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.

[Scott H]

Hi Greame. Welcome. I'm pretty sure that the electric brewery does have a 240 conversion section.

[Barry]

Its in the forum:
http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25393&s...

[Matt Lory]

Not looking to hijack this thread, however, I have a 4m length of some 10/3 SJOOW Jacket, 30 Amp 300V calbe (i.e. the element cable used by the electric brewery) left over from my build.  Would this be useful for anyone?

[Peter Smith]

I will have it matt email me

[Adam Sparks]

I say if you can follow instructions competently and take your time then you will be fine working from Kal's site without knowing a lot about electricity. If you read some basic theory along the way and test as you go then you'll actually find its not hard to put together. And then if something breaks you'll know where and how to replace it! Use an RCD (if you don't have them already in your house) on a normal 10amp house socket and that will allow you to test quite safely as you go. Only thing you can't test till you have a 30amp outlet are the elements.

In saying all that, I have very very basic understanding of electrical theory and now that I Im heating water and commissioning everything I can't for the life of me figure out why my elements don't draw the current I expected!

Here's a picture of the volt and amp meter telling me that a) I have less voltage than I did yesterday (it was 236) and still only 20amps which works out to 4400W (these are 5500 watt elements).

Any idea's electrical heads?

[Barry]

Have you tried a different meter? Like a portable multi-meter I mean, something you know is accurate.

The shunts I've heard are very accurately aligned with their meter, you can't mix and match. Could that be the issue?

[Adam Sparks]

My meter isn't rated for this much current unfortunately

[Adam Sparks]

And the shunt is the just the little donut which came with the meter. I assume that's all good. Will track down a better multimeter and see what's up

[Barry]

Ah a donut. Interesting. I haven't had mine under element load yet so can't tell you whether it's reading what I expect. Hoping it's all G!

[Peter Church]

I would think it is a supply side issue, more demand in the neighbourhood so less horsepower coming in, see what you get on the meter late at night when demand is lowest

a 5500 watt element recieving 223 volts is derated to the equivalent of  4750 watts, this will only draw 19.8 amps

I find this calculator pretty useful

http://gnipsel.com/beer/software/calculators/electric-heat.xls

[Adam Sparks]

next up Im going to add a 2 pos switch to the right of the reset button for switching the HLT over to timer mode. Im hoping that I can make use of the second alarm in the B3E and set the HLT to turn on before I get up in the morning.

If I pass one side of the SSR control signal coming from the pid through a NO contact that should work right? with both sides of the hot timer switch being NC contacts

[Peter Smith]

What voltage does it show with the element off?  if you have say 80ft of 30amp wire and some connection that are not perfect you can see a voltage drop  or 1 % or more on 80ft at 20 amps, add in another 1% misread by the cheap volt / amp meter....    now you are say 2% off a 238v supply = 233  I would try to put a fluke on it, I have a fluke that has clamp function so you can read actual amps without breaking the circuit

Barry found this one somewhere for auber- see pdf, but you could just use any timers high going alarm signal to switch on the output relay for the hlt heater ....   have to say I was pissed to find out the timer auber could not just switch the SSR driver off directly if it was coded against a timer....   pretty simple you would think....