How to attach Auber RTD sensor in my Blichmann pots?

I'm not sure which of these two RTD temperature sensors to order to put in my Blichmann 20 gallon HLT, MLT, and BK. I want to go weldless.

Liquid tight RTD temperature sensor, 4” probe, M16x 1.5 metric thread

Link: Liquid tight RTD temperature sensor, 4” probe [PT100-L100] - $32.55 : auberins.com, Temperature control solutions for home and industry

Liquid tight RTD temperature sensor, 4” probe, 1/4" NPT thread

Link: Liquid tight RTD sensor, 2” probe, NPT Thread [PT100-L50NPT] - $29.95 : auberins.com, Temperature control solutions for home and industry

The only difference seems the metric vs imperial threading. Correct? Which would you use?

4" is better than then 2" probes because it gets you farther into the pot correct?

I want to go weldness so I'm assuming all I need to add is a stainless nut and high temp silicone o-ring , and washer after I've punched the holes in the pots? Where can I get this nut/o-ring/washer?

Thanks guys.

Kal

Drill a hole and use a SS wing nut to tighten. You can get a small rubber washer on the outside to seal it. I covered this in my Ekeggle build.
As stated in my build too... I have the 1/4" thermocouple and it reads exactly what the temp is in the wort. I dont have any problems reading the true temp in my keggle, and the probe doesnt get in the way of my chiller. I covered this in my build thread as well.

When you are boiling wort, it is homogenous, because it circualtes so rapidly. A 4" RTD is unnecessary for an accurate temp in the BK IMHO.

Thanks Pol.

I'd prefer to go with high temp silicone however. That's what Blichmann uses for their thermometer and other items. I'll have to find a place that sells them.

FYI: RTD's are by design more accurate than thermocouples (TC's). Nothing to do with circulation or the fluid being homogenous. The +/- % error on a TC is simply higher. In the BK it doesn't really matter sinec most people are just boiling but in the MLT/HLT people should consider RTD's over TC's for their accuracy regardless of how the fluid is circulated.

Kal

Use the metric threads to attach them in a "bulkhead fitting" style. I'm not sure why you're adding a temperature sensor to your boil kettle, though...

An RTD is more accurate than a thermocouple. True. However, a thermocouple is more than accurate enough for brewing. I bought 50 feet of k type thermocouple wire off ebay for cheap. I have found it to be very accurate and easy. Cut off a piece the desired length, connect one end to pid, strip 1/8" off other end, and twist the ends together - voila - a thermocouple. I make thermowells with copper tubing and a compression fitting.

Personally, I would NOT drill a hole in one the those beautiful pots unless I had to. You can build a great system without drilling a hole in any of the pots. All three vessels have built in thermometers. You don't need to control the temp in the HLT - control the temp of the wort as it returns to the mash tun. In other words, put your RTD in a "T" right before the wort returns to the mash tun. You don't need an RTD in the mash tun; you have a thermometer. You don't need an RTD in your boil kettle; water boils at 212F.

stevehaun has some great advice above - worth giving that some thought.

If you still want to add an RTD to each vessel...

There is already a coupler welded into each BoilerMaker for the analog thermometer. Most likely, it is a 1/2" NPT fitting. Just remove the existing dial thermometer and use a reducer to attach the 1/4" NPT version of the sensor. Hardly any effort required!

KAL; that is a NPT not a straight threaded probe. If it were my unit I would part off on the lathe rings from the ends of a stainless 1/4" NPT coupling as wide as the threads sticking inside after a sealing washer is installed on the outside, a red fiber washer at the below named hardware stores and a thin nylon washer like .025" thick on the inside.
These materials are available at any ACE or TrueValue Hardware Store.
Any soft rubber type material will spit out before any tightening down is applied and more so later under heat when it becomes softer.

Yuri_Rage said:

Use the metric threads to attach them in a "bulkhead fitting" style.

Click to expand...

Thanks - that's the problem... I can't seem to find what I need!

I'm not sure why you're adding a temperature sensor to your boil kettle, though...

Click to expand...

I'm 100% electric and the boil PID needs something attached to it to work I'm told (even in manual mode). If I want to do the chill in the BK then it may prove useful too though the Blichmann thermometer would be fine for that.

stevehaun said:

Personally, I would NOT drill a hole in one the those beautiful pots unless I had to. You can build a great system without drilling a hole in any of the pots.

Click to expand...

I'm going 100% electric so that would be difficult. I want have to use 3 heatsticks in the BK instead of the one 5500W element I plan on using (though a whole in the side near the bottom).

