Upgrading the brew shed - adding 240v - go 30amps or 50amps?

[kal]

The topic of the night is: when moving to 240v, should I go 30amp or 50amp? Since I've got the walls removed anyway, should I install both a 30 port and a 50 port?

When you say "port" I assume you mean wall receptacle.

When I did my basement and included my electric brewery and wanted to power my 30A panel, I had the electrician pull wire rated to 50A, just in case. The breaker is 30A as is the wall receptacle, but the wire is 50A because that can't be changed easily once drywall is up.

So for now I brew with my 30A panel on my 20 gallon kettles to make 10 gallons kegged.

If ever want to go to a 50A back to back setup or bigger kettles, the wiring in the walls can accommodate. I simply have to replace the 30A breaker with a 50A, and replace the 30A wall receptacle with a 50A. (And change the control panel, kettles, and so forth too of course).

Long story short: Pull 50A wire if you think you may want to one day use 50A *if* the wire's not easily accessible.

Kal

 

[cannman]

@kal

Blichmann Engineering was nice enough to write me back and confirmed that their RIMS Rocket would work on 30 or 50 amps. I was also educated to realize that the GFCI was tracking erroneous flows of electricity and this has no direct correlation to my question.

ANYhow. Priced out the electrical build to about $800 in parts and supplies, $900 if I'm a lazy ass and don't dig the 100' trench myself. With father's day just around the corner, I've already collected $430 in Home Depot gift cards so even if Sunday is not as fruitful, I think we can move forward immediately in August (scheduling) and finally start brewing.

I'm also thinking of installing necessary items make the entire building negative pressure with hepa filtering to play with some open fermentation fantasies of mine.

No one knows yet, but I'm BBQing tomorrow...

 

[BrunDog]

You can run a 15A appliance on a 50A circuit. But it won't be protected for overload faults below "50A". So I would suggest a 20A breaker to feed that device, and the 50A breaker upstream. The GFI is ground fault, so really only the 50A would need it.

 

[itsnotrequired]

$900 if I'm a lazy ass and don't dig the 100' trench myself.

i dug the trench out to our sauna, about 150 ft. no raceway so i had to go 24" deep. i debated renting a trencher but had 2 or 3 irrigation lines i would have had to cross. i opted to go the full hand route since our soil is pure sand. once i got through the top 10-12 inches of grass/topsoil, it couldn't have been easier. no roots, no rocks. nothing. it was 'polish the shovel and wheelbarrow' type of sand.

all that being said, i would have probably hired someone for $100. if you have roots, rocks, etc., hiring seems to be the way to go. one main reason i did it was i didn't want someone else tearing up the lawn and making a mess.