I usually heat my water/wort with a natural gas burner (see below since there are not many of them, thank you tejassmokers.com) and a 2000 watt (120 volt) heat stick. But with my recent switch to 10 gallon batches, I've felt it takes way to much time to heat/boil. So with two 20 amp lines in my shop, I made another heat stick, this time a 1500 watt. I've also started using reflectix insulation on my kettle, but I've been curious how much effect it has.
I had a day off work so I thought I would do a little test to see what the different effective BTUs of my various heating options were.
Here's my spreadsheet if anyone is interested in the data or formulas (if you don't want to figure out the math yourself).
I realize this is far from a scientific test. I was doing other things while the test was going on. I didn't record at the same time or in the same temp range for every test. And I also did not account for the fact that water weighs less at higher temps. I just used 8.34 lbs per gallon as a general multiple.
I have discovered that my natural gas burner is really low powered. Even at 25% efficiency, its only 18,000 BTU/hr. That is enough in practice to keep 12 gallons boiling, but still that sucks. With the two heat sticks (and assuming a 25% efficient propane set up), I'm running at basically the same as a 50K BTU propane set up. That's fairly low powered for 10 gallon batches, but good enough for me.
I had a day off work so I thought I would do a little test to see what the different effective BTUs of my various heating options were.
Here's my spreadsheet if anyone is interested in the data or formulas (if you don't want to figure out the math yourself).
I realize this is far from a scientific test. I was doing other things while the test was going on. I didn't record at the same time or in the same temp range for every test. And I also did not account for the fact that water weighs less at higher temps. I just used 8.34 lbs per gallon as a general multiple.
I have discovered that my natural gas burner is really low powered. Even at 25% efficiency, its only 18,000 BTU/hr. That is enough in practice to keep 12 gallons boiling, but still that sucks. With the two heat sticks (and assuming a 25% efficient propane set up), I'm running at basically the same as a 50K BTU propane set up. That's fairly low powered for 10 gallon batches, but good enough for me.