All three vessels have built in thermometers. You don't need to control the temp in the HLT - control the temp of the wort as it returns to the mash tun.

Click to expand...

I want to be able to fill the HLT with cold tap water, dial in 154F (or whatever), turn on the recirc pump to recirc the water in the HLT and walk away.

Same thing for sparging. I don't understand how you'd raise the temp to 170F without having a sensor in the HLT.

You don't need an RTD in the mash tun; you have a thermometer.

Click to expand...

Might go RIMS in the future. So I'd like something to read the mash temp and control it automatically.

You don't need an RTD in your boil kettle; water boils at 212F.

Click to expand...

You need a TC or RTD to make the PID work. Might as well measure the temp in the BK too.

There are thermometers in all 3 pots - they come like that. I'll use those as backups.

Yuri_Rage said:

There is already a coupler welded into each BoilerMaker for the analog thermometer. Most likely, it is a 1/2" NPT fitting. Just remove the existing dial thermometer and use a reducer to attach the 1/4" NPT version of the sensor. Hardly any effort required!

Click to expand...

There's no coupler welded in Blichmann pots. They're simply bare punched holes. I had to install the Blichmann thermometers myself. The thermometers come with a stainless nut, washer, and a high temp silicone o-ring for installation. All of the fittings on a Blichmann pot are done that way (weldless style).

I thought about replacing it with and RTD (still might do that) but figured it would be nice to have essentially two thermometers. With 1 you assume the reading's correct. With two, if one is off you're going to know.

BrewBeemer said:

KAL; that is a NPT not a straight threaded probe. If it were my unit I would part off on the lathe rings from the ends of a stainless 1/4" NPT coupling as wide as the threads sticking inside after a sealing washer is installed on the outside, a red fiber washer at the below named hardware stores and a thin nylon washer like .025" thick on the inside.
These materials are available at any ACE or TrueValue Hardware Store.
Any soft rubber type material will spit out before any tightening down is applied and more so later under heat when it becomes softer.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I have to say however I don't understand why a stainless nut, stainless washer, and high temp silicone o-ring wouldn't work. All 3 Blichmann pots came with weldlesss brewmometers like this:



I'm confused guys! I thought I had this all figured out but seems I need to think about things some more!

Kal

Kal:
It is true that you must have a thermocouple or rtd hooked up to the pid for it to work in manual mode. However, the thermocouple does not have to be in the boil kettle. You could measure the temp in your garage while you are boiling your wort.

I use one pid in my system. The thermocouple is located between the heat exchanger (herms coil) and the return manifold at the top of the mash tun. I fill my mash tun with the mash water and the HLT with the sparge water. I set my PID to my desired temp and start pumping the mash water thru the herms coil. The HLT heats up to several degrees above the temp I dialed in for my Mash tun and gradually my mash water is heated to the desired temp. When my mash is completed, I set the temp to 168F. When I reach the desired mash out temp, my HLT water is about 175F (I measured it when dialing in my system although I never measure it anymore). You will have a thermometer telling you your HLT water temp.

You can do this successfully many different ways. You can control the HLT water temp and learn what it takes to give you the desired mash temps. I chose to control the temp of the wort returning to the top of the mash tun. I know in my system, if I set that wort temp to 152F, my mash temp will be exactly 150F.

Regardless, have fun. You will have a great system. One other thing, you are never really done modifying your system...

I'm confused. You shot down every suggestion and still claimed confusion.

Kal, how much more accurate is a RTD vs. TC? Just for my info. thxs

If you want the PWM feature of the PID but do not need a temperature readout just use a 100 or 150 ohm resistor from radio shack instead of RTD, set PID up for 2 wire sensor.

stevehaun said:

Kal:
It is true that you must have a thermocouple or rtd hooked up to the pid for it to work in manual mode. However, the thermocouple does not have to be in the boil kettle. You could measure the temp in your garage while you are boiling your wort.

Click to expand...

Yup. But I figured why not put it in the BK so that it measures something useful.

At first I thought I'd just have one RTD and two PIDs and use a switch to select which PID uses the RTD. Then I figured given the cheap price of PIDs/RTDs why not just have two PIDs and two RTDs (one for the HLT/MLT and one for the BK). Then I thought that I may want to go RIMS in future so why not make it the most flexible possible and use a PID/RTD per kettle.

