Heating pads / belts

[Fairlane]

ok well I have my new cooling system up and running and sure enough it's so freakin cold here that it is completely redundant at the moment....   so I need to wire in some sort of heating implement and since I know next to nothing about them, any advice is appreciated... 

 

Cheers 

[Patrick]

I got a single electric blanket from the warehouse for $17.99 - can't get much cheaper than that! It keeps the fermenter at a steady 20C on the lowest setting. My house is a drafty tomb though.

[Brett Mason]

I'm currently using a light bulb shrouded with a malt extract can. $10 for the work light, $1 for the bulb. Linky

I am using a Fridge Mate to control the bulb but in theory you could adjust the wattage of the bulb instead but it would be difficult to keep things constant when the fermentation gets going. There are some temperature controllers on ebay.com.au which have been mentioned here which are cheaper than the Fridge Mate.

[HBay Masher]

I am using a light bulb and one of these from Jaycar
http://www.jaycar.co.nz/productView.asp?ID=QT7200&keywords=ther...
Not a bad price and readily available. I modded mine by pulling it to bits then cutting out the thermistor and reconnecting it via some wire I found in garage so the sensor can be in the chamber with the light bulb and the brain with the readout is on the outside. Works well!

[martin w]

i used to use a mirror demister which worked really well and i how use a heatlamp bulb under the fermenter which also works real well, i controlled them with an underfloor heating thermostat.you can also use a waterbed thermostat which are pretty cheap on trademe

[Fairlane]

Thanks for the replys guys.....I probably should have stated that I have a temp controller and the device is to heat an insulated keg....

http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/photo/chiller-unit?context=user

So the light bulb thing is a no go for me...

[Chris Banks]

Could you put an element in or under your glycol tank and use the temp controller to control the element whilst circulating with the pump as normal?

[Fairlane]

hmmmm not a bad idea there... I will have to work out how to put the controllers into reverse mode, but then I was going to have to do that anyway...

[Richee]

Fairlane,

I use a cheap electric blanket and a controller. I set the controller to "defrost" every hour. An evaporator probe (in a bottle of water) is used by the controller to decide if the electric blanket should be turned on and when the defrost termination temperature is reached it turns itself off. Pretty effective really, just got to watch it closely.

[martin w]

is it insulated underneath? or is the insulation removable? a mirror demister would work perfect under the insulation

[Fairlane]

Yeah I can remove the insulation no worries.... another good idea that I'll be looking into..

cheers

[Nicholas Jones]

Hey all, I use a 100W submersible aquarium heater on its lowest setting, wrap a blanket around the fermenter to insulate..on the lowest setting I get around 19-20 deg consistently. My only fear is it starts growing some nasties in the cracks and I dont get them out during sterilisation...but its a sweet $20 solution... :-)

[Fairlane]

Well thanks to everyone for their input... I have come up with the following solution which will work fine as long as I don't have the need for cooling and heating cycles in the same ferment period.

I bought a wine tank heater (which is a flash version of the mirror demister) and some extra switches for my control box so that I can simply reverse the operation of the controller, and switch it on to either auto or manual heating...

It took me a little bit to get my head round as far as wiring it all up goes as I'm not a sparky.... But it hasn't exploded yet :)