I've been fretting and futzing with my fermenter now that the cold has come.
During the winter my detached garage dips into the 40s F, and sometimes flirts with the 30s F. It is well insulated but if I'm not using it the cost to warm it is considerable, especially for a batch of beer. In the past I've used heaters directed at the fermentors almost exclusively. Hooked up to an inkbird they weren't too bad, but it was a lot of wasted heat, even in a freezer and a converted server rack.
A couple years back I picked up a used Ss glycol chiller and a jacketed fermentor which worked great for cooling, but was useless for warming. I built a "warmer" out of a beverage cooler, inkbird, aquarium heater and a sump pump which worked pretty well, but was sort of messy and took up space I needed for other stuff.
The thing is that the chiller could double as a warmer using the aquarium heater and an ink bird like device. But controlling the flow was tricky because the FTSs only had a cooling set point. All the same plumbing could be used but the set point would have to be low and the FTSs used as a relatively expense power switch. And overnight I was using blankets to keep it from cooling too much. This process caused me to hit at one point 74° F on the high side, and nightly as low as 58° F.
The solution was so simple. Buy an AC aquarium pump, some more tubing and use a second ink bird, and just completely ignore the FTSs. One ink bird maintains the 80° setpoint of the glycol reservoir, the second maintains the temperature of the fermentor. Now I don't have to babysit it and my temp range is now closer to 2° F, and for the cost of a $12 pump, in addition to what I had in boxes.
During the winter my detached garage dips into the 40s F, and sometimes flirts with the 30s F. It is well insulated but if I'm not using it the cost to warm it is considerable, especially for a batch of beer. In the past I've used heaters directed at the fermentors almost exclusively. Hooked up to an inkbird they weren't too bad, but it was a lot of wasted heat, even in a freezer and a converted server rack.
A couple years back I picked up a used Ss glycol chiller and a jacketed fermentor which worked great for cooling, but was useless for warming. I built a "warmer" out of a beverage cooler, inkbird, aquarium heater and a sump pump which worked pretty well, but was sort of messy and took up space I needed for other stuff.
The thing is that the chiller could double as a warmer using the aquarium heater and an ink bird like device. But controlling the flow was tricky because the FTSs only had a cooling set point. All the same plumbing could be used but the set point would have to be low and the FTSs used as a relatively expense power switch. And overnight I was using blankets to keep it from cooling too much. This process caused me to hit at one point 74° F on the high side, and nightly as low as 58° F.
The solution was so simple. Buy an AC aquarium pump, some more tubing and use a second ink bird, and just completely ignore the FTSs. One ink bird maintains the 80° setpoint of the glycol reservoir, the second maintains the temperature of the fermentor. Now I don't have to babysit it and my temp range is now closer to 2° F, and for the cost of a $12 pump, in addition to what I had in boxes.
