one piece at a time

[Chia]

i am sure this has been looked at before, but i am changing my brew system. I am thinking of going single tear, and thought i might make the HLT electric. my garage has 220, but it is an old 220. i put an inline hot water heater and it blows the breaker, so i know i have to have the electric checked out. I figure i will use my burner for now for boil, (i dont know enough enough about electric to do the boil kettle yet) My big question is what and how many elements do i need to get? i have one HLT that is 15.5 gallon, if i make 10 gallon batches, can i get my sparge water hot enough during the mash? is it more i like the idea of electric because it will cut down on runs to buy propane, but dont know that much about it. if you can point me to any good threads that would be great. Oh, and i was thinking of having a friend of mine set it up with a timer and temp controller so that it will be ready to go when i get out to the garage. Thanks!

 

[iijakii]

There's so many ways to go about this. First off, why do you think you can make an eHLT but not an eBK? I don't see the differential.

Before you can continue you need to find out what kind of circuitry you have to work with. You should be able to figure out what your 'old 220' is rated for and run just one large 5500 or 4500w element to it. That'd be plenty. Search here for builds with a combination of keywords like: 1 pid, ebiab, simple/cheap. Or if you want to go super simple you don't need a PID and can run a PWM like https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/simple-ssvr-controlled-e-biab-rig-443594/ .

 

[Chia]

thanks,
I was worried about the time it would take to get to a boil, and the amount of draw it would put on my old wiring. I was thinking the HLT would not have to boil and could get up to temp a little slower. am i off on that?

 

[Spookgolds]

I got it one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime...

Sorry, that post made me start singing one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs...

 

[augiedoggy]

I got it one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime...

Sorry, that post made me start singing one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs...

Lol "you'll know it me when I come through your town"..... I was thinking the exact same thing...

Check your breaker to see how many amps your 220 line is rated for... your breaker could also be flake too or you may just need to clean the connections in your outlet box....

 

[Chia]

that was the theme for the post, doing it all one piece at a time as i sneak this together without the wife seeing how much it will cost. will check the breaker ASAP. Thanks for the help so far.

 

[augiedoggy]

also look to see if the 220 line has 4 wires.... thats what you ideally want to install a gfci (ground fault circuit) you can do it with 3 and it will work but it wont meet code. you want a ground and a neutral as well as two hot wires...

 

[sennister]

I agree that the first step is to see how big the 220V Breaker is that keeps tripping. Also is it the only run to the garage? I ask because my "Garages" are detached. They both have 220V runs to them with sub panels in the "Garages". My main one which is my shop has a 60A run. I have to keep in mind that the 60A is shared because that is the run from the house to the shop. I am working on a 50A panel but if I am doing other things out there at the same time as brewing, I may not be able to run the 50A panel wide open with both elements going. The reason I am mentioning this is that lets say you have a 30A circuit like I have going to my other garage. That is fine but if you build a panel to use 30A which is pretty common, you may run into issues when you turn on the lights, have a radio going, and run some other stuff. This is because all of these things share the same 30A.

As for the breaker tripping, again, what is the rating of the breaker and what was the load. I have seen point of use water heaters that are pretty small and run on 110 all the way up to ones that take 3x 50A 220V circuits. Were you plugging in a 50A 220V unit into a circuit that could only take 30A well there is the problem. Don't need to dig much more into it. But if it was a 20A heater in a 30A circuit there is either a wiring issue or since you mentioned the stuff is old, the breaker might need to be replaced. Don't put a bigger one in but replace it with a matched size breaker as the breaker rating should match the capacity of the wiring. The wiring is what the breaker is protecting. I have seen where breakers trip too often and they will trip at lower and lower ratings. I have a house built in 63 and had some issues with breakers tripping even though I wasn't very close to the max load. Like a 30A that was tripping on a 20A load. Replaced it with a new 30A and it has been fine. Garages are common for this as people tend to trip them more often than circuits in the house.

 

[jeffmeh]

I got it one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime...

Sorry, that post made me start singing one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs...

Love the avatar. We have two Eskie rescues here.

 

[Chia]

it is three wire not four, and the garage is also detached with a breaker box in it. I have really thought about trying to dig out from under my deck and replace the wire, but that is just too expensive. The garage does have a breaker box in it, and that is the one that trips, but the power comes from the house. nothing trips in the house when the garage does.

could i run a HLT for mash and get the water hot enough to sparge with a 220 element that is running at 110? i have a friend that did that with a rims.

 

[sennister]

it is three wire not four, and the garage is also detached with a breaker box in it. I have really thought about trying to dig out from under my deck and replace the wire, but that is just too expensive. The garage does have a breaker box in it, and that is the one that trips, but the power comes from the house. nothing trips in the house when the garage does.

could i run a HLT for mash and get the water hot enough to sparge with a 220 element that is running at 110? i have a friend that did that with a rims.

It isn't really all that practical. Keep in mind when you take a 240v rated element and send 120v at it the end result isn't half power. It is actually quarter.

From my favorite law when doing electrical work. Ohm's law that is....

Lets look at a 5500W element rated for 240V as that is a popular one out there.

5500/240= 22.916A
240/22.916= 10.473 Ohms

The ohms tells us the resistance of the element which is a constant. Now apply that to the 120v

120/10.473 = 11.4580 A
120*11.4580= 1374.96419 Watts

So as you see if you apply 120v to a 5500w element you only get 1374.96 watts out so a little more than 1/4 the output.

So what does this mean in real time. Well there is a spreadsheet I found out there to calculate rough times. To take 6 gallons of water using an element with 1374.96 watts of power and a starting temp of 50F and 95% efficiency. You are talking 109 minutes to get to boil. That is running at 100% power provided you had 120V at the outlet. You may not have that much so plan on 2 hrs. Add a second element so you have 2749.92 and you are looking at 54 minutes.

To run two elements you need to ensure they are on separate circuits and separate sides of the 220v main. So it is possible. You just have to decide what works for you.

 

[augiedoggy]

if its at least 20a 220 you could run a 4000 or 4500w element and be safe.you will want a good ground though for the gfci.

 

[Spookgolds]

Love the avatar. We have two Eskie rescues here.

Yeah looking back we wish we would have gotten 2. They seem to do better in pairs. He definitely exhibits many traits of the breed. Sometimes it's a ton of fun, sometimes it's a PITA. I named my "brewery" after him, because like my beers, he is very "in your face".

I know, I know, sorry...

 

[augiedoggy]

Yeah looking back we wish we would have gotten 2. They seem to do better in pairs. He definitely exhibits many traits of the breed. Sometimes it's a ton of fun, sometimes it's a PITA. I named my "brewery" after him, because like my beers, he is very "in your face".

I know, I know, sorry...

I named my first beer after my shepard... even printed labels with his picture on them...
My GF and I help run a dog rescue in the buffalo area and we have been fostering for years. We get all sorts of different personalities in our foster pets..

 

[jeffmeh]

I know I brought off topic, but I will also add that despite the brewery name and logo, I do not have a pet beaver.

 

[augiedoggy]

I know I brought off topic, but I will also add that despite the brewery name and logo, I do not have a pet beaver.

I'm not gonna touch this one...

 

[Spookgolds]

I'm not gonna touch this one...

That's what she said...