Gas system, 5 gallon.
To start, I put the water in the kettle, and put the lid on, and fire off the burner. This time of year at least, by the time I finish measuring out the grain and hops, It's still 20F under my strike temperature. Once it gets about 10F from strike temp, I take the lid off, add the collar and mash tun, and begin recirculating without the restrictor in place. This is where I run at +3F until I'm close to my strike temp.
I haven't bothered with a step mash yet.
For mash out, I have been running at +5F, and with a full pot, it takes about half an hour to hit the desired temp.
This is helpful..thank you. I don't have plans for step mash but I'm curious about the mashout. Is there a reason why you should not up the burner output instead of upping the pid? If it takes 30 min to mashout it would seem your not experiencing the 1.5f/min that I saw suggessted for determining the amount of burner output.