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CI SupportLab· remote monitoring
CI SupportLab™ · BG · live readings · alerts · records
A boiler runs a hundred and sixty-eight hours a week and gets tested in about five of them. The other hundred and sixty-three are on the phone in your pocket, next to the band each reading is supposed to be inside.
BoilerGuardYour boiler plant, on your phone, every five minutes of the year.
Live · last reading 09:38 · 3 min ago
Section 01 · What changes
The service is a sample panel in the boiler room. The product is what shows up on your phone
Five signals. Seven sensors. Every five minutes. On a screen you already carry.
CI BoilerGuard puts a sample-conditioning panel on the feedwater, blowdown and condensate lines, and a live picture of the plant in an app. Boiler water conductivity, feedwater ORP and temperature, condensate pH and conductivity, and makeup measured against condensate return report every five minutes to a phone, a tablet and a browser. Readings arrive with the band they should be inside. Alerts arrive with what to do next. The log writes itself.
A plant that tests twice a shift on weekdays observes its own water chemistry for a few minutes out of a hundred and sixty-eight hours. The rest is inferred from the last titration. Almost every expensive boiler event — a tube scaled by a softener that failed on a Saturday, oxygen pitting from a restart nobody scavenged for, a return line thinned by carbonic acid, a blowdown valve left open for a fortnight — happens inside that gap and is found afterwards, usually by the fuel bill or by a leak. What follows is the same week, with and without the app.
One week at the same plant
Now · tests when there is time
Mon
Two tests, one log sheetConductivity and sulfite drawn at the sample cooler, written on the sheet, keyed in at month end if at all.
Tue
No testThe shift was short and the boiler was steaming fine. Whatever happened at 04:00 happened unrecorded.
Wed
Blowdown “for a while”Conductivity read high at 14:05. The valve was opened and closed by feel. Nobody records how long, or what it cost.
Thu–Fri
Two tests, both fineBoth in range. The forty hours between them are an assumption, not a record.
Sat–Sun
Plant unattendedFifty-two hours. The softener regenerated on a stuck valve at 03:00 Saturday and nobody knew until Monday.
With BoilerGuard · same staff
Mon
2,016 readingsSeven sensors, every five minutes, from the phone in your pocket.
Tue
Nothing neededThe screen says every band held overnight. That is a reading too, and it is on file.
Wed
Blowdown with a numberConductivity, the setpoint and the recovery curve, so the valve closes when the cycles are right rather than when someone remembers.
Thu
One task, for a reasonCell clean and calibration — not a walk to the sample cooler to take a number.
Sat 03:12
Hardness alertSoftener breakthrough flagged in eleven minutes, instead of found in ten weeks of scale.
What the operator actually gets back
Gain 01The call-in you do not makeWeekend and holiday trips exist to read three numbers. When the numbers arrive on their own, the trip is made when there is something to do at the other end.
Gain 02The restart you do not loseOxygen enters an idle boiler and meets bare steel at the first firing. That hour has never appeared on a log sheet, at any plant, on any schedule.
Gain 03The cycles you stop guessing atBlowdown by conductivity instead of by habit. US EPA puts the move from manual to automatic blowdown control at 2–5% of boiler energy and up to 20% less blowdown; a continuous record is the first half of that.
Gain 04The log you do not retypeDaily minimum, maximum and average per parameter, alerts and acknowledgements, exported in the shape an insurer, an inspector or an energy audit asks for.
What this service is, and what it is not
BoilerGuard does
- Show boiler water conductivity, feedwater ORP and temperature, condensate pH and conductivity, and makeup against condensate return, on phone and browser.
- Learn this plant’s own rhythm — firing pattern, weekend shape, seasonal load — then alert on departure from it.
- Send an alert that states the reading, the consequence, and the first three moves.
- Build the water-treatment log and the exports that support insurer, jurisdictional and energy reporting.
- Connect a measured condition to the CI360 boiler chemistry that answers it.
BoilerGuard does not
- Control anything. Nothing in the app opens a blowdown valve, strokes a chemical pump, or moves a controller setpoint.
- Replace the wet tests. Sulfite, orthophosphate, nitrite, alkalinity and hardness titrations remain the operator’s and the CI technician’s work.
- Replace the operator, the chief, or the jurisdictional inspection.
- Require a new control system, a DCS project, or a plant shutdown to install on most sites.
- Report a number without context. A conductivity reading with no limit behind it is not a service.