And then you mentioned this:

I use one pid in my system. The thermocouple is located between the heat exchanger (herms coil) and the return manifold at the top of the mash tun. I fill my mash tun with the mash water and the HLT with the sparge water. I set my PID to my desired temp and start pumping the mash water thru the herms coil. The HLT heats up to several degrees above the temp I dialed in for my Mash tun and gradually my mash water is heated to the desired temp. When my mash is completed, I set the temp to 168F. When I reach the desired mash out temp, my HLT water is about 175F (I measured it when dialing in my system although I never measure it anymore). You will have a thermometer telling you your HLT water temp.

You can do this successfully many different ways. You can control the HLT water temp and learn what it takes to give you the desired mash temps. I chose to control the temp of the wort returning to the top of the mash tun. I know in my system, if I set that wort temp to 152F, my mash temp will be exactly 150F.

Click to expand...

And I really like this idea. Since what is the HLT for other than to set/control the mash temp right? It's not a bad idea.

I'll have to think about it a bit more and run through my process again. Since I want to build the be-all/end-all system that's flexible for the future I may just do the 3 PID/3 RTD combo anyway just to be safe anyway.

We'll see!

Regardless, have fun. You will have a great system. One other thing, you are never really done modifying your system...

Click to expand...

Very true. I'm trying to minimize reworking the system later such that it makes it look like I've tacked on a bunch of stuff. I plan on a having a nice control box with industrial dials and engraved labels (the whole 5 yards) and don't want to stick in something later in the corner.

Yuri_Rage said:

I'm confused. You shot down every suggestion and still claimed confusion.

Click to expand...

Doesn't mean I'm still not confused as to what to do. I'm confused because I thought I had all of this clear in my head but obviously not as you guys have come up with some interesting ideas/workarounds/changes.

I was also confused because you mentioned using the thermometer welded coupler in my Blichmann pots when there's no coupler to begin with. It just makes me question what other suggestions I need to wonder about.

Everyone's here to help of course, but not every suggestion is 100% correct or in line with my needs (either due to me not providing all of the necessary information or other reasons), nor is my process likely 100% correct. Hence the confusion from my side. I'm just not always sure where the confusion lies! It's hard to figure out where the problems are by just reading. I need to start building!

Kal

caskconditioned said:

Kal, how much more accurate is a RTD vs. TC? Just for my info. thxs

Click to expand...

I'm not sure myself. This comes from process control engineers that I know. I'm an Electrical Engineer who spent 7 years in a manufacturing plant designing software for process control systems in the 90's. I was a software geek back then but did see enough of the electrical/process stuff that some sank in. In retrospect I wish I paid more attention to the boxes and controls that the electricians used as that would have been handy now. They used to use TC's in plants years ago but now everything is RTD I'm told because they're better/more accurate.

All that said, the first thing an engineer needs to know however is when enough accuracy is enough. You don't need a million dollar atomic clock to know when to catch the bus. A $2 wristwatch will do you just fine. Given the negligible price difference (to me) between RTD's and TC's I opted to go with RTD's everywhere without even really looking into the differences.

In a boil kettle used only for boiling, I'd say it really doesn't matter at all. And as others have mentioned above, the TC or RTD doesn't even need to be in the pot. Using a 2 cent resistor will also work as mentioned.

The Auberins PID manuals do mention:

Measurement accuracy:

0.2% Full scale: RTD, linear voltage, linear current and thermocouple input with ice point compensation or Cu50 copper compensation.

0.2% Full scale or ±2ºC: thermocouple input with internal automatic compensation.

I'm not really sure what that extra "or ±2ºC" for TC's really means.

I really didn't mean to spend much time figuring out if the $25 more was worth it. I just planned on ordering the more expensive temp probe.

Kal

Does the PID from Auber show temp when it is in manual mode? If so you could use it to measure the output from the bottom of the mash. That should tell you when the whole mash is at temp.

Mike

airbalancer said:

Does the PID from Auber show temp when it is in manual mode? If so you could use it to measure the output from the bottom of the mash. That should tell you when the whole mash is at temp.

Mike

Click to expand...

Yes, the PV is always shown on the PID. The SV will change to % output in manual mode.

Ok, since the BoilerMakers don't have couplers (sorry, I thought they did), you're stuck either welding fittings into your kettles or using a weldless bulkhead design.

Since money appears to be no object, I'll first suggest having some 1/4" NPT couplers welded into your kettles. That would make a very clean, simple installation.

If you're bent on weldless, once again, get the metric straight-threaded design. Use the threads on the sensor itself as the through-wall portion. A silicone o-ring under the collar of the sensor on the outside of the kettle and a stainless washer and nut on the inside should make for a leak-proof design (all available at McMaster-Carr). Don't over-tighten the nut - a snug fit is all you need.

