Electric burners - Any builders out there?

My setup is similar, rather than splicing them I put proper connectors on them so it's like plugging an extension cord into another extension cord.
I bought one of those 4 wire dryer cords and put a leviton twist-loc connector on it. The other cable is a 25ft (10-4) extension that I got at home depot (not the cheapest solution, but I had a gift card so I made it work).

I can see the photo's you post I just couldn't edit any of the diagrams. I like your enclosure it's looking good.

If you use one of these you don't have to do any inline splicing:

http://www.lowes.com/pd_246879-1571...entURL=/pl__0__s?Ntt=30+amp&page=5&facetInfo=

They are adjustable from 120-240 volts and 30-50 amps by changing the plug pins.

If you do end up splicing anyway use individual butt connectors and heat shrink and you can just about drive a car over it and not have any problems we do this for commercial spider box cords that see alot of abuse every day. No need to worry about the connections coming loose with a little movement.

bruin_ale said:

My setup is similar, rather than splicing them I put proper connectors on them so it's like plugging an extension cord into another extension cord.
I bought one of those 4 wire dryer cords and put a leviton twist-loc connector on it. The other cable is a 25ft (10-4) extension that I got at home depot (not the cheapest solution, but I had a gift card so I made it work).

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Yeah I was looking for the cheap way out! But realistically I realize this is a lot of amperage and I don't want to save a hundred bucks and lose a life.

I think that I will roll with the shorter factory dryer cords (10ft) that I have for now. However if they aren't long enough it will likely be a full out new 4 prong (like yjfun suggested) and 30ft bulk wire; or leviton connectors as you have suggested. But those leviton connectors are cost prohibitive. I bought some for the panel, but man!

I know I will need to upgrade them... but my wallet needs a little recovery time That will give me some tim to sort out the best solution.


yjfun - thanks for the advice! I think I will hook everything up that I have as is (right not that is 10 ft cord with factory 4 prong on it and the leviton connector).


1.[adjustable prong approach] 30ft 10-4 wire ~$2.10 a ft I think = $63
$14 4 prong adjustable plug = $14
(have end connector already so) - total = $77 x 2 = $154

2. [leviton connector]20ft 10-4 wire ~$2.10 a ft = $42
connector ~$40
male twist lock ~$20
(have end connector already so) - total = $102 x 2 = $204

3. [Splice] 20ft wire ~2.10 a ft= $42
butt crimps (have them, maybe $.50)
heat shrink ($5-$10 tops)
(have end connector already so) - total = 52.50 x 2 - $105

For my money I think it would be worth $50 more to have a single run of wire to the plug. Bad part is neither option is cheap. Time to look for deals on 10-4wire! ha

CidahMastah said:

...
I know I will need to upgrade them but my wallet needs a little recovery time

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If that is the case: Splice the cables, solder the connections, tape and shrink wrap. It'll be A-Ok for a short term solution. Long term? Not!

Just saying...

Actually this almost isn't a bad deal. I am not sure if that connector will work with the flange receptacle I have though.

CidahMastah said:

I am glad I am motivating you!

First let me say I hate painting, it usually is the part where I screw up hours of hard work. My wife looked at the paint enclosure perplexed, paused and said, "It looks professional". Haha - not sure I would go that far but I really thought it turned out pretty well all things considered.

I went with rustoleum's grey hammered finish (aerosol). If they would have had a burnt orange or red I might have went that route, but I actually like the grey too (didn't have the red in the HD where I picked it up). It says you can apply direct with no primer but I lightly sanded and primed anyhow. The black was too dark for me. I really wanted to go with the silver color, but I compromised for the grey based on opinions from my wife and buddy. We plan to paint the whole steel stand with this color as well as the control arm so it looks uniform.

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That's the same paint I plan to use, I really like the look of it. What HD did you find the grey at? I ordered the charcoal grey online and they sent me two Silver's before they got it right and sent me grey. So I'm up two cans of silver hammer finish.

the one in east Syracuse has it (might call it the dewitt store)

yjfun (or anyone who can help) - wanted to check something.

should I toss in an inline fuse going from the jumper on the contactor block to the switch? (gold triangle on drawing)

You had mentioned something about possibly putting an inline fuse in where I have marked the gold triangle in the attached picture. Is this a best practice? Right now i had used 10g wire to go from line in to contactor, and contactor to terminal block. However I used 14G wire to run from the contactor jumper to the switch because the jumper wire should not draw beyond its lower amperage needs to activate the LED and close the circuit on the contactor (thereby allowing power to flow to the terminal block.)


if the vote is yes I was thinking I would toss in a 8amp slow blow fuse since the switch is rated for 10amp (just because I have some of them). This way any minor short pulls of power wouldn't blow the fuse, only constant.