Monitoring, not control
The panel is installed on an isolated, read-only monitoring path fed by a cooled, pressure-reduced sample line. Sensors read the plant; they cannot operate it. There is no button in the app that changes how the boiler runs. Firing, blowdown, chemical feed and every safety function remain with the plant’s own controls and the certified operator.
Want the arithmetic for your own plant?The Fit Check takes your test schedule and returns coverage, tier, sensor array and the chemistry lanes worth pre-staging.
Open the Fit CheckSection 02 · The app
Three mornings in the same boiler room, as they arrive on the phone
Pick a morning. The screen and the operator’s next move both change.
This is the working surface. Not a chart library and not a plant control screen shrunk to fit — a single scrollable list of what the plant is doing right now, ordered so the thing that needs a decision is at the top. Most days it says nothing needs you. That is the point of it.
BoilerGuardBoiler & Condensate Monitoring
AssetCamrose Plant · Boiler No. 1Live
Overview
Alerts
History
Settings
Morning A
What the operator does next
Illustrative
Screens and values shown are representative of a low-pressure industrial steam plant. Actual bands, sensor set and alert routing are set per boiler at commissioning, against the ABMA limits for its drum pressure and that plant’s own baseline.
Why the screen is built this way
1The asset header, not a device ID
The boiler is named the way the crew names it — No. 1, the east unit, the new one — with a live indicator and the age of the last reading. If the link drops, the header says so rather than showing a stale number as if it were current.
2Reading, unit, and verdict together
Every signal shows the value and the band it is in. 2,840 µS/cm means nothing on its own to a relief operator at 03:00. 2,840 µS/cm · In band is a decision.
3The banner sits on the signal that raised it
An open condition appears directly beneath the reading that caused it, in the colour of its severity, with the sentence an operator needs. Everything else on the screen stays quiet. There is no wall of red icons to learn to ignore.
4Colour that survives a boiler room
Status is carried by a labelled pill and a border, not by colour alone — readable under a sodium light, readable in a truck at noon, and readable by an operator with colour vision deficiency.
5History is two taps away
Any signal opens to its own 24-hour, 30-day and season traces. The blowdown sawtooth, the cycles achieved, the overnight minimum and last winter’s same week are already calculated.
6Acknowledgement is the record
Acknowledging an alert writes a name and a timestamp. That line is what answers the insurer’s question a year later about who knew what, and when.
Two surfaces, one account
Phone · the decision surfaceFor the sixteen hours a day nobody is at a desk
- Live values with their band, one screen, no configuration.
- Push alerts with the response steps inside the notification.
- Acknowledge with one tap; the log records who and when.
- Switch between boilers, loops and buildings from a list.
- Works on the cellular signal you already get in the plant yard.
Browser · the analysis surfaceFor the log, the trend, and the conversation with finance
- Every boiler and loop side by side with status at a glance.
- Overlaid traces, cycles of concentration, blowdown percentage and return percentage.
- Alert history with acknowledgement and resolution against every entry.
- Report generation and export in log and audit-ready formats.
- Role-based access for operator, administrator, viewer and inspector.
Section 03 · The dashboard
The browser view is where the week gets explained and the log gets filed
Same data, more room. Built for the desk, the trend, and the submission.
The phone answers what is happening now. The dashboard answers what has been happening, and what do I file. Multi-asset sites get a rail with a status colour against every boiler, loop and receiver, so the first thing anyone sees on Monday is which asset moved over the weekend and which did not.
DashboardBoiler No. 1 · 19 Nov · 10:30
Boiler Conductivity2,840µS/cmIn band
Condensate pH8.3In band
Condensate Return62%Warning
Condensate return at 62% · down from a 71% twelve-week average, makeup up 1,900 L/day at the same steam load×
24-Hour TrendsBoiler conductivityCondensate pH24 hours
●Illustrative interface●Seven assets on one account●Amber and red states carry a named response●Every view exports
What is on the screen and why
ViewBG-DBSurfaceBrowser console · operator and administrator rolesStandardStatus before values · one open condition · every view exportsAssets1–∞
| What the console is showing | Why it belongs · operator note | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Every boiler and loop on one screen | A status colour against each asset in the rail, so a plant with three boilers, a deaerator, a receiver and two loops sees the whole system before it sees any single number. The one that needs attention is the one that is not green. |
| 2 | Cards carry the verdict, not just the value | Each signal shows its reading, its unit and its state. A warning card changes its border and its label; it does not rely on the operator remembering which conductivity number is close to the ABMA limit for this drum pressure. |
| 3 | One banner for the open condition | The same rule as the phone. The condition that needs a decision sits above the charts, with the number and the rate of change inside the sentence. |
| 4 | Trends read together, not one at a time | Conductivity and condensate pH on one 24-hour frame, because the shape of the pair is the diagnosis. A sawtooth that stops sawing means the blowdown valve is open, stuck, or the controller has quit — and that reads instantly as a flat line. |
| 5 | Everything on the screen exports | The same view becomes a CSV, a PDF, or a formatted water-treatment log. Nothing is retyped into a spreadsheet to become a submission. |
Derived metrics are the reason for the desk view
Cycles of concentration, blowdown as a percentage of feedwater, condensate return percentage, the energy recovered in that returned condensate, scavenger reserve against restart events, and season-over-season comparison are all calculated from the seven sensors. US DOE puts typical blowdown at 4–8% of feedwater flow — a figure most plants have never actually measured on their own boiler. Raw values ask the operator to do that arithmetic by hand, from memory. Derived metrics do it in advance.
