Grounding just the element in kettle?

Quick question I can't find an answer for. I am looking to turn a kettle into an ekettle. Because of my design I have no good way of grounding the kettle without soldering or drilling the pot (which I REALLY don't want to do). I however can ground the element very easy. Since the element is the source of the electricity and not the kettle would grounding the element alone be fine, or do I really need to ground the kettle as well?

Isn't the fact that the element is connected to the kettle and then the kettle itself becomes the ground to your stand and then grounded from your outlet? I just saw this was unanswered and I am a maint supervisor so I am just thinking hw tanks since I really know little about electric brewing.

I was looking at putting a washer on the inside and out so the element would be free floating and not contact the kettle.

Sorry o-ring not washer

It is important that you ground the pot. If you are sure that the thing you are grounding (i.e., the element threads) will remain in permanent electrical connection with the pot, then your solution is good.

The reason for grounding is so that your GFCI (or breaker, god forbid) will trip when a hot line contacts the wort or pot. That's it. If you don't have a good ground, the electrical current has no place to go, and the safety devices won't trip until you grab the pot while in bare feet.

If you have a GFCI, you will probably still live and might not even know what happened (other than the circuit went dead). If you only have a breaker, it's very unlikely that your body will conduct well enough to trip the breaker, and you'll probably die.

Everything will be connected to a GFCI for sure. I couldn't even imagine brewing without it. I think what I'm going to do is run a ground wire soldered to the element to my sight glass/thermometer kit and call it a day. It will not be as clean as I like but living is a positive.

ekjohns said:

Everything will be connected to a GFCI for sure. I couldn't even imagine brewing without it. I think what I'm going to do is run a ground wire soldered to the element to my sight glass/thermometer kit and call it a day. It will not be as clean as I like but living is a positive.

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ekjohns, I posted in your other thread as well. Another option is that you could use your reducing washer with the hole in it but instead of looping the ground around it and soldering it you could sandwhich it between the reducing washer and the kettle itself. This is what I did last night. So it would go (From inside kettle to outside) : lockwasher > O-ring > Kettle > O-ring > (This is where the ground is sandwhiched) reducing washer > element base.

EDIT: To be more clear the ground wire sits above the outside o-ring and the reducing washer is what smashes / keeps it in place to the kettle. I wish I had a picture.

So it is held in place by the pressure of the o-ring against the kettle? So it would go inside to out " locknut > o-ring > kettle wall > ground wire (smashed) > o-ring> washer > element ?

I wonder if I put another SS washer with a diameter slighlty smaller than the outside o-ring that my tightening it up enough it would make contact with the reducing washer and the kettle wall but the o-ring would still be pressing enough on the kettle wall and reducing washer to seal

ekjohns said:

So it is held in place by the pressure of the o-ring against the kettle? So it would go inside to out " locknut > o-ring > kettle wall > ground wire (smashed) > o-ring> washer > element ?

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No its held in place by the reducing washer after the o-ring. The reducing washer is bigger in diameter than the o-ring so the ground sits on top of the o-ring inbetween the void (The size of the o-ring) of the kettle and the reducing washer. Does that make sense? This is where a picture would be worth a 1,000 words.

A word of caution... your ground "bond" needs to be of significant size and mechanical connection to carry the full potential current load. I've seen several threads where folks talk about different ways to make a ground connection... just because you can use a meter to measure a connection it may not be a "good bond". When you talk about "sandwiching a wire", it just makes me a little nervous. If you don't have a good bond, you may not know it until it fails then you have BIG problems.

Ohio-Ed said:

A word of caution... your ground "bond" needs to be of significant size and mechanical connection to carry the full potential current load. I've seen several threads where folks talk about different ways to make a ground connection... just because you can use a meter to measure a connection it may not be a "good bond". When you talk about "sandwiching a wire", it just makes me a little nervous. If you don't have a good bond, you may not know it until it fails then you have BIG problems.

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I looped my ground (12 gauge wire) through the reducing washer and then sandwhiched it to the kettle. I totally understand where your coming from and I am in no way saying that this is a end all way of doing it. Hopefully the OP knows to do this at his own risk and check everything twice before plugging in. In my case I drilled my 1500 watt 120 volt element hole in the kettle smaller so I actually have to thread the element into the kettle as well. I figured with the element to kettle connection there and the reducing washer touching the element as well and the ground being sandwhiched in between this should be enough.

Yes that makes sense. I will keep that in mind. I tend to be a worrier so my only concern would be the wire popping out or rusting or somehow loosing contact. What I was thinking the last time I looked at my diagram was soldering a nut onto the reducing washer so I could run a wire from that and have it soldered on the other end to a SS washer that I would thread in front of my thermometer thus grounding the pot with no concern of a loose wire or something getting knocked. Kind of ugly but better to error on the side of caution