what are you guys using for heating in your chambers

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I have an electric heating pad (~$30) from a walgreens type drugstore. I wrap it around the fermenter with a bungie cord. I switch my STC1000 to heating mode and use it to maintain a minimum temp in my ferm chamber. It works pretty well.
 
I have a larger ferm chamber (2' x 6') and use a personal heater for now. My garage is usually not too cold (Southern California) so it hasn't had to work much yet.
 
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Funny that this should come up now. I just finished my first ferm chamber last night. I was originally using a travel hair dryer, but after reading about a bunch of potential horror stories, I went with a ceramic heat lamp bulb. I figure a slow, steady 60 watt heat is probably better/safer than a fast hot 1875 watt heat. i have been testing the heating cooling and step features of my new Inkbird itc-310 and I am VERY happy with how everything is turning out. Brewing my first real batch for the new chamber this weekend.
 
With my chest freezer in a 45 deg winter basement a 40 watt light bulb does the trick.
I see your from Geneva we have a place and got married on Keuka lake...love it up there...in the summer of course
 
I use (2) 15w Carboy heat belts inside of a 9cf chest freezer. The freezer and the two heat belts are controlled by an stc1000, they reside in my 40f garage and the two heat belts have no problems maintaining temperature.
 
JONNYROTTEN said:
With my chest freezer in a 45 deg winter basement a 40 watt light bulb does the trick.
I see your from Geneva we have a place and got married on Keuka lake...love it up there...in the summer of course
Click to expand...

yeah its nice in the summer....not so much at the moment with this weather
 
Researching the same thing as well right now. Leaning towards personal heaters since I do not yet believe that the heat pads/wraps will bring my chest freezer to a reasonable temperature with it being 0C (32F) and lower outside right now. The other option I was looking at is the ceramic (non light emitting) reptile bulbs, but they seem to be more work than the personal heaters.
 
I have been using only a 4" muffin fan with great success. I found out by accident that it will warm the chamber when I just intended to circulate the air. It's rated at 24w of power consumption, most of which is generated heat.
My chambers are 1.5" foam insulated and sized to just fit a carboy in a milk crate.
It will heat a chamber to over 80F from ambient 57, over night.
It's all I use for heat, with an STC1000+

Edit: I originally had muffin fan sized heaters on the fan, rated at 200w. Very nice units, but produced too much heat. The chamber got too hot before the carboy temp came up, causing overshoot. I put a diode in series with the heater which reduced it to 100w, but that was still too much. It was shortly after that I discovered the fan alone was enough to to the job.
 
Use a fermwrap attached to the back of my fridge. Works just fine even when my basement gets into the 40s. I have a dual controller....so I can set a temp and the heat pad will heat and the refridge will cool giving me the perfect temp every time.

ferm.jpg
 
Phildo253 said:
Funny that this should come up now. I just finished my first ferm chamber last night. I was originally using a travel hair dryer, but after reading about a bunch of potential horror stories, I went with a ceramic heat lamp bulb. I figure a slow, steady 60 watt heat is probably better/safer than a fast hot 1875 watt heat. i have been testing the heating cooling and step features of my new Inkbird itc-310 and I am VERY happy with how everything is turning out. Brewing my first real batch for the new chamber this weekend.
Click to expand...


^^^^THIS! One ferm chamber fire was enough for me!
 
I use a 150w ceramic bulb from eBay. No issues for 1.5 years. My chamber is probably close to 5 cu ft.
 
I use a 30W heating tape. It is intended to wrap around pipes to stop them freezing in winter, but it works well attached to the inside of the chamber.
 
I use PICO Brews Kegsmarts that consists of a controller that controls the keezer and the hearing wraps that go over the fermentation corneys to keep a constant temp the specific beer.
 
Totally said:
Researching the same thing as well right now. Leaning towards personal heaters since I do not yet believe that the heat pads/wraps will bring my chest freezer to a reasonable temperature with it being 0C (32F) and lower outside right now. The other option I was looking at is the ceramic (non light emitting) reptile bulbs, but they seem to be more work than the personal heaters.
Click to expand...

I have an upright freezer for a fermentation chamber in my garage. My only heat source is a 15w brew belt. I brewed saturday when the temperature in my garage was 28F. While i was brewing, i plugged the brew belt in and left it in the fermentation chamber. By the time i put the fermenter in there, the temp in the chamber rose 20 degrees. With the temp probe and the heater both attached to the fermenter, it had no problem keeping the temp at 59F (my set fermentation temperature) until fermentation kicked off.

Freezers are well insulated. A little bit of heat goes a long way in there.
 
TallDan said:
I have an upright freezer for a fermentation chamber in my garage. My only heat source is a 15w brew belt. I brewed saturday when the temperature in my garage was 28F. While i was brewing, i plugged the brew belt in and left it in the fermentation chamber. By the time i put the fermenter in there, the temp in the chamber rose 20 degrees. With the temp probe and the heater both attached to the fermenter, it had no problem keeping the temp at 59F (my set fermentation temperature) until fermentation kicked off.

