Kick,
The Trash Can's are no different than a normal while plastic bucket except the lids do not seal as well. They are FDA approved for food and are widely used by home wine makers.
Here's a discussion thread.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/using-20-gal-trash-can-fermenter-195660/
Get a Brute 20 Gallon Trash Can. I do it all the time. But... you can't really move it once it's full without some sort of rig.
I pump right into the fermenter which is already in the fridge. I put the fridge on a homemade table so that I can fill kegs right out of the fermenter.
My system is on the trashy side too. I want all the features, but I want to do it cheaply and incrementally.
Start with the bare minimum. Electric kettle plus heat control.
Scavenged a 50 A DPST switch from an old welder.
Used a post and ring connector approach for power distribution...
Here's the false bottom.
It's worked remarkably well. It can float just a little bit, but it's never been a problem. I do have a hose clamp on the dip tube to help hold it down a bit.
I used 2 cutting boards for my false bottom. Cut half circles with few inches overlap and then used stainless bolts to connect them and form offsets to keep them off the bottom of the tun. Drilling the holes took quite a while!
I set mine up so that I take one bolt out and it "PacMan's"...
Yeah, the Arduino is 8 bit, but how often do you need to compute this? I geeked out and looked at the Steinhart-Hart Equation. Looks like computing (ln) is the worst of it and you only need to do that once in that equation.
It could be inconveniently slow, but even on the Uno, the docs I...
Should be even easier on a better Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Plenty of horsepower there to do the calculations in floating point even. No need for the interpolation stuff.
First: Consider putting the element in your kettle! IF you have a pump, heat your water up before hand and then pump to your HLT.
Second: You don't need a PID. Just a voltage controlled SSR and a potentiometer in your control panel to start. A master switch should be included based on...
Runningweird: Did I read that right? The temp at the return reads 2 degrees _lower_ than in the tun?
Wouldn't the hottest location be in the HERMS coil and the coolest be in the Tun itself? Just checking my thinking.
3 Kettles, Keggle for HLT, and 2 20G pots for my MT and Kettle.
I've only converted my Kettle to Electric. I definitely did not go the Kal route. More redneck for the moment, but will update as I add elements and PIDs/sensors to the other vessels.
I used
A 50 Amp SPDT switch from an old...
It was a huge success. 5.5 hours including clean up but I did preheat water overnight using the kettle turned down.
I have only put a 5500 watt element in the kettle so far and managed to not use any propane at all!
Which kind of strain relief? I used the two screw all metal type inside my element enclosure but it doesn't seal anything.
What's the name for the snazzy type?
Well, I didn't worry about sealing the cord entrance entirely. You could cut a disk of plastic and drill 3 overlapping holes that the cord just fits through.