Thanks,

CidahMastah said:

should I toss in an inline fuse going from the jumper on the contactor block to the switch? (gold triangle on drawing)

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After chatting with a few folks and one electrician I think I am safe to leave the fuse out of the mix for this.

I also reason that electricity follows the path of least resistance. The 14g run is about 5x longer that the 10g and has greater resistance as well (only bizarro current would be able to act in a way that could cause issues). All things considered I think the fuse is unnecessary.

I think your logic makes sense and wouldn't bother putting one in.

Electricity does like the path of least resistance but between the 14 awg and 10 awg wires it won't care. Those wire sizes are so close and also its such a short run that it will go either way and not care.

yjfun said:

I think your logic makes sense and wouldn't bother putting one in.

Electricity does like the path of least resistance but between the 14 awg and 10 awg wires it won't care. Those wire sizes are so close and also its such a short run that it will go either way and not care.

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I guess if something fries early on, or the wires (the 14g jumper wires) get warm to the touch after a brew session. I will toss an inline fuse just to be safe.

Thanks!

Amost done wiring... waiting on a PID and then it should wrap up nicely!

I think I will bench test it with my electricl probes first before I hook it up for a brew day. Make sure my receptacles/outlets are reading the right values, etc. I am looking forward to doing that maybe by the end of this week.

Definitely bench test everything before hooking up your elements. Also go over every termination screw and make sure they're tight. I don't know how many times I've had to troubleshoot a system where the installer missed tightening a terminal and things either didn't work or worse fried an expensive component.

yjfun said:

Definitely bench test everything before hooking up your elements. Also go over every termination screw and make sure they're tight. I don't know how many times I've had to troubleshoot a system where the installer missed tightening a terminal and things either didn't work or worse fried an expensive component.

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Sound advice. I have already traced out paths for wiring from the terminal block to components and back as per my wiring diagram for the left side twice since it is complete (will be doing the same for the right side when last my PID comes in this week).

There are a lot of wires in this bad boy because I didn't daisy chain anything. I wanted trouble shooting to be straight forward for each component. Though I am paying the price in spaghetti!

Use lots of zip ties and sticky backs.

yjfun said:

Use lots of zip ties and sticky backs.

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Funny you say that. I am sort of in 3 stages with the wiring. Actual wiring (95% done), checking wiring (50% done) and "reining" the wiring in (40% done)

those stickies and zip ties are my friends

Bench tested and brewer approved!!

Double checked the terminals and went through a full bench test. We are ready to rock!

First pic is of my buddy working on our stand, changed from diamond pattern to straight linges. Looking toight!

Some amarillo IPA to keep the chill away

The rest are way too many pics of the completed control panel...

Next round:

Shot of the heat sink,face and body profile

Last shot (unfortunately not that great), with all the lights on!

Will get some more shots in a few weeks-month when we wrap up our stand and get the armature all set up. I think it will be a little easier to get a good shot of it once it is in its final position.

Thanks for all the help guys. No way I could have come this far alone.

Excellent. Great wiring!

Wow, looks awesome! The panel looks similar to Kals which I am aiming for. Excellent job thus far. Can't wait to see the whole setup in action.

What are you using for a HLT and Mash Tun?

CidahMastah said:

Will get some more shots in a few weeks-month when we wrap up our stand and get the armature all set up. I think it will be a little easier to get a good shot of it once it is in its final position.

Thanks for all the help guys. No way I could have come this far alone.

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Looks great Cidah I should have you come wire mine..I can pay you 4.5 lbs of barley!

iijakii said:

Excellent. Great wiring!

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Thanks!! There is a lot of wire in that beast! I everything has a dedicated line in and out. The only exception being that I daisy chained the hot and neutrals on the right side PIDs. I will also daisy chain the alarms on both of those, and might put in an on - off - on switch so I can set the alarm for either the HLT or probe for exiting wort from the eherms. But I am still recovering a bit until the eherms portion will fully take off (buying the coil and other fittings).

jbsengineer said:

Wow, looks awesome! The panel looks similar to Kals which I am aiming for. Excellent job thus far. Can't wait to see the whole setup in action.

