Love temp controller build-along

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.

nostalgia

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2008
Messages
2,397
Reaction score
114
Location
Port Murray, NJ
Ohai! I just wired up a Love TS-2 from Dwyer and thought you guys might like to see how I did it.

It started with a 4x4x4" outdoor plastic enclosure from Home Depot.

I flipped the lid over and marked the position of the Decora outlet and Love controller. Then with my Dremel and a cut-off wheel, I rough-cut the openings. I later fine-tuned them with a hand file. Note the relief that needed to be cut around the holes that will hold the outlet in. I also ended up having to cut similar reliefs at the top where the plastic clips hold the Love controller in place. It's a really tight fit.

20121111_104518.jpg


Next was drilling holes for the thermocouple and power cable. Zip ties act as strain relief to prevent them from being accidentally pulled out and yanking on the controller's connectors.

20121111_111457.jpg


Now the fun part: wiring! I can post up a schematic if anyone needs one, but it's pretty simple.

  1. Neutral wire from the feed goes to the white side of the outlet, and to pin 7 or 8 (I arbitrarily chose 8). You can see I used the outlet to jump the neutral instead of a separate wire nut. Same effect, cleaner installation.
  2. Hot wire from the feed gets split in two. One goes to pin 7 or 8 (whichever you didn't use for neutral - in my case 7). The other goes to pin 11, the NO (normally open) side of the relay.
    Why not pin 10? Because that would make pin 9 hot all the time. Not really a big deal in this application, but it helps me sleep at night.
  3. Hot wire from pin 10 to the black (hot) side of the outlet.
  4. Bare ground from the feed to the green lug on the outlet.
20121111_113317.jpg

20121111_113325.jpg


Then carefully stuff everything in the box and screw on the lid. Plug it in and see what happens!

20121111_113800.jpg

Questions and comments are welcome.

-Joe
 
Good write-up. I have the same box on my Love TSS2 build and cut the rectangular hole with a Dremel, cleaned up with a file

Love TSS2 Build_Pic 4.jpg
 
DSmith said:
Good write-up. I have the same box on my Love TSS2 build and cut the rectangular hole with a Dremel, cleaned up with a file

Can you share your wire diagram? Nice work.
 
I'll look around for the schematic I used for planning (may not exist anymore because it's not a fancy CAD drawing or anything). It's exactly the same as other TSS2 builds but I wired through a fuse holder and switches on each of the hot legs to the relay switch outlets.

There were so many wires in the build that stranded 12g THHN was a must. I'm a fan of soldering eyelets/forks to those wires. The downside is that the ground to the boxes has a bunch of stacked eyelets under the ground screw.
 
Back
Top