Yuri_Rage said:

Ok, since the BoilerMakers don't have couplers (sorry, I thought they did), you're stuck either welding fittings into your kettles or using a weldless bulkhead design.

Since money appears to be no object, I'll first suggest having some 1/4" NPT couplers welded into your kettles. That would make a very clean, simple installation.

If you're bent on weldless, once again, get the metric straight-threaded design. Use the threads on the sensor itself as the through-wall portion. A silicone o-ring under the collar of the sensor on the outside of the kettle and a stainless washer and nut on the inside should make for a leak-proof design (all available at McMaster-Carr). Don't over-tighten the nut - a snug fit is all you need.

Click to expand...

Thanks Yuri. That's the confirmation I needed.

I've been talking to some of the shops around town and none of them seem to keen to weld anything to this Blichmann kettles when I tell them what I'm doing and how much the kettles cost. They all get really nervous and say that they can't guarantee anything. I really don't want to take that risk. That, coupled with the fact that Blichmann themselves don't use weldless makes me want to at least try weldless first all around. I can always keep looking and get someone to weld in something later if I have leaks.

All of the weldless vs welded comments I've read on this forum lead me to believe that weldless shouldn't be an issue.

Some of the other comments here have me re-thinking about just going with a single PID/RTD in my setup so I'm re-thinking that as well. I'll do whatever's the cleanest in terms of process flow (yes - I'm lucky enough to say that money is secondary ).

Thanks again guys. Auberins.com order will likely go in today.

Kal

Kal,

Since those BLINGmans are so sexxy... why not get the immersion RTD that you can ust put over the edge and hang in the kettle? Just an idea... I know, not very blingy, but it would leave the BLINGmans in tact.

Kal- I understand where you are coming from... I too want my system to be all encompassing (RIMS, HERMS, direct fired, or whatever else I can dream up) and therefore it will have a lot of extras. If I were you I would go 3 PID/3 RTD and attach them as suggested by Yuri.

Good luck!

The Pol said:

Since those BLINGmans are so sexxy... why not get the immersion RTD that you can ust put over the edge and hang in the kettle? Just an idea... I know, not very blingy, but it would leave the BLINGmans in tact.

Click to expand...

Yup. Though the big issue is the high wattage elements in the BK and HLT. The only way to leave the pots intact would be to use heatsticks and I don't want to get into that. I'd need 3 heat sticks to equal the 5500W RIPP element I plan on using. That would be a mess.

I never plan on brewing without electricity so I don't really see any issues with punching holes in them for the elements and RTDs.

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

Kal- I understand where you are coming from... I too want my system to be all encompassing (RIMS, HERMS, direct fired, or whatever else I can dream up) and therefore it will have a lot of extras. If I were you I would go 3 PID/3 RTD and attach them as suggested by Yuri.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Thanks Justin. The way it looks it's likely I'll just end up going with a 3 PID/RTD setup. More lights in a control panel isn't a bad thing.

Kal

stevehaun said:

Personally, I would NOT drill a hole in one the those beautiful pots unless I had to. You can build a great system without drilling a hole in any of the pots.

Click to expand...

+1. Put the probes in the plumbing, not the pots.

For the MLT, your not going to put the element directly in the pot, so that points to RIMS, HERMS(external heat exchanger), HERMS(coil in the HLT), or direct fire. All of those imply recirculation with external heat, i.e., put the probe in the plumbing after the heat source.

For the HLT, element in the pot makes sense. You probably have 2 pumps, so why not use one to recirculate instead of a stirring mechanism to avoid stratification? Probe in the plumbing.

For the boil kettle, temp doesn't matter as others have suggested, although it's still nice to monitor. But the nice analog thermo works here. And if you want a digital readout on the pid you can replace the analog with the RTD. But having 2 temperature readings in the BK probably isn't necessary, so resistor in the PID as kladue pointed out.

Just my 2 cents. No matter what you chose you are going to have a sweet system!

eccsynd said:

+1. Put the probes in the plumbing, not the pots.

Click to expand...

Thanks. One less hole to drill and it makes sense to have it at the HERMS coil output anyway.

For the MLT, your not going to put the element directly in the pot, so that points to RIMS, HERMS(external heat exchanger), HERMS(coil in the HLT), or direct fire. All of those imply recirculation with external heat, i.e., put the probe in the plumbing after the heat source.

