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Old 03-27-2006, 11:20 AM   #3
Bill
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Location: The mountains of Scottsdale, AZ, and the beaches of Maine
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BobRederick
Has anyone experience with an Oxygen sensor to deal with this issue successfully?
Actually, I combed the Internet looking for one and couldn't find one that would be useful. I did find a couple, but they were laboratory instruments, enormously expensive, required calibration frequently, and required a new sensor (very expensive) every couple months.

This is what concerns me about catalytic heaters that claim to have a built-in oxygen sensor. If it is a real oxygen sensor, I should be able to buy one somewhere. And if I can buy the whole cat heater for a couple hundred bucks, I should be able to buy the sensor for less than that. Instead, I see tens of thousands of dollars.

I don't know what kind of sensor the cat heaters have, but I am scared that it might be a simple temperature sensor. If the oxygen in the room gets severely depleted, the catalytic "flame" gets colder and just like a pilot light and thermocouple, the gas shuts off. But that is a pretty crude sensor, as all of us know who have fought with the same pilot light / thermocouple mechanism in the refrigerator or the oven. I'm not willing to bet my life on it. (Of course there is no flame per se in a cat heater - I'm referring to the temperature of the glowing conversion mat.)

Let me emphasize again that I don't know what the sensor in a cat heater is - the above is just my own speculation. I would welcome some actual information, but the cat heater web sites don't provide any.

Bill
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