Kauri Road Brewery 2.2

[Barry]

Tiny bit more progress tonight saw my making holes in my stainless pots for the electric elements.

Massive thanks to Guy Gibson for the lend of the chassis punch, legend.

I'm doing these following theelectricbrewery.com's instructions to the letter – 2 gang metal junction box, faceplates either side, 32mm hole through a faceplate on the back, element, oring, washer on the outside, lock nut on the inside. Unsurprisingly looks like it'll be perfect.

The hold up has been waiting for some stuff to arrive from Amazon – 3 weeks overdue. Bah. Finally arrived this week so the holes are done. I'll do the rest of the work with weekend, but the end of it I should have elements all wired up.

Punch on outside:

Punch on inside:

Punch through:

Hole!

And the other one:

Cheers.

[Peter Smith]

thats my electrical engineering hat speaking.....

[Druid]

Yep, guess my Scrooge hat intervened at the prospect of a 4k power board rebuild. And that's not counting the fact that we've only got a 30a feed to the house and it would be hard to ignore tackling that while undertaking the rewiring.

[Peter Smith]

You could always put a "engineer at work - don't operate" sign on the stove ...   8)

[Barry]

@Druid, "4k power board rebuild" – did you get a quote for that much?

My dad just put a new distribution board in his new garage, the box, bars, breakers, wire etc for 3 phase cost him less than $100. Wired it himself, got a sparky to sign it off.

Not a new meter, sure, but $4k sounds like a LOT? (and would you need a new meter anyway?)

[Druid]

The cost wasn't just for a new distribution board - it also included a forced upgrade of the existing board as the sparky considered it too old and constrained to connect a new distribution board to.

[Chris Banks]

I can imagine that I just had my shed wired up with bringing power 30M (in a back breaking 600 deep diy trench) across from the house, lighting,powerpoints,sub box,breakers,RCD's ,cabling etc - and after fixing sins of previous electricians and updating 99% of the main board to meet new codes and getting inspectors out etc etc etc @~$6k

[Barry]

That's a long list of stuff. Well worth it in the end I'm sure Chris :)

[Chris Banks]

Yip Im happy - I may regret not bringing 3 phase in from the street one day - but when I have had prices for that at previous propertys with even short runs it has been outrageous and this place has a longish driveway.... have to sell a lot of sparge arms before that happens lol

[Scott H]

Did you get your elements fitted over the weekend Barry?

I managed to get my 5.5 installed and hooked up on sat morn for sundays brew, it kicks ass got from sparge to boil in 1/2 the time of my gas burner. Next stage will either be my new MT or ordering the PID's and probes.

[Barry]

Hey Scott, nah I got barely anything done – too busy. And I couldn't locate any JB Weld (or alternative) to make up the junction boxes as per directions. I did get them drilled out and primered though, might get them painted tonight. I have to clean up the holes in the kettles a touch too.
Away all this weekend also, slow progress! Too bloody busy.