dragonfire540
Well-Known Member
On mine I used a flowmeter from Omega that uses a Hall effect sensor to read water coming from my HTL tank. It inputs pulses to my Unitronics controller that I use to calculate flow volume and I can read frequency to get flow rate.
It works very well for me and very accurate. As far as level sensors I saw somebody mention, I use Stainless steel Level switches in my HTL tank to signal the controller that the HLT is full so turn off the water input valve, and when it get too low (I heat HLT electric with 5500 Watt element) to turn on water valve to fill the tank again. Also it makes sure if the water gets too low to cut the power to the heating element. They also work very reliably.
The Latter Logic takes input I enter into the HMI or pre-programmed recipe to take the grain weight and the water to grist ratio I program to calculate the volume needed and measure that amount on the transfer to the Mash tun.
I was playing with a proportional control valve to adjust flow rate for the sparge but found it more reliable to use a Blickmann autosparge arm instead and use valves to direct flow properly in the system. I think using the flowmeter is crucial to the entire system to keep it fully automated.
BTW, I did once had to send the meter for service and while it was out I reprogrammed it to measure flow volume based on time. I have a fairly steady flow rate from my pumps so I measures how long it took to transfer 1 liter of liquid from HLT and calculated the Liters/per second to use to turn on the valve from the HTL for the amount of time needed to transfer the needed volume. It worked, not as accurate as I would have hoped but it got close enough. The mash ratio is not a hard and fast rule anyhow, accuracy is not that critical, ballpark is good enough for it.
Could be a cheap way to go without a flowmeter if needed, granted you have a controller capable of it, or use some timers otherwise.
Hope this helps!
It works very well for me and very accurate. As far as level sensors I saw somebody mention, I use Stainless steel Level switches in my HTL tank to signal the controller that the HLT is full so turn off the water input valve, and when it get too low (I heat HLT electric with 5500 Watt element) to turn on water valve to fill the tank again. Also it makes sure if the water gets too low to cut the power to the heating element. They also work very reliably.
The Latter Logic takes input I enter into the HMI or pre-programmed recipe to take the grain weight and the water to grist ratio I program to calculate the volume needed and measure that amount on the transfer to the Mash tun.
I was playing with a proportional control valve to adjust flow rate for the sparge but found it more reliable to use a Blickmann autosparge arm instead and use valves to direct flow properly in the system. I think using the flowmeter is crucial to the entire system to keep it fully automated.
BTW, I did once had to send the meter for service and while it was out I reprogrammed it to measure flow volume based on time. I have a fairly steady flow rate from my pumps so I measures how long it took to transfer 1 liter of liquid from HLT and calculated the Liters/per second to use to turn on the valve from the HTL for the amount of time needed to transfer the needed volume. It worked, not as accurate as I would have hoped but it got close enough. The mash ratio is not a hard and fast rule anyhow, accuracy is not that critical, ballpark is good enough for it.
Could be a cheap way to go without a flowmeter if needed, granted you have a controller capable of it, or use some timers otherwise.
Hope this helps!