Click to expand...

Yup. So no extra holes in the MLT at all. I like it! The only thing that needs to get into the MLT is the HERMS return and sparge arm which I'll likely do through the lid anyway.

For the HLT, element in the pot makes sense. You probably have 2 pumps, so why not use one to recirculate instead of a stirring mechanism to avoid stratification? Probe in the plumbing.

Click to expand...

Yup. Good point too. Nice! I intend to use both pumps during mash (one to recirc the HLT water, one to recirc sweet wort).

For the boil kettle, temp doesn't matter as others have suggested, although it's still nice to monitor. But the nice analog thermo works here. And if you want a digital readout on the pid you can replace the analog with the RTD. But having 2 temperature readings in the BK probably isn't necessary, so resistor in the PID as kladue pointed out.

Click to expand...

Yup. $30 savings. But to me the "odd" thing is that the PID will always read a constant temp while the other(s) will show correct temp(s). I'll probably be in the $4-5K range once all is done and saving $30 just seems odd to me.

I'm not convinced of anything yet... still mulling things over but I really like the ideas. Thanks!

Kal

eccsynd said:

+1. Put the probes in the plumbing, not the pots.

For the MLT, your not going to put the element directly in the pot, so that points to RIMS, HERMS(external heat exchanger), HERMS(coil in the HLT), or direct fire. All of those imply recirculation with external heat, i.e., put the probe in the plumbing after the heat source.

For the HLT, element in the pot makes sense. You probably have 2 pumps, so why not use one to recirculate instead of a stirring mechanism to avoid stratification? Probe in the plumbing.

For the boil kettle, temp doesn't matter as others have suggested, although it's still nice to monitor. But the nice analog thermo works here. And if you want a digital readout on the pid you can replace the analog with the RTD. But having 2 temperature readings in the BK probably isn't necessary, so resistor in the PID as kladue pointed out.

Just my 2 cents. No matter what you chose you are going to have a sweet system!

Click to expand...

This sounds like a very good solution to me. I agree that in the grand scheme it may be worth $30 just to have the readout like nice on the panel.

I think if I automate my future system I will use this. As an added bonus, if you put the probes on the outputs of your pumps, while cooling you could know hte temp of your cooling water and wort as it is chilling (I will be using a ice water circulating system and a whirlpool). Cool ideas as usual guys!

EDIT:

I would do a setup like this- (priming port optional)

Nice Justin! Thanks! You wouldn't happen to have the McMaster part numbers handy would you?

I take it that 2" probes are enough if they're not going in the pots (in fact 4" may even be too long).

I want to place a bunch of orders tonight. Spending hours/day just doing research is driving me nuts. I want to start assembling!

Kal

Yuri_Rage said:

If you're bent on weldless, once again, get the metric straight-threaded design. Use the threads on the sensor itself as the through-wall portion. A silicone o-ring under the collar of the sensor on the outside of the kettle and a stainless washer and nut on the inside should make for a leak-proof design (all available at McMaster-Carr). Don't over-tighten the nut - a snug fit is all you need.

Click to expand...

You mentioned silicone o-rin on the outside, and nut/washer combo on the inside. FYI: My Blichmann pots came with their weldless thermometers which also contain a nut, washer, and o-ring. However they they say to put the washer & o-ring on the outside because the o-ring is small and fits *inside* the washer (the washer doesn't compress the o-ring). It would seem they do it this way to ensure that the o-ring doesn't get squashed by someone over-tightening the nut on the inside. I think they're trying to patent the idea too.

Kal

I installed my thermocouple in my Ekeggle as Yuri stated. If you have the washer on the outside, you will have a metal on metal "seal", which is not a seal. I dunno how well that will work? The seal is the barrier, if you have a washer contacting the shoulder on the RTD, there will be no seal to the RTD.

Sorry Pol, I should have been clearer with my description.

The o-ring sits *inside* the washer so that both the washer and o-ring are against the thermometer and the kettle. I should have posted a link earlier, but there's a picture of how it works (see Fig 2 on page 2) of the Blichmann Brewmometer manual here: http://blichmannengineering.com/BrewMometer/BrewMometer Owners Manual-V1.pdf



(Blichmann needs to update their manual, the original picture doesn't come with the text labels explaining what's what [I added those] so it was hard to figure out what they meant just by looking at the black and white picture)

The purpose of the washer seems to be keep the o-ring from expanding out or getting squished too much. Blichmann must have had a lot of issues with people cranking down on the inner bold and squishing the outside o-ring so badly that it leaked (tighter is better right?) such that they decided to use a washer too that wraps around the o-ring limiting how far it can get squished. Makes sense to me, but different from what Yuri recommended.

