gas valves / burner control

While planning my own Brutus 10 build I have accumulated a LOT of research, mostly from you faithful home brewers. You guys are brilliant. One part of the project I keep coming back to is the gas / valve / controllers for the burners. Lonnie (as featured in BYO) came up with an elegant solution. My problem is many of the parts even on EBay will budget more than the stainless and welding. Seriously, has anyone tried to re-cycle an entire control box from a discarded gas hot water heater? Except for conversion to LP, it has all the components already assembled. Safety shut off with thermocouple or glow bar, thermostat that can be over ridden by a love controller and a functioning solenoid valve. Am I missing something or will this work with a little build out? Your thoughts please.

You could salvage the pilot burner and the thermocouple but the valve will not be able to flow enough gas to fully fire the larger burners used in homebrewing. All that would be needed to upgrade would be one of the 24V standing pilot furnace valves that has the flow capacity needed, all the other parts could be reused if Natural Gas is used, otherwise a couple conversion parts would be needed for propane. If you are patient the gas valves are about $40 or less on Ebay.

Mine only cost $4000.

My furnace recently bit the dust. What a nice surprise I found when I peeked inside - a honeywell universal pilot control, pilot/ignitor and NG gas valve. I grabbed all of it, including the pilot supply line and wire harness.

Now all I need is the actual stand/rig.

You might try contacting a friendlt local HVAC guy. You might be able to go digging around the recently removed furnaces. It should not be too hard to find one that has a replacement pilot control unit. A few 1/4" nuts and a big wrench for the gas fittings and you should be all set.

jason

Here is a little something I wrote up about gas control https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/gas-temperature-control-dummies-116632/. Kladue helped me. Kevin is our guru when it comes to this topic.

Sawdustguy- Thanks for the post! It will help me put together my parts list. Can you post pics of your system?

Sawdustguy- Can you give a spec on the SYL4352? I can't find the PID on Auber's site by the model number- I think I have to go with the description. Thanks.

ggltd, per your request.......

Beautiful system Guy , nice work !

Thank you....