Dry fired. Is my element dead?

CornyKegs 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
M

mcgeebc

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2007
Messages
90
Reaction score
2
Location
Cleveland, OH
I just dry fired my element for 10 seconds tops. It was enough to glow and smoke a bit.

The element looks fine, but as soon as I plug it in, the breaker trips.

Is it dead? Anything I can do to save it?
 
I'm no electrician, but wouldn't a heating element that fired dry (and was not meant to) fail due to the element cracking/melting, thus breaking the electrical circuit? What would cause the breaker to trip if the element is bad? Could it be something more serious than the element? I'm only working off of very limited experience with a defrost element in a fridge and an igniter in a furnace.
 
I think your correct. The element gets so hot it needs the water to displace the heat. Without water they just burn up. Very technical writing I know :)
 
AndrewD said:
I'm no electrician, but wouldn't a heating element that fired dry (and was not meant to) fail due to the element cracking/melting, thus breaking the electrical circuit? What would cause the breaker to trip if the element is bad? Could it be something more serious than the element? I'm only working off of very limited experience with a defrost element in a fridge and an igniter in a furnace.
Click to expand...

It would trip the breaker with water surrounding it, as the water will cause a short.
If it was dry it may not trip the breaker since there would be nothing to short out the current.
 
What's the wattage of the element?

I dry-fired a 5500W 240VAC element. After doing the math, I should measure 10.5 ohms. Sure enough, the element I didn't dry-fire measures 10.5 ohms. The one I did dry-fire measures about 10.8 ohms. After doing the math, I will have a reduced wattage of 5333W. Sounds like no big deal to me, so I'll try it it with water soon. I'm sure it'll work fine. I'll let you know if it doesn't.
 
It was a 5500 watt element. Luckily, the dry fire didn't happen during a brew session. I was heating up water to Sous Vide some steaks.

I ended up going to Lowes and buying a new one for $15 yesterday. It works just fine.

I find it difficult to balance the water level between my mash tun and HLT when I'm recirculating. My ball valve coming out of the pump has to be in the exact right spot or the water level drops in one of the vessels. I guess I'll be looking into a float switch to make sure this doesn't happen again.
 
mcgeebc said:
It was a 5500 watt element. Luckily, the dry fire didn't happen during a brew session. I was heating up water to Sous Vide some steaks.

I ended up going to Lowes and buying a new one for $15 yesterday. It works just fine.

I find it difficult to balance the water level between my mash tun and HLT when I'm recirculating. My ball valve coming out of the pump has to be in the exact right spot or the water level drops in one of the vessels. I guess I'll be looking into a float switch to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Click to expand...

I just started learning about electric brewing setups and I'm confused as to how this would happen. Isn't the fluid from the mash tun separate from the fluid in the HLT? I thought that the fluid from the mash tun circulated through the HLT inside of an immersed coil, but did not mix with the HLT fluid. If this is correct, how can the fluid drop if it is just being recirculated back into the vessel it came from?
 
The way mine is set up is my strike water and sparge water is in the HLT along with the water level to cover the herms coil, could have gone to sparge and the water level dropped, not to mention the amount of water that is in the pump an lines, I've almost done it too. I now have float switches and alarms in my HLT and bk for that reason.
 
My system is based off of the brewtus 20. The boil kettle and the HLT are the same unit and I don't have a herms coil. I recirculate between the mash tun and boil/hlt to raise or maintain temps.
 
AndrewD said:
I just started learning about electric brewing setups and I'm confused as to how this would happen. Isn't the fluid from the mash tun separate from the fluid in the HLT? I thought that the fluid from the mash tun circulated through the HLT inside of an immersed coil, but did not mix with the HLT fluid. If this is correct, how can the fluid drop if it is just being recirculated back into the vessel it came from?
Click to expand...

You are thinking about a RIMS system I believe. I have a ekeggle and do not use any type of recirculation. Its just just a keggle that boils wort via electric. I believe the OP has a similiar setup.
 
What do you guys think? How about dry firing a 5500 watt low watt density ripple element. I ended up draining the HLT and the top half of the element was out of the water and red hot. It still heated up the water and didn’t see much difference other than the top of the element was no longer stainless steel but gray.
 
Bobby_M said:
If it's still heating and not tripping your GFCI, you're fine. I would recommend grabbing a new element as a backup though. Everyone should have a spare element because it's the one thing that will ruin a brew day if it fails in the middle of brewing.
Click to expand...

Valid point and makes me think about something I'd hadn't considered.
 
That's hardly equivalent - unless one has truly dysfunctional plumbing.
I've replaced thrust washers in the middle of a recirculating mash, nbd: close two valves, fix pump, open same valves, done...

Cheers!
 
AndrewD said:
I just started learning about electric brewing setups and I'm confused as to how this would happen. Isn't the fluid from the mash tun separate from the fluid in the HLT? I thought that the fluid from the mash tun circulated through the HLT inside of an immersed coil, but did not mix with the HLT fluid. If this is correct, how can the fluid drop if it is just being recirculated back into the vessel it came from?
Click to expand...

In a 3 vessel system, when mashing, what is you described is the process. When you sparge, you pump from your mash tun to your boil kettle, and from your HLT to your mash tun. You try to match the flow so that the water level doesn't change until the end of your sparge. If you don't have spare water in your HLT you can run it dry. I shut my HLT element off when I start sparging to prevent this.
 
Last edited:
Pacific Electric said:
In a 3 vessel system, when mashing, what is you described is the process. When you spare, you pump from your mash tun to your boil kettle, and from your HLT to your mash tun. You try to match the flow so that the water level doesn't change until the end of your sparge. If you don't have spare water in your HLT you can run it dry. I shut my HLT element off when I start sparging to prevent this.
Click to expand...

This is why the design only allows the heating element only allows working in the brew kettle or the HLT.
 
My HLT and BK are identical, so if anything goes wrong with one I can just sub the other vessel without any effect. Though, I usually do back-to-back batches, so the pipeline there would get messed up if one of the elements failed on batch #1.
 

Similar threads

B
240v : Scary start of brew
Replies
9
Views
701
passedpawn
passedpawn
jeeppilot
Humming noise from control panel after dry fire
Replies
9
Views
989
Tartan1
T
Nick Poggetti
Heating Element Scorching - Long boils w/ High OG Wort
Replies
25
Views
1K
Nick Poggetti
Nick Poggetti
Wogman75
Electric Brew Panel Troubleshooting
Replies
29
Views
2K
Geezer-Glide
G
R
Dry fired Brewmonk 30L
Replies
0
Views
588
rs450834
R

Latest posts

Back
Top