Once upon a time there was a lunatic that wanted heat in his house in the Canadian Winter.

This is what I created.

I started with a standard boiler and then plumbed the hot water to heater-cores out of Chevy pickup trucks. Why Chevy? because they are dirt cheap, and a brother-in-law in the automobile recycling industry could get his hands on them for even cheaper.

I mounted 12 volt fans to them In the end I have 1 fan and heater core per room. Individualized heat for every room... Complete Bliss when the Mother-in-Law comes over and turns down the thermostat. No freezing bedroom at the end of the day.

Now it is just a simple matter of controlling all of the fans and the boiler, so with out further ado......

The top left is the power supply, the smaller ones give individual room temp. control and the lower left is the boiler control unit.

A bit of history.

HCU 1- A battery charger and a relay lasted 1 year 1993-1994

HCU 2 - regulated power supply and a board of relays with GMC fan motors 1994-1995. Scrapped due to high relay failure and noise--house guests were startled when a fan started up on a cool winter's eve.

HCU 3 - Very nice box with built in redundant back up systems.1995-1998. Scrapped due to design failure. ( Main system failed and backup seamlessly took over without notification, clever designing -- backup failed at -35 degrees Celsius-- after several repairs it began to look like an octopus)

GMC motors replaced, due to very high failure rate, with Princess Auto DC brushless fans also much more quiet--so we can hear the kids fight.

HCU 4 - 1998-present replaceable racks, indicator lights for power on and run condition, diagnostic unit to test fan and thermostat circuits, override and manual control switches

HCU5-The Future--now I play with computer parts and the wife dreams of a small box that can do the job. Good thing she likes to dream.

The power supply has 4 independent outputs and 2 regulators. ( one is just for backup ) Note: a switch has to be flipped to change over to 'backup' no more nasty deep winter breakdowns

The fan unit has variable speed adjustment and is transistor controlled.This one has been upgraded with a cooling fan because the power supply would over heat the regulator when the outside temp hit -50C . Yes it has happened!

And that's all it takes. Well that and a little bit of wire.

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