Cool immersion heater from Korea

I found this on ebay. It's 220V, 1500w and have a temperature probe. What will I need to run in an american (Canadian) kitchen ?

a really good manual?

Should be pretty easy to cut the plug off and wire up a regular three prong plug. It looks like it might only have two wires inside and if that is the case you would have to manually wire up a ground for it, otherwise I would be scared to use it.

If it's 220v, you'll need to plug it into a 220v receptacle to get the full 1500w. If you wire it up for 120v you'll cut the wattage down to about 600watts (guesstimate, didn't do the actual calculation).

Just cut the end off and wire an extension with a North American style 220V 20A plug.

And you probably REALLY want to ground the device, or at least the kettle (if it's metal)

Eh, it's Korean, what could go wrong?

heckels said:

If it's 220v, you'll need to plug it into a 220v receptacle to get the full 1500w. If you wire it up for 120v you'll cut the wattage down to about 600watts (guesstimate, didn't do the actual calculation).

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1500w at 240v would yield 375w at 120v. Not useful at 120v, and kind of waste of a 20a, 240v circuit that could take a 4500w element, IMO. If you need to wire a new circuit and your panel has room, it would be much better to put in a 30a double pole breaker and get a 5500w element.

Homercidal said:

Just cut the end off and wire an extension with a North American style 220V 20A plug.

And you probably REALLY want to ground the device, or at least the kettle (if it's metal)

Eh, it's Korean, what could go wrong?

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I am everything but an electrician..

But can I get that 220V 20A outlet mounted for cheap in my kitchen from splitting or wiring it from my standard stove plug?

South Korea has 220V mains. In the United States mains voltage is actually 120V ± 5%, with 240 available on two legs.

If you put a 220V 1500W heater on a 240V circuit it will draw 1785W. Probably not enough to burn it out, but you never know.

The ground thing scares me, too. Plus you would probably be limited to 3-4 gallon boils.

Wynne-R said:

South Korea has 220V mains. In the United States mains voltage is actually 120V ± 5%, with 240 available on two legs.

If you put a 220V 1500W heater on a 240V circuit it will draw 1785W. Probably not enough to burn it out, but you never know.

The ground thing scares me, too. Plus you would probably be limited to 3-4 gallon boils.

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With 240 available on two legs ? What do you mean by that?

Alternating current, with 120v from different phases on each hot wire, summing to 240v.

If you have an electric stove, 220V, then yes, it would be relatively easy and not terribly expensive to wire an outlet off the stove's outlet, but you would not be able to use both at the same time, and there may be some code I don't know about that would prevent an electrician from begin able to wire it this way.

Also, Wynne-R has a point: Our current is actually closer to 240V than 220V, even though a lot of people call it "220". I don't think it's a big deal, but coming from Korea, you gotta wonder how much overhead is designed into that thing.

For the cost, I'd consider doing this as an experiment. A lot of people want or need an electric system for their house or apartment, and this might be a nice way of accommodating some of them. But you really need to figure out a ground for it, and of course there is the whole needing to wire an outlet for 220V thing.

EDIT: Forgot to say that our current is approximate, and that 120V is going to be slightly less, due to line loss and everything has a certain tolerance it will work within. So I am guessing that they 240V device will work just fine on a 234V (approximation) current coming from a stove outlet.

Power companies like to run a little high. The lights are brighter, the motors work better, and they get to sell more electricity.

I didn’t work much with 240, but I did have some high current equipment on 120 volt lines. I don’t recall ever measuring below 120, even at remote locations. If I ever measured 110VAC I would pull the mains and call an electrician.

Before some smart-alec complains, yes I used a well calibrated RMS voltmeter, though meters calibrated for sine waves are just about as good for measuring line voltage.

The line loss is on the power company side, consider they have miles of lines and aren’t so much worried about burning down the house. Line loss in a building is pretty negligible, I’d guess less than a volt.

The power consumption is proportional to the square of the voltage. That’s why doubling the voltage increases the wattage 400%. The same formula tells us that going from 220 to 250 bangs up the wattage by 29%.

So, back to the OP, if you’re going to overvolt this thing without a decent ground I would run run run away or you could be dead dead dead. Don’t screw around with safety.

In the European plug the ground is in a slot on the side not a male pin like in US / Canada. The old standard was 380 /220 but is now 400/230v just like the old 115v US is now 120v and is often closer to 125v. Your range receptacle has a 40 amp breaker which is way oversized for this heater.
An electrician can install a two pole (240v) GFCI at 15 or 20 amps for you.
15A is good enough for this heater and can use less expensive #14 wire.
However a 20 amp circuit will allow you to move to a larger brew system.

BTW I'm looking at the common 1000w 120v bucket heater for a hybrid brewing system eHerms with propane for boiling and HLT

You could run two US spec 1000W bucket heaters off a 20A 120V outlet instead of bodging something for that, and get more power into the liquid. You won't get a temperature controller for that, but running that heat stick above on out of spec power might well mess up the temperature control that it does have. The temperature control also probably isn't accurate enough to control mash or strike temps.

I use one of these for 10 gallon brews. Works fine, been doing it for 5 years now but I do use this in Korea. Doesn't help your wiring woes but for scale of batch, it's cool for 10 gallons