ReptiHeat Cable?? yay r nay?

[fatherdan]

Lots of searching and still cant find my answer. So bear with me.

I have a 25 cubic foot fridge/freezer freezer on top

I can fit 4-7.9gallon fermenters in fridge section.


no room for a bulb except the top. will repti heat cable be enough taped to fridge sides.

Northeast OH, so it gets fairly cold.

Thanks

 

[fatherdan]

Am I posting this in wrong section?

 

[Yooper]

I'm thinking about this. What would the ambient temperature be inside of the chamber?

 

[drgonzo2k2]

If you're talking about reptile heat tape, I think you should be fine. I've got 6' of heat tape that line the walls of my converted chest freezer fermentation chamber, and I can get that guy up near 100 even when it's 32 out, and my chamber sits inside my unheated garage.

 

[fatherdan]

Thanks. Reptile heat cable I have is 23'. 50 watts. 68 degrees should be the highest I need to get. Hoping what I have is enough.

I'm using the ITC-1000…with just the sensor lead. What's the standard placement for that? Thanks again.

 

[bobbytuck]

I'm using it in my fermentation chamber -- (a small chest freezer in basement with year-round ambient about 65F) -- with no issues. It's great, actually. It takes a while to heat up, but I'm able to get up in the upper 70's with it, no prob (for Saisons).

I'm about to brew another Saison with Omega's new hybrid strain ('Saisonstein's Monster') and plan to see if I can get into the 80s for the later stages of fermentation.

The key is that the cable can't cross over itself. So I used Gorilla tape to tape the cable around the mid-to-lower interior of my chest freezer. Then I'm using a Fermostat for the temp controller. Dual port lid on my Big Mouth Bubbler: one port airlock, the other for the submersible temp probe. Works great.

I fiddled with using a lightbulb in a coffee can, but for whatever reason the bulb made me nervous in the enclosed freezer. No reasons why -- it worked okay temp-wise -- but I feel much more comfortable with the cable. The only downside (as I say above) is that it takes a while to heat up (more or less depending on the size of your freezer, I suspect). It's a slow, steady heat. I can touch the cable when it's heating, BTW -- no issues there.

Here's the cable I'm using:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001OVBEEK/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[drgonzo2k2]

Oh, I see you guys are talking about an actual heating cable.

I was talking about Reptile heat tape, specifically the 12" width sold here.

This is the same stuff that home brew shops rebrand as "ferm wrap" and sell for a lot more.

I've got 6' of it lining the walls of my chest freezer (held in place with Aluminum foil tape), and I've got no problem going all the way up to 100F.

I could probably go higher even, but haven't had the need yet.

I've held a couple of sours at 80F for a month and have a Saison that I ramp from 68F to 90F over the course of a week or so, and it works great.