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Heat chamber for Rims system

Simie

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I've been brewing all grain for about a year now and basically use a rims/herms system (I heat the mash and circulate back in). I will be moving up to a pid controlled heat chamber like I see is several systems. I will be using a 6000w, 22 inch, hot water(?) heating element at 110 volts knocking down the power to about 1500 watts. I see most people use 1 1/2 copper pipe to put the element in but was wondering if 2 1/2 would work okay? I already have the 2 1/2 in my inventory. What do you guys think?

Thanks, Simie

 
I suggest you re think the PID
Look at either the BCS 460 or even better the Arduino PWM technology which you can contro yourself using open source code.
PIDS are not terribly flexible and you gotta invoke a slew of incomprehensible coding every time you change an output state so if you want to change the temp of a mash step then  it's effort.
And the Fuzzy logic most of the have is bothersome too. I don't want a chip deciding how I will run a mash based on some math algorithm that has nothing to do with my intentions.

I don't know if Love controllers are such PITAs as PIDs.

If you want some thing like a RIMS chamber why not use a Corny~?  It'll also hold enough for a batch  sparge.

I was planning on a  one gallon RIMS  heater and got to a place where I have been thinking that I  would really like to  batch sparge after voorlauf but don't have the heart in my  electric brewery design for a third kettle. So I may use one of my Corneys for the HLT/ RIMS heater.
My system will be for my 14.5 gallon fermenter.
I found the Arduino site after searching a way to get  PWM  technology to a series of peltier heater / coolers for my fermenter.
I didn't like the cheesy shabby  incompetent engineering job  that  Moore Beer uses their peltier system. They just let the damn things slam off and that forces all the heat from the peltier's hot side to migrate back into the fermenter destroying thermal control.  Peltiers being superb heat conductors the moment the unit is off the thermal energies swarm from the hot side to the cold and into the beer.
Ya gotta throttle them back and maybe hold them at some neutral idle till the fans are done cooling them before you go to zero energy state.  The Arduino system looks like it can do that pretty well  so long as I'm willing to tolerate the coding learning curve.


 
And lo and behold  there is an Arduino application called the Brew Troller that is allready hammered out.
 
I've been using the BCS460 to run my RIMS Chamber and it works great. I also use a 120v system for this.  I looked at building my own RIM Chamber but decided to buy one from brewershardware.com.

Here is a link to my website showing how it arrived and what was included. http://www.gbrewing.com/2010/07/30/home-brewer-rims-tube/

I really have been happy with this system and it works great. The only issue I had to overcome was using the wrong size extension cord for the first brew. It got a bit warm but didn't cause an issue. I purchased a cord with #12 wire and all is well.

Good luck!
 
I bought one of these exact units as well, and also control it with a PID.

And I disagree with the above comment that they are difficult to use/program.. I find that mine knows exactly when to add heat (a 4500w 240 volt copper water heater element running at 110v) and how much. I can raise or lower the desired temp with the push of a single button,  and it seems to be getting more intelligent with each batch. I think I bought the PID for less than 30 bucks, a 40 amp SSR and the rims tube in the link above...... and couldn't be happier.


I mounted it all in a box with two receptacles & two switches to manually override the pump (march409) and heating element..... since you really don't want the heater on until you are sure fluid is passing over it. This way I can turn the heater or pump OFF regardless of what the PID is calling for.

Talk about consistency!
 

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gbrewer said:
I've been using the BCS460 to run my RIMS Chamber and it works great. I also use a 120v system for this.  I looked at building my own RIM Chamber but decided to buy one from brewershardware.com.

I was almost sold on that BCS.
I have a bunch of issues about having to log onto to a web page to program my unit.

But I like their front end. Hell I'd pay them more than they are asking if I could get a package that did not require I log on to the Web to program my unit.  That's really my only issue.

 
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