Hot plate rewiring question

[ebj5883]

Hopefully this is the correct forum for this question (apologies if not), but I've just been told that I can take a broken hot plate home to try and fix it for brewing, since it would be tossed in the dumpster otherwise. The maintenance guy here where I work seems to think the thermostat switch is broken, since the unit gets power, but no heat makes it to the plate, and the fuse is brand new.

My question is this: how do I rewire this to just work at full power when it's turned on? I've found tutorials, but they all seem to be somewhat different than the plate that I have. I've attached a picture below, showing the inner workings of the plate. I'm hoping that its easy enough to just bypass the thermostat.

 

[mpcluever]

You should reverse the wires and make it a cold plate

 

[ebj5883]

You should reverse the wires and make it a cold plate

Great idea. Thanks.

 

[mpcluever]

I'm no electrician, so I'm guessing here, but it looks like two identical wires that go into the hot plate. Guessing that it doesn't matter what orientation they get hooked up. I'd take the brown and blue off the power supply and hook them up to those white wires. It doesn't seem that they go through any other voltage converters or anything, just a thermostat and a switch. Just bypass those? Did I mention I'm not an electrician?

 

[PlexVector]

Hopefully this is the correct forum for this question (apologies if not), but I've just been told that I can take a broken hot plate home to try and fix it for brewing, since it would be tossed in the dumpster otherwise. The maintenance guy here where I work seems to think the thermostat switch is broken, since the unit gets power, but no heat makes it to the plate, and the fuse is brand new.

My question is this: how do I rewire this to just work at full power when it's turned on? I've found tutorials, but they all seem to be somewhat different than the plate that I have. I've attached a picture below, showing the inner workings of the plate. I'm hoping that its easy enough to just bypass the thermostat.

- Is that a hot plate or warming plate? There should be a label by the power input that gives you the voltage and wattage or currant or volt Amps (VA).

- Is that an ON-OFF switch by the thermostat?

Even if it is a hot plate the heating surface is so spread out I would doubt if that will get you too a boil in a reasonable amount of time even with a 1 gallon vessel, but not enough to go on from the picture.

 

[ebj5883]

- Is that a hot plate or warming plate? There should be a label by the power input that gives you the voltage and wattage or currant or volt Amps (VA).

- Is that an ON-OFF switch by the thermostat?

Even if it is a hot plate the heating surface is so spread out I would doubt if that will get you too a boil in a reasonable amount of time even with a 1 gallon vessel, but not enough to go on from the picture.

While I don't have it with me right now, it is most definitely a hot plate, capable of 450°C.

Also, no, that's just a power indicator light.

 

[PlexVector]

While I don't have it with me right now, it is most definitely a hot plate, capable of 450°C.

Also, no, that's just a power indicator light.

Back of the napkin calculations: assuming that the kettle covers all of the hot plate and ignoring heat loss to air and the hot plate is 1500 watts--for 2.5 gal of pure water at sea level it will take about 40 minutes to start boiling. So with wort rather than pure water and losses figure at least a good hour or MORE to reach a rolling boil.

Throw away the thermostat and substitute a on off switch...