Water heater element question

[Beer Baron]

I was wondering - if you have a 220V GFCI breaker installed, can you use the test and reset buttons as an off/on instead of plugging and unplugging the cord?

[cornhole]

I think I've seen them online as cheap as $70, but they aren't cheap. Here's something for $62, but I'm not sure I believe that's exactly what we want: http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/produ ... 02400&pfx=
Here's a 50 amp (more than I need) wall mount one for $80:
http://www.1800pools.com/6895_BLK_Black ... _240V.html
http://spapartsshop.com/6895-BLK.aspx
Maybe this, for $58:
http://www.poolsupplyworld.com/spagfci/ ... id=GN30638

I briefly looked at these and I don't think they are 2 pole. The Best Solution is to have the GFCI Breaker installed in your main breaker box.
FYI, To run the element at 220V one uses both legs of the wiring (red and black), green to ground. White is left out.
GFCI could save your life, far beyond just a circuit breaker. You won't know that you've unknowingly broken your ground connection without a GFCI breaker.

[cornhole]

Thanks all for the replys.

Sounds like That contoller really is worth the money. I'm in a tough spot where I want to but the peices for my "dream system" now instead of settleing for what works for now (ie an electric turkey fryer). Yet I can't quite afford it yet. Maybe I'll buy the kettle now with the 3500 watt element and "plug, unplug" it untill I can aford the controller and then upgrade to the 4500 Watt controller.

Thanks again everyone!
PB

Here's some links to some related things I am working on.
Circuit Diagram
Built Circuit

[foomench]

The Best Solution is to have the GFCI Breaker installed in your main breaker box.

Now that you point that out, it occurs to me that I might already have a GFCI breaker installed then. I'm going to use the 240V line that is wired to go to my oven. My actual oven is gas, so that line isn't being used, but it is about 10 feet away from where I want to set up my brewery.

[Cliff]

I could buy one of these http://www.highgravitybrew.com/productc ... 2657&qty=1 The problem is they recomend the 4500 watt element because its stainless steel and ultra low density.

Which makes absolutely ZERO sense.

Conventional black metal water Heater elements are sheathed in Inconel. Inco alloys are super dense nickel chrome steel alloys that resist pretty much every single thing you can do to them. All Stainless Steel has is chrome as an oxide passive layer on the surface. Get it too hot and that chrome migrates away from the surface allowing Rust.
Expose it to the wrong or too much acid or base ( food acids are adequate) and the Chrome Oxide layer can be flashed off and washed away - causing Rust.

However in order to use this element you need one of these
http://www.highgravitybrew.com/productc ... 6p3084.htm
otherwise you end up with a 20% evaporation rate.

Not so.
You can run a PID or a BCS 460 to control water heater elements.
Well actually the thing is the controller controls a Relay preferably solid state that snap on and off really fast maintaining an energy output to your liking. The Relay, in turn, controls the water heater element.

The electrical is really very simple.

[biertourist]

Is there a cheaper way to build one of these controllers with a potentiometer or rheostat or something? I'm not an electrician however my father in law is so I'm sure he could help me put something together.

An extremely clever scheme from a fellow named Ken Schwarz, put a simple diode in one of the power lines to the heating element with a switch across it. With the switch closed (shorting out the diode) the heater produces full power. With the switch open the diode only conducts when the voltage across it is positive (half the time) and the power is reduced to 50% of full.

AJ, I've actually been thinking about something similar to this Ken Schwarz solution as an interim solution for my own electric kettle, but aren't we talking about reducing the VOLTAGE by 50% and therefore the heating capacity to 1/4 the original wattage? The statement that the "power" is reduced to 50% of full can be easily taken to mean that the heating wattage is reduced by 50%, which I don't think would be the case with this design. (If the feed on my 240v 5500 watt element were reduced to 120v, I'd have only 1375 watts of heat output; not enough to maintain a boil in an uninsulated kettle.


Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to use one lower-powered electric element for boiling 5 gallon batches (2000w 120v) and another higher-powered element for boiling 10 gallon batches (5500watts) if I don't want to make the initial investments in SSRs and a PID controller. -My element will be screwed into a tri-clamp to NSP adapter so swapping elements isn't actually that difficult or time consuming...



Adam

[ajdelange]

No, you are not reducing the voltage. You (or the diode actually) is switching it completely off for alternate half cycles. AC current consists of alternating positive and negative pulses. The diode blocks one or the other. With the diode in the circuit power is transferred only for half the pulses and thus you get half the power.

Were you to connect a true rms voltmeter to this circuit you would find, with the diode shorted, an rms voltage across the heating element of 240 V. If you open the switch so the diode is in the circuit the voltage would drop to 240/sqrt(2). This is because the meter squares the input, averages over some time period and then takes the square root (root mean square). If the power is only applied half the time the mean square is 1/2 what it is normally and the rms thus 1/sqrt(2).