240V 30amp GCFI?

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theonetrueruss

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Ok, so I'm planning my electric HLT that will eventually be a HERMS system but it will be built piece by piece. I want to use a 20G volume in my HLT to ensure I have gobs of water to mash and sparge with. I want to make sure that I can raise 20G 60 to 100 deg F in about an hour and 14G by 30F in 15 minutes. I figure that will give me the ability to move temps in the ways I need.

To do this I am trying to figure out if I need to go with a 30 amp circuit or a 20 amp circuit. 4500 watt element seems like it might do the job at a little over 18amps though a 5500 watt element would be much more certain... though I'd need to put in a 30 amp circuit.

Everything rated for 30 amps seems to be twice the price. The killer catch I am running into is the cost of GCFI protection for a 30A 240V circuit balanced with how much cheaper everything will be at 20amps. Is there a low cost way of getting GCFI for 30A 240V?

Will I regret going with 4500 watts to save a few 100 $s now? Or is 4500 watts really enough for an HLT. I don't want to go cheap and regret it... I also don't want to have a lot of wasted capacity.

My plans do not include ever going to electric for boiling.. I only want to use electric for my HLT and pumps/controllers which can already run off of existing circuits.

Any advice?
 

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