How to control the furnace blower independently from the furnace itself

hvacthermostat

I have an outdoor wood burner with a water jacket. It has an electric blower that needs to run to get the fire going hot enough to be clean burning. I have a 200 gallon storage tank, and plan to enlarge it to 1000 gallons. I pump water out of the tank to the wood burner, then the hotter water goes to the house and through an exchanger in my furnace. Then the cooled water goes back to the tank.

Is there a thermostat that will kick just the furnace blower on at say 68 and turn it off at 71 but still let the furnace light and work normally at a lower temp like 50?

Best Answer

To accomplish this, you can use a 2-stage thermostat. You'd connect only the 2nd stage to your furnace. Both stages run the blower.

When the temperature drops to say 69, the first stage will start your blower. When the temperature drops to an even lower temperature, the furnace (stage 2) will be switched on just as you describe.

There are many thermostats which can accomplish this. Here's a great video I found which demonstrates how a 2 stage thermostat works. You can see that the first stage is activated when the temperature is slightly lower than the set temperature and the second stage is activated when the room temperature is much lower than the set temperature. There are dials to set when the second stage is activated. He also shows the wiring for the stages. In your application, you'd leave w₁ unconnected and connect your furnace to w₂.

How 2 stage thermostat