Electric Brewery's

[Scott H]

We spoke about creating a discussion so people who have or people who are thinking about and/or building can share pic's info and pitfalls to avoid.

Just about finished building my bench and hopefully will have a chance to start wiring it up this weekend. Pics to follow shortly.

[Adam Sparks]

Questions for the electrical heads.... I have wired in a 2 pos switch to have the SSR control signal latch closed when the timer is up. Delaying the HLT in this way means that the HLT mechanical relay is closed and the only thing holding back all that power is the SSR. It works but I just wanted to know if you think it is safe or not?

Now that I have it wired I feel uneasy about leaving the panel on over night with all that available power just waiting for something to flow through 

[Scott H]

I would change it so it delays closure of the mechanical relay.

SSR's tend to fail into the closed position.

[Adam Sparks]

Thanks Scott that's a much better idea!

[Peter Smith]

Adam are you using the alarm on an auber pid to latch the mech relay? Or a different timer? Can you post a schematic of your final configuration? I hope I did not put you wrong with the PDF

[Peter Smith]

Good link on an SSR failing stuck closed.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/myth-ssrs-fail-closed-state-233541/

 Sure enough... the SSR is busted. It's passing current through no matter what.

This is a good idea as well

Yes, I have a failsafe wired up. I use a contactor as the master on/off for my element, and the contactor's control signal passes through a normaly closed "alarm" relay built into my PID. If the temp ever gets over 170*F, that alarm relay opens and the contator will shut off. (I caught the overheating before the failsafe kicked in tonight).

But will require an external timer as the auber pid timer utilises the alr pins....   arrrrgh

[Adam Sparks]

Hey Peter

Im using a sestos B3S timer for the delay which is slightly different, that schematic you sent is for a pid not a timer correct?…. I chose to delay the control signal but I see thats not the safest of ways to go about it so will delay the mechanical relay and I might wire through the second alarm of my pid for a failsafe as in the homebrewtalk thread, thanks for that!

[Barry]

That PDF is a diagram sent to me by a French-Canadian chap and is for suckers like me who bought an Auber SWA-2451 before Auber changed their product description to clarify that it will not turn heating on after a time period has elapsed (allowing brewers to start their HLTs on a timer).

The SWA-2451 WILL NOT do that out of the box, instead you must follow that diagram to have the separate alarm relay/circuit switch things on (ideally with an isolator switch in between so you can also use the thing normally).

I didn't do this, the timer on that PID is a white elephant in my system. Bah humbug.

[Peter Smith]

Yeah but you could run the HLT failsafe overtemp as per that thread through the alarm port Barry (I am trying to see the silver lining in that cloud...).   Still need to bypass the SSR and act on a downstream mech relay in case the SSR fails.

Or you could trigger just direct trigger that mech relay off the big timer you have?

[Adam Sparks]

Ah that makes sense… so if you had known you would have just used a sestos PID I assume? At least you didn't omit the timer form the panel thinking you wouldn't need it!

[Barry]

Yeah definitely would've just used a sestos.

And yeah, glad I kept the separate timer!

[Scott H]

Does it turn off after a period instead barry?

If it did theres prob a way to get it to do waht you want with the addition of a Normally Closed Relay.

[Barry]

There is a way to do it using the PIDs alarm relay – no need for an additional NC relay. That's what the wiring diagram shows.
But I'd also wire in a switch so you can do it selectively and also use the PID normally.