worstbrewing
Well-Known Member
So, I've been scouring the electrical threads for months now, playing out various scenarios that I'd like to consider for upgrading to a 10+ gallon all-electric brewhouse. There is still plenty I have to consider, so I'm not jumping into this quite yet, but wanted to see if I could clear something up.
Here's the scenario: I have a small room in my basement that I'm converting into the brewery (at SWMBO's suggestion no less!) and will only use electric in it, nothing gas. So, no matter what I do, there will need to be fresh electrical ran to the room. Safety is obviously most important, so I'm heavily leaning towards the Spa Panel for my GFCI since it seems to be the best for both wiring plus price, especially if I want to use 120V and 240V in the same control panel. Because of this, I'm leaning towards just running 6/3 wire from the panel and putting a 50A breaker in there so it is 50A all the way through. I plan to use 5500W elements or 4500W in both the HLT and BK, but plan to use a cooler for my mash so I won't be recirculating like HERMS/RIMS.
Where I'm a little stuck is, on one hand, 50A seems overkill if I only run one element at a time, as I've seen most people use 30A service to achieve that. Obviously with 5500W elements I can't run both at the same time on 50A, but I just wanted to see if someone could clear this up for me. I haven't seen anyone mention it in all of my searching but I assume there is a reason it hasn't been done. Is there any reason you couldn't put two 4500W elements on a 50A circuit? From doing the math with the spreadsheet I found on here, 9000W should only add up to 37.5A, which is within the 80% threshold it seems. Again, since this hasn't been done I'm sure there's a good reason not to, but since I can't find anyone mentioning it, I'm not sure if it just hasn't been tried either. I would like the convenience of running both at once since I do often do back-to-back batches, but it isn't an absolute must, just seems possible in this case. Since I won't be doing RIMS/HERMS either, the only times the pumps will be used is for transferring from one vessel to another, even then, the math seems to add up that it shouldn't be an issue then either.
Did I miss something perhaps? The spreadsheet was straight forward, I just punched in the numbers and it claims it should work, but again, I just feel like I must be missing something. I'm fairly familiar with DC electronics and 120V AC stuff but this is a little above me. No worries, the wiring in the household will be done professionally and otherwise I have a friend who's more familiar with 240/120 to help on the other details as they come up, but I'm just curious if this seems possible or even a good idea. Sorry if this has been posted somewhere already, I've been hunting for a while and haven't found something quite like this scenario, so feel free to point me elsewhere if I missed it. Thanks!
Here's the scenario: I have a small room in my basement that I'm converting into the brewery (at SWMBO's suggestion no less!) and will only use electric in it, nothing gas. So, no matter what I do, there will need to be fresh electrical ran to the room. Safety is obviously most important, so I'm heavily leaning towards the Spa Panel for my GFCI since it seems to be the best for both wiring plus price, especially if I want to use 120V and 240V in the same control panel. Because of this, I'm leaning towards just running 6/3 wire from the panel and putting a 50A breaker in there so it is 50A all the way through. I plan to use 5500W elements or 4500W in both the HLT and BK, but plan to use a cooler for my mash so I won't be recirculating like HERMS/RIMS.
Where I'm a little stuck is, on one hand, 50A seems overkill if I only run one element at a time, as I've seen most people use 30A service to achieve that. Obviously with 5500W elements I can't run both at the same time on 50A, but I just wanted to see if someone could clear this up for me. I haven't seen anyone mention it in all of my searching but I assume there is a reason it hasn't been done. Is there any reason you couldn't put two 4500W elements on a 50A circuit? From doing the math with the spreadsheet I found on here, 9000W should only add up to 37.5A, which is within the 80% threshold it seems. Again, since this hasn't been done I'm sure there's a good reason not to, but since I can't find anyone mentioning it, I'm not sure if it just hasn't been tried either. I would like the convenience of running both at once since I do often do back-to-back batches, but it isn't an absolute must, just seems possible in this case. Since I won't be doing RIMS/HERMS either, the only times the pumps will be used is for transferring from one vessel to another, even then, the math seems to add up that it shouldn't be an issue then either.
Did I miss something perhaps? The spreadsheet was straight forward, I just punched in the numbers and it claims it should work, but again, I just feel like I must be missing something. I'm fairly familiar with DC electronics and 120V AC stuff but this is a little above me. No worries, the wiring in the household will be done professionally and otherwise I have a friend who's more familiar with 240/120 to help on the other details as they come up, but I'm just curious if this seems possible or even a good idea. Sorry if this has been posted somewhere already, I've been hunting for a while and haven't found something quite like this scenario, so feel free to point me elsewhere if I missed it. Thanks!