What are you using for a HLT and Mash Tun?

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Yeah the key difference between this one and Kals would be enclosure size (superficial) and guts. I think Kal offers a build with twice the amperage/service for a single element but doesn't have a build with two sides functioning at once yet (I think). Definitely couldn't have made it this far without Kal's help and ingenuity though. Mine is a hybrid between Kals design and the guts from my first build.

Most important is that it can run 60 amps, 30 amps per side, simultaneously. This was part of my design from the start because I found my buddy and I doing double and triple 11g batch brew days to play a little catch up if we weren't brewing for a while. Having another element really helps out for heating strike and sparge water in between while the first brew is boiling.

I have a 15G HLT (megapot) and a 25G BK (megapot) and then the blichman MT in 20G size

WAORGANY said:

Looks great Cidah I should have you come wire mine..I can pay you 4.5 lbs of barley!

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haha too funny. I actually really enjoyed this project. I love wiring the stuff up.

I couldn't help but put in parts that are my own spin on Kal's build, but as I told him. Simply never would have been at this level without his ingenuity.

just noticed you can't see the double sided nature of my build in the other pictures so i will attach this one. Each side is fully redundant with the right side having all the hardware for a full eherms. That is the next direction I am moving to. Mechanical stirrer, etc. (that is what the lower red switch on my panel will likely be for.)

Nicely done. You should be proud of what you've built here. It will give a lot of information to those that want to follow in your footsteps.

yjfun said:

Nicely done. You should be proud of what you've built here. It will give a lot of information to those that want to follow in your footsteps.

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Thanks yjfun - appreciate it!!

Without the help of people like you on this forum I never would have learned what I have, or been able to conceptualize and design something like this in the relatively short time it took me to build it (about 3 weeks of passive building to get it done). The hard work is definitely done on the front end before you even touch your tools.

It not only helps me step up my brewing game, but really taught me a lot about electricity in general.

Cidah hope all is well getting closer to using that barley got a lot done today. Check out my thread.

I am wiring a motor to use as a stir paddle for my HLT. It came with two 440V capacitors and I am trying to decide if they are needed and if so how to wire them in.

I have two questions:
1. Should I use the capacitors? (I assume I should use only one even thought they supplied 2, as per the wiring diagram)
2. If yes, how do I wire them in?

Here is the motor

I am unsure if the capacitor is needed for my application. I was talking to a couple electricians and they thought it might not be required and said I would be ok leaving the capacitors out.

That said I see at least one capacitor represented in the wiring diagram (not sure why they gave me two).

I have tested the motor wiring a hot to the red, neutral to the white and ground to green. It runs. But I am not sure if I am under feeding and potentially damaging the motor.


Thanks a ton for your help guys, I really appreciate it.

I read that diagram as requiring a capacitor after the plug (and after a switch if you were planning on putting one inline down from the plug).

So this is what I was thinking. If I wanted to make the motor turn clockwise I would simple use the blue wire.

That's a motor run/start cap. The cap is there to help give the motor the initial charge it needs to start turning. Also, it looks like it stays in circuit during the run (some motors have a switch that will shut off that portion of the circuit once the motor is turning).

You need the blue wire either way, if you want to run clockwise you'd apply power to the blue wire and attach to one head of the cap. Then attach the red wire to the other cap connector.

And yes, this should be way after any switches that you have for the motor. The cap for my HLT stir is placed immediately next to the stir motor itself and I just have the 3 wire extension cord running to the stir motor/cap assembly as it sits on my HLT.

CidahMastah said:

I read that diagram as requiring a capacitor after the plug (and after a switch if you were planning on putting one inline down from the plug).

So this is what I was thinking. If I wanted to make the motor turn clockwise I would simple use the blue wire.

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Do you have a requirement that you can run the motor both clockwise and counter-clockwise? If so, you can wire up a DPDT switch to do this. (I did this for motorizing my barley crusher so that I can reverse the motor if I feed my tie into the crusher. )

Thanks for the information yjfun and bruin.

Based on your comments and advice I updated the wiring diagram (in my visio cartoon styled attached diagram) and grabbed some of the properly rated capacitors on amazon for an optimal motor performance/life.