Access is scoped
Administrator, operator, viewer and inspector roles, with multi-factor authentication. An insurer’s engineer or a jurisdictional inspector can be given a read-only account against a defined period instead of being sent a folder of screenshots.
Section 04 · Alerts
An alert that does not say what to do is a louder version of the problem
Reading, consequence, first moves, expected recovery. Four parts, every time, in that order.
Most monitoring products fail here. They push a number and a red icon to somebody who is driving, and the operator learns to dismiss them. BoilerGuard notifications are written to be acted on by a competent operator who is not a water chemist, and who may be looking at a lock screen at five in the morning.
What arrives on the lock screen
Lock screen5:26Monday 17 November
BoilerGuardnow
Warning · Boiler No. 1 · Feedwater ORP above band. Four readings with feedwater at 88 °C. Oxygen ingress risk on restart. Tap for response steps.
BoilerGuard2h ago
Weekly summary ready · Boiler No. 1 and No. 2.
Channels follow the tier
Lite delivers by email. Pro adds SMS and app push. Enterprise adds a phone call on an unacknowledged critical. Whichever channels a site carries, the four-part wording is identical, so an operator reads the same thing on a lock screen, in an inbox, and in the console.
The one alert that is never routine
A hardness breakthrough with the boiler firing. Every hour of it lays deposit on a heated surface, and deposit is the only failure on this list that cannot be undone by feeding something afterwards. It is delivered on every channel the tier supports and it stays open until a person acknowledges it.
WarningZ2 · Feedwater ORP · above bandBoiler No. 1 · 05:26
What
Feedwater ORP has risen to +64 mV and has been above the site band for four consecutive readings, with feedwater temperature at 88 °C against a 104 °C deaerator setpoint.
Why it matters
Above the band there is no reducing reserve in the feedwater. Dissolved oxygen reaching hot steel pits it, and pitting is localised, fast, and not reversible by chemistry after the fact.
What to do
- Confirm the scavenger day tank has product and the pump is stroking.
- Check deaerator pressure, vent and steam supply before increasing the dose.
- If ORP stays above band with feed confirmed, contact Chem International technical support before the next firing period.
Expected resolution
With deaeration restored and feed confirmed, ORP should return to band within one to two hours. On a Monday restart a short excursion is normal — the trend across restarts, not the single reading, is what decides.
View live dataAcknowledgeCall support
Why the last line is there
“Expected resolution” is what separates a useful alert from an anxious one. It tells the operator whether this is an emergency, a watch item, or a normal feature of the plant they have never seen written down before. It is also what stops the 05:00 call that did not need to happen.
