Planning out my electric BIAB setup

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to set up a small BIAB brewery in my garage. In a nutshell this is what I'm thinking about:

Install a 240 VAC circuit ( I have a couple of empty slots in the subpanel in my garage).
Run that into the ubiquitously mentioned HD 50 buck spa panel.

I accidentally bought one of the cheap ebay aquarium controllers that's rated for 220 V. To not let that go to waste wire that in for temp control and then run from there to the water heater element.

I don't think I have seen use of the temp controller for the water heat element but I can't see why it would not work. Alternatively I would use an infinite switch for manual temp control on the element.

I would be grateful for any suggestions especially stuff I might run into with the electric side of things. I have generally no problems with household electic wiring but I'm not super experienced and definitely not an electronics guy.

Thanks,

Frank

OK, the temp controller is not going to work for this, so I guess infinite switch it is.

I was thinking of using one of those 220vac eBay controllers as well. Care to explain why it wont work? I'm still new tto the concept of electric brewing.

Unless I don't really understand the specs it's only rated for 5A and a 4500W element will pull about 19A.

If your plan is to go BIAB all electric - I suggest that you use the PID SYL-2352 from Auber Instruments and their SSR to control your brewery. There are lots of wiring plans on this forum on how to do it. (I know - I drew them.)

P-J

Well your temperature controller could work if you used it to energize a contactor that was rated for your amperage of the elements. Its not the best way to keep an accurate temperature though. You will have to have a large deviation to keep the contactor from constantly cycling every few seconds (if it cycled that often it would be loud, the contacts wouldn't hold up, and large increase in transient voltage from the coil).

P-J said:

If your plan is to go BIAB all electric - I suggest that you use the PID SYL-2352 from Auber Instruments and their SSR to control your brewery. There are lots of wiring plans on this forum on how to do it. (I know - I drew them.)

P-J

Click to expand...

Yes I saw quite a few posts about that. I was hoping to keep costs down though. With all the stuff for heater elements, fittings, breakers etc it's already going to add up to quite a bit, so I was hoping to do it less expensively. I really don't mind manually controlling things. Maybe a PWM control would be a good alternative?

F

I'm in the same boat, trying to do electric on a budget. There's no voltage adjustment knob we can use to control the amount of heat from the element?

phoenixs4r said:

I'm in the same boat, trying to do electric on a budget. There's no voltage adjustment knob we can use to control the amount of heat from the element?

Click to expand...

From what I have seen here on the forums the PWM route might be the cheapest.....but I might have to learn how to solder......yyyrrrrch!!!!!

So a plain Jane rheostat is out of the question? Sorry if I'm just being a dumb noob, I just figured it would be the cheapest, simplest option.

phoenixs4r said:

So a plain Jane rheostat is out of the question? Sorry if I'm just being a dumb noob, I just figured it would be the cheapest, simplest option.

Click to expand...

Do you know of a rheostat that will be rated for that high amount of wattage that is under a few hundred dollars?

Some people have looked into using electric range controls, not sure if anyone has been successful. I don't know why you wouldn't just use a pwm circuit, for under like 15$ with the ssr and heat sink and it will "control the heat".

Maxkling said:

Do you know of a rheostat that will be rated for that high amount of wattage that is under a few hundred dollars?

Some people have looked into using electric range controls, not sure if anyone has been successful. I don't know why you wouldn't just use a pwm circuit, for under like 15$ with the ssr and heat sink and it will "control the heat".

Click to expand...

I didn't know the rheostat would be that much, again, noobing it up I am.

I'll look into the PWM circuit. Thanks!