Freezers are well insulated. A little bit of heat goes a long way in there.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the info, thats not too bad really.

Though I think I would like a little warmer for some ale ferments and even warmer for doing Saisons.

I will keep that in mind and not go too high in watts if I go the ceramic infrared bulb route though.

Input much appreciated.
 
Like everyone else, i use and recommend the Lasko Myheat 100 heaters. 200W may sound like a lot but honestly i think its under that by quite a bit. Imagine its heat output similar to what your car vents would put out on like medium/high, hot air but not scorching by any means.

The built in fan means your going to keep the entire chamber a constant temperature unlike just using a light bulb or heat mat by itself. Also the built in temp kill means if something goes wrong and my chamber gets stuck on(I had a STC1000 do this), it will kill the entire heater once it reaches a specific temperature until i physically unplug and turn it on/off manually regardless of if its getting power.

Honestly those of you that use Ceramic bulbs/etc i have no idea how you sleep at night or go away on vacation when those bulbs could get stuck on for 24+ hours when(not if) your relay fails and your not there monitoring it, best case just melt the inside of your chamber a bit before the bulb pops, or your fridge/freezer gets wrecked running 100% trying to keep the inside cool, or worst case start a fire.

I like knowing my chamber will never get above 115F, even if my BrewPi relay fails open while heating. Yes ill have a ruined beer depending on where it was in fermentation, but i wont be dealing with home insurance either.
 
Bought the Honeywell Personal Heater today since I saw it on sale. It has two settings low 170 watts and high 250 watts, and a little fan which as @FuzzeWuzze mentioned is perfect for circulation in the chamber.

Tried it out at the low setting for a while and it really doesn't get that hot at all, I think it will be perfect.

The "Frequently Bought Together" item with this on amazon is the Inkbird ITC-308 (which I am using) so thats a good sign :)
 
i purchased an electric blanket and i take out the cord (and i made it just a blanket :p ) and knit it on a grill rack i will upload a photo soon!! it makes great work..
 
Action said:
I use an old hair dryer
Click to expand...


I used what was basically a hairdryer until I had a FIRE in my ferm chamber!
Fortunately, my temp sensor shut off the power. Lesson learned!
Now I use a ceramic reptile bulb in a std bulb outlet.
It's been functioning for several years w/o an issue.
 
govner1 said:
I used what was basically a hairdryer until I had a FIRE in my ferm chamber!
Fortunately, my temp sensor shut off the power. Lesson learned!
Now I use a ceramic reptile bulb in a std bulb outlet.
It's been functioning for several years w/o an issue.
Click to expand...



Oh great....now you tell me.....I will keep an eye on it.
 
BrewerTom said:
I use a seed germination mat in mine, works great.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of using similar. Germination mat or maybe a reptile/pet mat.
I'd like to put it underneath the carboy, separated by a wire fridge shelf (dont want to damage the mat with a heavy carboy sliding in and out) with maybe a little airspace between.
Think this would do the trick?
Seems like a real nice space saver.

I should mention that heating will probably be a fairly rare event...most of the time my chamber will be cooling.
 
Fermwrap taped to the back of my chest freezer and attached to an inkbird. Works great and is very safe.
 
Roland_deschain said:
An older style heading pad.
Click to expand...
+1^^^ this. The old style doesn't have an auto-cutoff switch. Mine is waterproof and I just set the Fermonster or bucket right on top of the pad in my chest freezer ferm chamber. I set the pad to low/med and control with the heat side of my STC-1000+. Since the Fermenting Vessel (FV) is on top of the pad, the gentle heat is directly applied to the wort through the bottom of the FV without having to waste energy heating the rest of the chamber. Ed
:mug:
 
WestMichBrewer said:
I was thinking of using similar. Germination mat or maybe a reptile/pet mat.
I'd like to put it underneath the carboy, separated by a wire fridge shelf (dont want to damage the mat with a heavy carboy sliding in and out) with maybe a little airspace between.
Think this would do the trick?
Seems like a real nice space saver.

I should mention that heating will probably be a fairly rare event...most of the time my chamber will be cooling.
Click to expand...

Looks like an "old style" heating pad is easier to find. One at Walgreens is $13 and can ship free to your closest Walgreens store.
Sounds like a weiner.
 
WestMichBrewer said:
Looks like an "old style" heating pad is easier to find. One at Walgreens is $13 and can ship free to your closest Walgreens store.
Sounds like a weiner.
Click to expand...
Just make sure the one you get is rated for "moist" heat. In other words, the pad itself (not the cloth cover) should be waterproof. Normally, it won't get wet anyway, but why take chances? Ed
:mug:
 

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