Threshold matrix · every signal, both bands, and the first move
| SignalZone and sensor | WarningWatch and diagnose | CriticalAct now | First moveBefore reaching for a product | Escalate only if… |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Z3Boiler water conductivity | 85% of the site limit | Above the ABMA limit for the drum pressure | Confirm the blowdown valve position and the controller setpoint before touching chemical feed. | Conductivity will not fall at full blowdown, or it climbs with the valve open. |
| Z2Feedwater ORP | Above band, three readings | Above band with feedwater below deaerator setpoint | Confirm the day tank and the pump. A scavenger that is not in the drum cannot be increased. | The excursion repeats at every restart rather than happening once. |
| Z2Feedwater temperature | 5 °C below setpoint | 10 °C below, sustained | Check deaerator pressure, the vent, and the steam supply valve. | Temperature runs low at normal steam demand, not only at restart. |
| Z5Condensate pH | Below 7.5 | Below 7.0 | Confirm the neutralising amine feed and the return percentage, then look for a new load on the header. | pH holds low with feed confirmed correct — there is a CO₂ source or a return you have not found. |
| Z5Condensate conductivity | Step above baseline | Sustained step, or above the makeup limit | Divert the return, then isolate heat users one at a time. | The step repeats on a cycle rather than once — that is a leaking exchanger, not an event. |
| Z1/Z4Makeup vs return flow | Return below the site floor | Makeup up sharply at unchanged steam load | Walk the trap list. Check for a blowdown valve left open before assuming a leak. | Makeup keeps climbing with no cause found across an operating week. |
| Rule of thumb | Bands are commissioned per boiler against the ABMA limits for its drum pressure and this plant’s own baseline, then written down and left alone. A threshold that gets adjusted every time it fires is not a threshold; it is a preference. | |||
First-move column — the diagnostic step that precedes any chemistryEscalation column — the conditions that change the plan
Escalation path
1Warning firesPush and email, plus SMS where the tier carries it
2Operator acknowledgesOne tap, logged with a timestamp and a name
3Unacknowledged criticalRepeats and escalates to the next contact
4Technical supportCI reads the trend with the operator
Alert fatigue is a design failure, not a user failure
If a threshold fires at every Monday restart, it is wrong. Commissioning includes a seven-day supervised period specifically to tune bands against how this plant actually fires, blows down and shuts down. An operator who ignores alerts has been trained to by the system that sent them.
The record is the second product
Every alert, acknowledgement and resolution is retained. When a tube fails, an insurer asks a question, or a warranty claim turns on whether the water was in control, the answer is a timestamped trace rather than a recollection. That record is frequently worth more to the plant than the alert that created it.
Section 05 · What the app is reading
Five signals decide whether a boiler is being protected — and the plant is empty for most of the hours they move
Five signals. Seven sensors. One panel.
The screens above are only as good as what is behind them. Seven sensors on one sample-conditioning panel carry five signals: what arrives, what is removed, what concentrates, what comes back, and what that costs. Each is banded against this plant’s own baseline and the ABMA limits for its drum pressure, not a textbook. Tap a zone on the flow schematic to see what it covers.
Five signals · tap a zone on the schematic or a signal in the list
Z1MakeupWhat is arriving, and is the softener holding?FLOW
Z2FeedwaterIs the oxygen gone before the water meets steel?ORP / TEMP
Z3BoilerAre the cycles where they should be?COND
Z4Steam & recoveryHow much of what you heated comes back?RETURN
Z5CondensateIs the return protecting itself, or eating itself?pH / EC
Selected zoneOther zonesRight column = the sensor that carries it
CI360 Water Treatment= catalogue section of a linked productAdd-on sensors are optional and site-specific
Blind spots the app is built to close
Blind spot 01The hours nobody is in the roomA plant that tests twice a shift on weekdays has chemistry data for a handful of hours out of a hundred and sixty-eight. The rest is an assumption carried forward from the last titration.
Blind spot 02The restartOxygen enters an idle boiler through every vent and seal. The reserve is gone before the first Monday test, and the damage happens in the first hour of firing.
Blind spot 03Scale is invisible until the fuel billDeposit builds over months. The first cheap evidence is stack temperature climbing at a constant firing rate. The expensive evidence is a tube.
Blind spot 04The condensate you already paid to heatA failed trap or a lost return raises makeup quietly. Very few plants meter both sides, so the loss shows up as a water bill and a chemical bill rather than as a fault.
Blind spot 05Contamination that arrives at 02:00A leaking exchanger puts process fluid into the return, and it reaches the drum long before the morning test. It is usually diagnosed as foaming or carryover a day later.
Thresholds in service · the bands behind the pills on the screen
Boiler water · ABMA0–300 psigPublished maximum recommended limits run to roughly 1,100–5,400 µmho/cm depending on drum pressure. Your band comes from the row for your boiler.
Condensate pH · warning< 7.5Neutralising amine programmes typically target about 7.5 to 9. Below 7.5, the return line is losing metal.
Sulfite residual · typical20–60 ppmDepending on drum pressure and reference. Roughly 8 mg/L of sodium sulfite consumes 1 mg/L of dissolved oxygen.
Scale · fuel penalty≈ 2%US DOE puts 1/32 inch of normal scale at about 2% of fuel and 1/16 inch at 3.9%. High-iron scale is worse.
Drum pressure and metallurgy decide the treatment lane
0–15 psigHot water & closed loops
Inhibitor reserve, loop pH and dilution are the whole programme. No. 20 Boiler Compound No. 25 Boiler Compound for a nitrite programme, and No. 32 Boiler Compound for recirculating service.
