Tighten your screws and lugs

[Beerwildered]

Friendly reminder, electric brewers - at least once every few brews, you might want to grab a screwdriver and tighten all of your electrical connections. Loose connections start fires... like this one. Luckily, all of my safety checks worked - gfci breaker tripped, and nothing/nobody was hurt. Parts are replaceable. This could have been worse... so make it a routine to check those connections.

 

[Dgallo]

Holy **** brother. Glad your safety equipment worked as intended and everyone/thing is ok

 

[Beerwildered]

Holy **** brother. Glad your safety equipment worked as intended and everyone/thing is ok

Yeah... as the son of a Master Electrician, and as a former electrician myself, I'm thoroughly embarrassed that I didn't check the lugs before starting up this new system. It's now a written part of my pre-brewing plan... tighten screws on electrical connections now comes before close all of the valves.

 

[mabrungard]

A double check of terminal tightness is certainly a good idea. Another thing you can do with your system is to use a non-contact infrared thermometer on each termination to see if any are “hot”.

 

[GParkins]

Here's another example of what can go wrong:

 

[doug293cz]

Here's another example of what can go wrong:
View attachment 727359

Great illustration of terminal overheating while it's actually happening.

Brew on

 

[Mr. Vern]

Here's another example of what can go wrong:

Thats one way to solder your connection.

 

[Sundy]

I recommend lock washers where they can be used.

 

[chessking]

Just for Sh*ts and grins, I gave my pannel the once over, and found all the low voltage stuff was fine. The connections on the high voltage contactors were a quarter turn out of tight, but the real surprise was the SSR. The low side was good but the high side took about a half a turn on both. I could actually wiggle the wires a little. Thanks
Beerwildered for the heads up

 

[day_trippr]

Stranded wire is particularly prone to the "loose screw" paradigm, but even solid copper has a degree of pliability that in high-current applications can exhibit increasing connection resistance with repeated high-current cycles. It's actually a bit disconcerting when one considers how many candidates there might be in the typical domicile that never see a second visit...

Cheers!