dirtyal

Recipes 

I did some thinking, more thinking, talked with some electricians and the guy who is manufacturing the heating elements for me and we decided to lower them to 4500W. I also read the great http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/ and exchanged some email with Kal.
Here in Brazil, altough the grid should be 220V, it is rated as so, sometimes we get 232V, 240V and this would certainly over used my home installation with 5500W elements.
It will take longer, but it will be WAY SAFER and at the end, I am not in a rush anyway, it is a hobby and time is not money here!
The 4500W elements should exceed my burner anyway, so, it has all the odds to be better then what I do today.
I also could easily add Kal´s 50A control panel to my setup in the future.
Tks the forum, as soon as I get the elements and test them, I´ll post the results.
Alessandro.

stevehaun

Recipes 

I have two 4500 watt elements in my boil kettle. 240 vac, 50 amp gfi breaker. I have brewed 35 gallon batches (preboil wort volume ~44 gallon) successfully. I run the elements at 100% power until a boil is reached and 90% power to maintain a decent boil. Personally, I think you would have a problem maintaining a decent boil with a 70 gallon batch.

dirtyal

Recipes 

Tks Steve for the input, just a question, which component do you add to control on how much % do you run the heating elements at?
If both 4500W dont cut the boil, then I will have to rething the process and the installation, I will have to make a project to the electrical company to raise the input power, but, I dont know if it is worth doing that.
I will not drill holes on the kettles, the heating elements will be like heating sticks and fix on the border of the kettles.
Tks.

stevehaun

Recipes 

I use a PID controller in manual mode which allows me to run at 90% power.