15–150 psigLow-pressure steam
The standard industrial lane. No. 30 Boiler Compound with OS15 or OS100 oxygen scavenger, and PD-90 Liquid Phosphate Dispersant for deposit control.
150–300 psigTighter limits, less tolerance
The same ABMA table, but lower conductivity and silica ceilings and far less room for carryover. PBT20 Polymer Boiler Treatment where a polymer programme suits the water.
AlAluminium & mixed metallurgy
Conventional alkaline assumptions do not apply, and neither does conventional cleaning. Neutral Boiler Cleaner and a controlled-pH approach on the aluminium side.
Why this pairing matters
Boiler chemistry is not a strength ladder. A hot-water loop treatment and a low-pressure steam compound are different programmes for different failure modes, and a filming amine is not a stronger neutralising amine — it is a different mechanism. Drum pressure, metallurgy and condensate return percentage are what select the lane. Continuous data is what makes that a measured decision instead of an inherited one.
When the data says act · CI360 boiler chemistry lanes
Oxygen is the constraintORP sits above band, feedwater runs below deaerator temperature, or the plant comes back cold every Monday.
OS15 Oxygen ScavengerSulfite-based feedwater scavenger
OS100 Catalyzed ScavengerFaster response, higher oxygen demand
No. 30 Boiler CompoundLow-pressure steam internal treatment
Deposit and heat transfer are the constraintConductivity runs high, hardness is leaking past the softener, or stack temperature has been climbing for a season.
PD-90 Liquid Phosphate DispersantDeposit control and sludge conditioning
PBT20 Polymer Boiler TreatmentPolymer scale conditioning
No. 110 DescalerInhibited scale removal
The return line is the constraintCondensate pH sags overnight, the returns show iron, or the plant has replaced the same length of pipe twice.
No. 45 Corrosion InhibitorSteam condensate line protection
No. 49 Filming Steam Boiler CompoundBarrier-style return protection
The loop or the metal is the constraintClosed heating, glycol, or aluminium in the circuit — where the standard steam programme is the wrong answer, not a weaker one.
No. 25 Boiler CompoundNitrite closed-loop protection
No. 32 Boiler CompoundRecirculating system treatment
Neutral Boiler CleanerAluminium-safe cleaning
Chemistry is not a substitute for pretreatment
A dispersant will carry a hardness leak for a while. It will not fix a softener that regenerates on a stuck valve, and every hour of breakthrough is deposit on a heated surface. Use the chemistry to hold the boiler while the pretreatment fault is corrected, and record both, so the next argument about softener capacity starts from evidence.
Sensors carry the trend; titrations calibrate it
Orthophosphate, sulfite and nitrite test kits stay in the toolkit. Continuous ORP is a proxy for scavenger reserve, not a measurement of it; conductivity is a proxy for dissolved solids, not a phosphate result. The wet test remains the reference, and the continuous record is what tells you which day to draw it on.
Section 06 · Records & reports
The month ends and the water treatment log is already written
The second product is the file, and it is the one that is worth the most a year later.
Every reading, alert, acknowledgement and resolution is retained for the term of the tier. The report is generated from that record rather than assembled by hand from a clipboard, a spreadsheet, and a memory of what the month was like. What used to be an afternoon is a download.
Records & regulatory context
What the record has to survive is a question asked a year later.
Pressure equipment in Alberta is regulated under the Safety Codes Act and administered by ABSA, and boiler and machinery insurers commonly expect evidence that a water treatment programme exists and is being held. The chemistry limits themselves come from the ASME consensus operating practices for feedwater and boiler water chemistry in industrial boilers, and from the ABMA table of maximum recommended limits by drum pressure.
BoilerGuard is supplementary to all of it. It does not certify a boiler, it does not replace a jurisdictional inspection, and it does not replace titration or laboratory analysis. What it supplies is the continuous operating record behind those things: what the plant was doing between service visits, when the chemistry moved, what the alert said, who acknowledged it, and what was done. That is the part of a file that is normally missing.
Stated plainly
Continuous sensor data supports your water-treatment record and your energy reporting. It does not certify the boiler, replace a jurisdictional inspection, or replace laboratory analysis. Confirm your obligations with your jurisdiction, your insurer and your permit conditions.
What a period report contains.
1Cover and period
Plant name, boiler identification and jurisdictional numbers, reporting period, and the statement naming the BoilerGuard panel serial and the operating client.