With that I can use this over powered beast to stir some water haha.

copyright1997 said:

Do you have a requirement that you can run the motor both clockwise and counter-clockwise? If so, you can wire up a DPDT switch to do this. (I did this for motorizing my barley crusher so that I can reverse the motor if I feed my tie into the crusher. )

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No reason to need to run it both ways, in truth I don't really need it to go both directions. Just was saying a "what if". I bought two of these motors so who knows what cool use I might find for the second motor down the road....

Some new items for the build. Shrouds for the two pump motors have been fabricated/painted along with the armature!

And my crazy @ss buddy just bought a 3 roller monster mill

CidahMastah said:

Some new items for the build. Shrouds for the two pump motors have been fabricated/painted along with the armature!

And my crazy @ss buddy just bought a 3 roller monster mill

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Nice work on the pump shrouds I need to make something like that when I build my stand too!

I think 50' is too much could only find 20' locally and saw this on Tiber Brew's build thread too. Hope this helps.

Gabrew said:

nice!

as for the length of your copper tubing, I would suggest 25ft. I had planned on putting together two 25ft tubings (as you can see in the first pic) but it came to pretty much the height of the keg itself. 25ft fits perfectly. leaves room for the element and is about 2-3 inches from the brim....

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Yeah I went with 20 ft of 3/8" (OD) copper for my herms. Seemed to work well when tested, although the flow wasn't super high - but seemed sufficient. But I am already using 3/8" hosing to run from my pump manifold to my HLT and to my MT, so figured it would be restricted anyways. If you go longer than 25 ft with 3/8" I can see where flow will really suffer due to length.

jeffb418 said:

Yeah I went with 20 ft of 3/8" (OD) copper for my herms. Seemed to work well when tested, although the flow wasn't super high - but seemed sufficient. But I am already using 3/8" hosing to run from my pump manifold to my HLT and to my MT, so figured it would be restricted anyways. If you go longer than 25 ft with 3/8" I can see where flow will really suffer due to length.

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All my hose is 1/2'' so I plan on using that size in copper. I have read quite a few folks using 50 feet, especially all the guys who copy Kal's build which uses 50 ft stainless. I bet if you bumped up your hoses to 1/2'' it would be all right, but truthfully have no idea. I do know that you want to have as little restriction as possible on the front end before the pump, and that you can restrict after the pump more liberally.

CidahMastah said:

All my hose is 1/2'' so I plan on using that size in copper. I have read quite a few folks using 50 feet, especially all the guys who copy Kal's build which uses 50 ft stainless. I bet if you bumped up your hoses to 1/2'' it would be all right, but truthfully have no idea. I do know that you want to have as little restriction as possible on the front end before the pump, and that you can restrict after the pump more liberally.

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Yeah all of my plumbing is 1/2" except from my value manifold to the HERMs input. I bought 3/8" for this. I'm not too concerned about the flow. I'd rather run it slower and avoid the risk of getting a stuck grain bed during mashing recirculation.

Cidah, I've finally gone through this entire thread and have a reasonable idea of what you've done, gone through, and why you did what you did (e.g. two 30 Amp circuits to one control box). Do you have some scematics that you can send me (to my email) and also any parts list and sources would be appreciated. I would like to build on some of your ideas, although I don't think I will go with two 30 AMP circuits.
Thanks!

copyright1997 said:

Cidah, I've finally gone through this entire thread and have a reasonable idea of what you've done, gone through, and why you did what you did (e.g. two 30 Amp circuits to one control box). Do you have some scematics that you can send me (to my email) and also any parts list and sources would be appreciated. I would like to build on some of your ideas, although I don't think I will go with two 30 AMP circuits.
Thanks!

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You have read a roller coaster of my learning curve with electric On post 1 there are some link you can jump to relevant sections of my thread (FYI)

No problem! I have my drawings in visio, but I don't have them on hand this second. Did you want the drawings for one side or for the entire enclosure (both sides). Would you mind pming your email to me?

FYI - I ran through the wiring schematics and the final product with my brother in law (licensed union electrician). So while I am not an electrician the concepts on paper and in the box were reviewed by at least one (had help from a couple others on as well).

It is certainly a little more $$ to go with the two 30 amp gfi feeds. However that is mostly a factor of the 30 amp GFIs that you have to buy. Aside from that if you get your enclosure on ebay with that free shipping on other items deal... you really aren't spending a ton more money on hardware to get two simultaneously running elements (IMO obviously well worth it).

If you need help figuring out why I did what I did, feel free to ask and we can even chat via phone if that works better for you.