Planning an Electric HLT / Boil pot. Need advice on elements & controllers

[AiredAle]

bgrubb7,

There are a lot of very helpful posts on other homebrew forums, here's one example:
http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=71676&st=0

or, check out this website for info: http://ewww.scarymonster.net/homebrew/System/

or, check out this thread:
http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?t=48195

That should get you started...

 

[bgrubb7]

Thanks for the links I'll be reading all of them. I have alot more homework to do before starting on this, but I at least have a good understanding of what I need thanks to this board.

I really need to re-evaluate my needs and decide how much wattage I really need, and what I really want this thing to do for me, then work on the setup.

I really envision staying at 5 gal batches, since I'm more into the variety of brewing rather than quantity. 3500 watts should definitely be enough for a HLT, but I'm not so sure about boiling, though. Can anyone chime in on this?

I am actually OK with a 2 degree or so temp swing, so a Love On/Off controller would give me all the accuracy I'm looking for. I think that a PID may be overkill for what I need this to do. I'm heating sparge water and boiling with this, not maintaining mash temps or using it in a RIM or HERMS setup.

Even at say 5500 watts with a Love control, wouldn't this thing only be cycling on and off a couple times per minute? Wouldn't a couple mechanical relays be sufficient for that? Then I wouldn't have to worry about fans and cooling the beast with the SSRs. Don't get me wrong, I certainly see the benefits of a PID and SSRs, just not for sure that I actually need it.

 

[ksarauer]

I reworked this diagram for review. Look about right? Since I don't know exactly which terminals are which on the PID, I just used these as an example.

I am planning on a setup similar to this, and would like to add indicator lights on the kettle (junction box) to know when the element is on. Would it be best to wire these before or after the SSR?

 

[Walker]

I am planning on a setup similar to this, and would like to add indicator lights on the kettle (junction box) to know when the element is on. Would it be best to wire these before or after the SSR?

Depends on what you want to know. Do you want to know when there is power in the box or do you want to know when the element is actually pumping out heat?

I put an indicator lamp on my panel, after the SSR, so I could see when power was actually making it all the way to the element.

Side note on that, though: If you have no actual real load attached the output of the SSR, there is enough leakage current through an SSR that a small indicator lamp will light up all the time, even when the relay is "off". Confused the hell out of me when I got done wiring things and flipped the power on to make sure the switches and whatnot were working. The indicator lamp turned on and I wasn't expecting it to.

But, if I have a real load (even something like a 40W lightbulb) on the output of the SSR, then a small indicator lamp will only light up when the load is really being given power.