2Summary and data tables
Days in band, alerts triggered, actions taken, and daily minimum, maximum and average for every monitored parameter — with cycles achieved, blowdown percentage and condensate return percentage.
3Trends and alert log
Thirty-day, ninety-day and annual charts, plus every threshold breach with its timestamp and its resolution.
4Equipment appendix
Calibration records and the maintenance log — the evidence that the data behind the report was trustworthy.
What the gap costs · published figures, not BoilerGuard results
Figure 01Scale on the watersideUS DOE Steam Tip Sheet #7 puts 1/32 inch of normal scale at about 2% of fuel and 1/16 inch at 3.9%, with high-iron scale worse. Its worked example loses roughly $27,000 a year on a 450,000 MMBtu boiler at $3.00/MMBtu.
Figure 02Blowdown controlUS EPA puts the move from manual to automatic blowdown control at 2–5% of boiler energy and up to 20% less blowdown. Typical blowdown runs 4–8% of feedwater flow.
Figure 03Condensate returnedUS DOE puts the energy in returned condensate at more than 10% of the total steam energy of a typical 100 psig system. One DOE case — a plant that cut makeup from about 35% to 14–20% — reported savings over $300,000 a year.
Figure 04An hour of downtimeABB’s 2023 reliability survey of 3,215 maintenance decision-makers puts the cross-industry median at about $125,000 an hour. Siemens’ figures run from roughly $39,000 in consumer goods to $2.3 million in automotive.
The caveatNone of these are our numbersThey are published figures for what the underlying problems cost, and they are why a continuous record is worth having. What the service returns at your plant depends on your fuel price, your water, and what you do with the alert.
Platform & data handling
CA
Canadian data residency
Hosted in Canadian cloud regions, with handling aligned to Canadian privacy legislation.
TL
Encrypted end to end
TLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest, certificate-based device authentication.
RB
Role-based access
Administrator, operator, viewer and inspector roles, with multi-factor authentication.
RT
Retention by tier
Raw data held one to seven years; aggregated trends retained substantially longer for season-over-season comparison.
OT
Monitoring-only path
The panel has no control authority over boiler equipment, valves or feed pumps. It reads and reports.
AP
Integration where it is wanted
Enterprise sites can pull data into an existing BAS, SCADA, CMMS or energy reporting system through a secure API.
Where the chemistry programme fits
BoilerGuard is a CI SupportLab service, and it is designed to sit alongside the CI360™ boiler treatment programme rather than replace anybody’s judgement about it. The measured condition selects the lane: a lost scavenger reserve points to oxygen chemistry, a conductivity climb points to blowdown and deposit control, a sagging condensate pH points to the return line, and a conductivity step in the return points upstream to a heat user. Sites running both get a chemical review cadence driven by data instead of by the calendar.
Section 07 · Field hardware
One panel, one sample line, half a day — and it has to live in a boiler room
The part of the service that is not on a screen.
The hardware constraint here is not accuracy, it is the sample. Boiler water leaves the drum at pressure and well above 100 °C, and no pH or conductivity cell survives that. The field unit is a wall-mounted panel fed by a cooled, pressure-reduced sample line off the continuous blowdown, with separate cells on feedwater and condensate. Plant power, plant network where there is one, cellular where there is not. No control wiring, no DCS project, and on most plants no shutdown to install.
