Education wagon train

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Carlin, Dynatherm team to bring technician training to the masses


Many years ago, this nation was founded by pioneers who traveled across the country and opened new horizons for all of us. Many of the wagons used by these stalwart souls were the venerable Conestoga wagon, a tried and proven product built in Pennsylvania. Last fall, a different type of wagon and a new path in education were used to blaze a trail that hopefully many will also follow. This time the wagon came from Massachusetts and it was filled with technology from both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and cut a new trail in the training of technicians.

The project evolved out of a series of application tests done by Carlin Combustion Technology in its labs in East Longmeadow, Mass., for Dynatherm of Quakertown, Pa. Dynatherm was looking to expand its product line while offering greater flexibility to its customer base in both fuel and venting selections. Dynatherm agreed to participate in a complete application testing program with Carlin to achieve even higher efficiencies and make the latest technology available to Dynatherm’s customers.

Jeff Mace, OEM and regional manager at Carlin, directed the project through Carlin’s Engineering Department.

Carlin’s test matrix included testing the Dynatherm FP Series boiler line with all fuels and configurations: chimney-vented oil, direct-vent oil, chimney-vented gas for both natural and propane, and direct-vent gas. Carlin’s application testing program with the Dynatherm FP Series models 18, 24 and 36 resulted in excellent combustion results and efficiencies on all fuels and firing-rate configurations. Carlin tested very conservatively with a CO2 of 11.5 percent on the oil tests, which resulted in efficiencies as high as 87.5 percent.


‘We ran at zero smoke all the way through the 13-percent CO2 range with the final settings. We didn’t reach any smoke until the mid-14-percent range on all of the configurations. We even achieved an efficiency of 86 percent on one configuration with the EZ Gas burner using propane gas,” said Mace.

The FP 18, 24 and 36 boilers use a Carlin EZ Pro configuration with multiple firing rates for oil and an EZ Gas burner with removable orifices for ease of changing gas-firing rates. The FP 48 is currently being tested and finalized on all fuels.

Dynatherm’s history begins with its original name, Bethlehem Dynatherm, which was founded in 1937 in Bethlehem, Pa.

Dynatherm was one of the industry’s first high-efficiency boiler pioneers with its unique three-pass, Scotch Marine belly flue, biferral design. Dynatherm’s boiler design was conceived by Bethlehem Foundry & Machine in conjunction with a Lehigh University engineering studies group. Dynatherm originally used its own engineered non-flame-retention burner design that incorporated components to give the Dynatherm heating plant higher efficiencies unheard of during that early oil burner era.


With the introduction of flame-retention head burners, Carlin burners were one of the first modern-day oil burners to enhance Dynatherm’s efficiencies to even higher levels in the 1970s using the 99FRD and 100CRD burners. With virtually no changes in boiler design over the last 69 years, Dynatherm has stood the test of time and continues to be an efficiency and technology leader in the residential boiler industry.

The fact that both Dynatherm and Carlin share the same philosophy on the importance of educating heating technicians and service managers alike in our industry was the starting point for the wagon train.

Kerry Moyer, president of Dynatherm Boiler Mfg., was looking for a way to expose this new Dynatherm/Carlin offering to the marketplace. Tom Tubman, general manager of Carlin Combustion Technology, Inc., offered Dynatherm a unique way to help expose these new boiler configurations to the market place by mounting three Dynatherm boilers with both Carlin EZ Pro and EZ Gas burners for mobile live firing transport to local wholesalers and service companies.


The Carlin U. trailer is a unique, enclosed trailer that has been retrofitted with a heating plant loading and unloading system. Boilers, hot water heaters and furnaces can be easily installed and removed, and the trailer is equipped to fire both oil and propane gas furnaces and boiler systems.

Kevin Emery, Dynatherm’s vice president of sales and marketing, arranged with Carlin to have an FP 18 mounted to the trailer with an EZ Pro oil burner. Also in the trailer was an EZ Gas direct-vent burner mounted on another FP 18 and an EZ Gas C.V. mounted on an FP 24 as the middle boiler in the Carlin trailer. Mace of Carlin was in charge of coordinating and operating the Carlin U. trailer with both Emery and Moyer present at the various customer locations in the Mid-Atlantic region.

The first stop of the road trip was none other than Dynatherm’s Quakertown, Pa., plant location where there were several open house technical forums for customers to stop by the plant at their own convenience to be educated with the help of the live-firing Carlin U. trailer.

Over the course of two weeks, the trailer traveled to various wholesalers and service companies in the Mid-Atlantic conducting live-firing education programs. The response by all of the companies visited was extremely positive and with the trailer it offered a unique hands-on experience at each company’s very own doorstep. Unlike this country’s pioneers, the only things required to make this wagon train successful was electricity and water for the trailer, and the willingness to learn that was found at each location. Another successful trail opened for education and the oilheat industry.


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