I've never seen the front end running so I'm not sure yet. The system controls at 0.5" like a residential system so accurate VAV control would be a challenge at such low static.

JCI controllers perform well at .25”/wc. I haven’t gone lower than that. Plus with pressure switches I would stay above .5”/wc.


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[Norriski Tech]

Anyone here old enough to have installed one of these butes back in the day??

Attachment 836910Attachment 836911

It's driving me nutty, but I took care of building with terminal boxes that had a very similar actuator. This was like 20 years ago so the old brain can't remember what it was? I vaguely remember the stroke time being something crazy long like 7 minutes? It wasn't the one pictured but very similar.

[Norriski Tech]

They are the ford pinto of comfort control.

Never had any damaged to the equipment, but it certainly requires some thinking about what your doing when you come around for a polish job on the turd. Overlook some edge case and its a RTU killer. DX ice maker or gas fired roof fire.

Had 3 carrier RTU's on a building that we took over. Parker VVT trash at the zone level. Somebody messed with the changeover time if I recall. The things would fire in gas heat, then turn around and run DX over and over. When you take 52 deg DAT temp and stuff it right back on the evaporator it's just really bad for the refrigeration process. Low suction, short cycling, lack of oil return compressor go boom. Ok so lets throw some minimum runtime in? Now DAT is running in the high 40's people in the space are like it's blowing ice cubes out the vent. Now I'm calling for heat gas burner fires DAT now 120 deg. Holy crap that thing is shooting fire out the vents! LOL VVT should be ripped out and sent to the dumpster.

[numbawunfela]

LOL VVT should be ripped out and sent to the dumpster.

Exactly.

[orion242]

Were the controllers the ones with sliders for CFM settings and such or was that early KMC analog controllers I am thinking about?

The OG controls got replaced once before I got there. Would guess at least 10-20yrs prior to us ripping out what was there.

Patent off that gem. 1968! If I had to guess the building was built mid 70's or early 80's era so seems like these could be the original actuators. To find any of these still working is pretty nuts.

https://patentimages.storage.googlea.../US3363536.pdf

[numbawunfela]

Patent off that gem. 1968!

I love hand drawn drafting. Takes skill there.