Field unit · sheet BG-07
SheetBG-07AssemblySample panel · conditioning · telemetryStandardIP65 / NEMA 4X · 0 °C to +50 °C ambient · wall mountSensors7
| Component | Specification | Why it is specified that way |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | EnclosureIP65 / NEMA 4X painted steel or polycarbonate | Roughly 60 × 50 × 20 cm.Wall or unistrut mount within a few metres of the sample points. Small enough to go on the boiler-room wall without a structural conversation. |
| 2 | Environment0 °C to +50 °C ambient, sample conditioned below 40 °C | Boiler rooms run hot and humid.The panel is rated for the room; the sample cooler is what protects the cells. Sample temperature is itself monitored, because a hot sample is a wrong reading, not a missing one. |
| 3 | Sample conditioningCooler, pressure-reducing valve, relief, flow control, flow cells | Boiler water off the continuous blowdown; feedwater after the pump; condensate at the receiver.Sample flow is monitored, so a plugged line reports as a fault instead of quietly becoming a flat line. |
| 4 | Power120 VAC, buffered memory and battery-backed clock | No solar, no trenching — boiler rooms have power.Readings are buffered locally through an interruption and pushed when the link returns, so a plant outage does not leave a hole in the record. |
| 5 | CommunicationPlant Ethernet or Wi-Fi primary, 4G LTE fallback | Transmission every 5 minutes, configurable; burst transmission on an alarm event.Outbound only, and on its own VLAN where the site’s IT policy prefers it. |
| 6 | SecurityTLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest, certificate-based authentication | Isolated monitoring path.No control authority by design: the panel has no output to a valve, a pump, or a controller, and nothing on the network can make it acquire one. |
Sensor array · accuracy and service interval
| Sensor | Type | Accuracy | Maintenance interval |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boiler water conductivity | Contacting 4-electrode, temperature compensated | ±1% of reading | Clean monthly · calibrate every 6 months |
| Feedwater ORP | Platinum band electrode | ±5 mV | Clean monthly · calibrate quarterly |
| Feedwater temperature | Platinum RTD (Pt100) | ±0.1 °C | None · solid state |
| Condensate pH | Glass electrode, low-conductivity reference | ±0.05 pH | Clean monthly · calibrate every 1–3 months |
| Condensate conductivity | 2-electrode, low range | ±1% or ±0.5 µS/cm | Clean monthly · calibrate every 6 months |
| Makeup flow | Magnetic or turbine, pulse output | ±1% of reading | Verify annually |
| Condensate return flow | Magnetic or turbine, pulse output | ±1% of reading | Verify annually |
Optional add-on sensors · specified only where the site justifies them
+Makeup hardness analyser
Colorimetric, on the softener outlet. Turns “the softener is probably fine” into an alarm at breakthrough rather than a scale bill in eighteen months. Reagent change every 30–60 days.
+Stack temperature
Thermocouple in the breeching. A stack temperature climbing at a constant firing rate is the earliest cheap evidence of waterside or fireside fouling.
+Chemical day-tank level
Level sensor in the scavenger and treatment drums. Most reserve losses start as an empty drum on a Friday afternoon.
+Feedwater dissolved oxygen
Membrane or optical DO cell. Where the pressure, the warranty or the insurer justifies measuring oxygen directly instead of inferring it from ORP.
Ongoing maintenance
Client tasks
Trained during onboarding
Monthly
Wipe the flow cells and confirm sample flow at each cell. This single task prevents most false trends.
Quarterly
Check the sample cooler for scaling on the cooling-water side. A cooler that has stopped cooling is the most common cause of drift.
CI field technician
Scheduled service visits
Monthly to quarterly
pH electrode calibration; ORP checked against a standard; wet tests drawn alongside the sensors to confirm the trend.
Every 6 months
Conductivity cell constants verified, condensate cell cleaned, reagent replaced where a hardness analyser is fitted.
Annual
CI technical team
Annually
Full system audit, firmware update, and a threshold review against the year of data and the current drum pressure.
Annually
Season-over-season comparison — cycles achieved, blowdown percentage, return percentage, and whether the plant is holding or degrading.
The honest maintenance line
Boiler-room sample lines foul and plug. Conductivity cells film over, pH electrodes drift, and a sample cooler on hard cooling water will scale on the shell side and quietly stop cooling. A monitoring service that does not name a cleaning and calibration schedule is a monitoring service that will be confidently wrong in its second year.
Section 08 · Service levels
Three levels — what changes is coverage and cadence, not whether the service works
Every tier includes installation, onboarding, data, app access, and CI technical support.
A school with one low-pressure boiler and a good caretaker does not need what a food plant with three boilers, two closed loops and an energy reporting obligation needs. The panel and the app are the same in all three tiers; what moves is how many signals are read, how often they report, how long the record is kept, and how much of the paperwork is generated for you.
| Capability | LiteOne boiler, essential signals | ProThe standard plant deployment | EnterpriseMulti-boiler and industrial |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monitored signals | 3 · boiler conductivity, feedwater ORP, condensate pH | 7 · adds feedwater temperature, condensate conductivity, makeup and return flow | 7 plus custom sensor array |
| Transmission interval | Every 15 minutes | Every 5 minutes | Every minute |
| Data retention | 1 year | 3 years | 7 years |
| Alert channels | Email, SMS and app push | Email, SMS, app push and phone | |
| Reporting | Monthly summary | Weekly, monthly and automated water-treatment log | Daily, on-demand and custom |
| Record formats | Data export | Insurer, jurisdictional and energy-audit formats | Custom formats with audit support |
| Derived metrics | Cycles of concentration | Adds blowdown %, return %, and recovered condensate energy | Adds fouling trend and cost modelling |
| Custom thresholds | Standard ABMA bands | Adjustable per signal | Fully configurable |
| Assets covered | One boiler | Up to three boilers and one loop | Unlimited, with site map and cross-plant reporting |
| API access | — | — | Secure REST API for BAS, SCADA, CMMS and energy reporting |
| Technical support | Business-hours email | Business-hours phone and email | 24/7 phone with a dedicated account manager |
| Chemistry integration | Quarterly chemical review | Monthly review with scheduled delivery | Weekly review and full programme management |
All tiers carry a minimum term. Hardware, installation and training are quoted per site once the plant is assessed.Speak to your CI representative for current pricing and grant-eligible configurations.