Kal

Well I decided to go with 3 PIDs and 3 RTDs. What the hell huh? All from Auber Instruments:

3 ea. 1/16 DIN PID Temperature Controller (SSR control output) $133.50
2 ea. 40 A SSR $38.00
2 ea. Heat Sink for 40A SSR $40.00
3 ea. Liquid tight RTD temperature sensor, 2” probe (M16x 1.5 metric thread) $89.85

One of the PIDs may only serve as a somewhat useless temp gauge for a while but I don't want to have to hack into my control panel after it's already been built if I want to add something like RIMS in the future.

Thanks guys! Now to finish ordering the control panel buttons/case/etc. After that comes all the stainless fittings, pumps, CFC, stand building, water/electrical conduit work, exhaust fan, etc, etc etc.

Kal

The Pol said:

I installed my thermocouple in my Ekeggle as Yuri stated. If you have the washer on the outside, you will have a metal on metal "seal", which is not a seal.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

Yup, metal on metal is not good, but take a look at the picture I posted above from the Blichmann manual on how it works. It's not metal on metal:



Maybe it's just me then but I really like the way Blichmann does it as it makes sure you don't overtighter the nut. You could throw an extra washer on the inside but I don't think it's probably needed.

BTW, I emailed John Blichmann last night and I already had an email this morning indicating that he'd update the next print run of their Boilermaker and Brewmometer manuals to include more labels like my Figure 2 above (to make it clearer for people what's what). I've always been impressed with their service. 5 thumbs up!

Kal

Justin,

What's that little plug called that the probe screws into?



Kal

Thats a hex bushing or simply a bushing. Here is a page:

Bushings-Hex

That site has the cheapest stainless I have been able to find.

Yuri_Rage said:

I'm confused. You shot down every suggestion and still claimed confusion.

Click to expand...

I'm confused about your confusion over his confusion.

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

Thats a hex bushing or simply a bushing. Here is a page:

Bushings-Hex

Click to expand...

Cool. Thanks.

Oh crap. I ordered three of these metric M16x1.5 threaded sensors from Auberins (before I thought about putting one or two in the plumbing instead of the pots):



How am I going attach one of these into a Hex Bushing which screws into the 1/2" stainless tee? I need some sort of M16x1.5 to 1/2" NPT hex bushing, no? (Doubt anyone makes something like that).

Should I have ordered sensors with 1/4" NPT thread instead for the ones going in the plumbing?:



These would then fit into 1/2" x 1/4" Threaded NPT Hexagon Bushing on this page right?: 1/2" x 1/4" Threaded NPT Hexagon Bushing SS I=.94 J=.83

(This would then go into the 1/2" stainless tee that I've also ordered).

Crap.

That site has the cheapest stainless I have been able to find.

Click to expand...

I just bought a couple of hundred worth of valves and fittings from BargainFittings.com (got it off your spreadsheet). Good prices and cheap shipping (I'm in Canada).

Prices are great too. For example: A stainless steel 1/2" full port ball valve with Stainless nipple, washer, coupler, locknut, and 2 Silicon o-rings: $26 USD. NorthernBrewer wants $37 and the locknut is brass not SS either (not that that really makes a difference since it doesn't contact the wort - just doesn't look as purdy).

Kal

oooooo if you can change your order I would. It will be difficult to find that adapter.

If you are stuck with the metric, your best solution may be to buy a 1/2 to 1/8" hex bushing then redrill and tap it for the M16. That may be difficult in the stainless though....

sorry

Order's already on the way. Looks like I'll just have to order some more RTD sensors (at least 1 or 2). Oh well. I knew there would be some redesigns/mistakes.

I can't (won't) get into trying to drill/tap my own bushing.

Thanks Justin.

Kal

Why would you ever buy metric anything? Isnt it just as easy, or easier to build anything with the english equivilent?

Yuri suggested the metric, maybe because it had the smallest footprint...?

I don't know. Maybe because the NPT is not a straight thread? Will the 1/4" NPT probe even fit in the bushing?

In other words, with a bit of plumbers tape wrapped around the thread of this 2" probe:



Will it fit into this 1/2" x 1/4" Threaded NPT Hexagon Bushing bushing?:




The 1/4" NPT probe order page says:

"It can be easily installed either on the tank or on the pipeline (with a T joint)."

Kal