Section 09 · Fit Check
How much of your boiler are you actually watching?
Enter your real test schedule. The readout is arithmetic, not a sales estimate.
The number that decides whether this service is worth anything to a plant is not a price. It is the proportion of the year the water is observed, and the hours currently spent drawing samples and writing them on a sheet. Put your own schedule in and the tool returns the coverage arithmetic, the tier that matches the plant, the sensor array that goes with it, and the CI360 chemistry lanes worth pre-staging for the conditions you selected.
Step 01 · your plantSite profile & conditions
Conditions at this plant
Step 02 · recommended pathEnter your schedule
Set the four numbers on the left, tick whatever is true about the plant, and the readout will show how much of the year the water is currently observed against what continuous monitoring would produce.
Sensor array
Chemistry lanes worth pre-staging
Screening tool
This is a screening calculator, not a quotation or a design. Sensor selection, thresholds, sample points and service scope are confirmed against the actual plant during site assessment. Nothing here changes your jurisdictional or insurance obligations.
Commissioning · what gets set once and then left alone
1Baseline the plant
Two to three weeks of unfiltered data before any threshold is finalised — including at least one weekend and one cold restart. Every band in the app is set against how this plant actually behaves.
2Write the bands down
Warning and critical for each signal, set from the ABMA limits for the drum pressure and this plant’s baseline, agreed with the chief and recorded. A threshold nobody agreed to is a threshold nobody will act on.
3Name the alert chain
First contact, second contact, channel, and what happens when a critical alert goes unacknowledged. Decided before the first one fires.
4Tune for seven days
A supervised go-live week to remove the alerts that fire on normal firing, blowdown and shutdown behaviour. This is where alert fatigue is prevented.
5Set the service calendar
Monthly cleaning, calibration intervals and the annual audit booked into the work-order system rather than remembered.
6Document it against turnover
Bands, contacts, sample points, drum pressure and the ABMA limits used, recorded where the next chief will find them.
What to measure once the service is live
UH
Unobserved hours
Hours per week with no chemistry data. This is the number the service exists to move, and it should approach zero.
AK
Time to acknowledge
Alert issued to alert acknowledged. A rising figure usually means the thresholds need tuning, not that the operator needs reminding.
FA
False alert rate
Alerts that turned out to be normal plant behaviour. Should fall sharply after the go-live week and stay low.
UP
Sensor uptime
Percentage of expected transmissions received. Drops here are power, link, or a plugged sample line, and each has a different fix.
CY
Cycles held
Average cycles of concentration achieved against target. This is the number that turns directly into water, fuel and chemical spend.
CR
Condensate return
Return as a percentage of feedwater. A slow decline is a trap survey; a step is a leak. Finance understands this one without being taught boiler chemistry.
CI SupportLab™ BoilerGuard is a monitoring service guide, not a substitute for site-specific engineering, jurisdictional requirements, insurance conditions, or operator judgement. Application screens shown are illustrative representations of the operator interface; layout, values and alert wording are configured per site. Sensor accuracy, thresholds, transmission intervals and service scope are confirmed per site during assessment and commissioning. Continuous sensor data supports the water-treatment record and energy reporting; it does not certify pressure equipment, replace jurisdictional inspection, or replace titration and accredited laboratory analysis. Published cost and efficiency figures are attributed to their sources and are not representations of BoilerGuard results. Confirm all product dilution, dosage and handling against current labels and SDS before use. Product names follow the Chem International catalogue.
CI SupportLab™ · BoilerGuard
Want to know what your feedwater does at 03:00?
A site assessment covers boiler class and drum pressure, sample point availability, cooling water for the sample cooler, network and cellular coverage, condensate return configuration and the bands that matter at your plant — and returns a scoped deployment for your actual boiler room.
Chem InternationalA division of Aliysha Enterprises Ltd.10770 180 St NW, Edmonton, AB T5S 2S4info@chemintonline.comchemintonline.comISO 9001:2015CANUTEC emergency: 1-613-996-6666