Electric Urn And Power Outages

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sm0902

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Hi All,

Just had our power cut with my boil [thankfully] only 2 minutes from the end.

I've been wondering what I would do in the event of a storm, and being part way through a boil and having the power cut.

What do you do? Start back from where you left off when the power is back on?

Anyone had this happen to them? What did you do?

Cheers




Stuart
 
I go to plan' B ' revert back to my mongolian gas burner :p
 
Hi All,

Just had our power cut with my boil [thankfully] only 2 minutes from the end.

I've been wondering what I would do in the event of a storm, and being part way through a boil and having the power cut.

What do you do? Start back from where you left off when the power is back on?

Anyone had this happen to them? What did you do?

Cheers




Stuart

How many times in the last year has your area experienced power outages? Being a Sydney-ite, personally that's not something for me to generally be concerned about. Noosa may be different. If I was living in some Nepalese village, it might be cause to post such a question.

If your urn is tripping the breakers (or the fuse) then you are either drawing too much or the circuit isn't right. 2400w on a circuit that isn't shared with other high load devices should not be an issue, and many brewers do it.


Anyone who knows how to use Electricity had this issue before?

How to use electricity? :huh: Plugging the device in and turning it on seems to works for my usage requirements.
 
How often does the power go out compared to how often do you run out of gas?

We seem to be on the same bit of the grid as the shops down the road, so the one time the power has gone out for more than a couple of minutes they had a generator down there pretty quick to keep the shops going.
 
not really an answer to your question but .....
I use those over the side elements and I make sure I don't have any other sort of power sapping device on at the same time.

e.g
If I put on my bar heater and a slow cooker and then my wife starts up a hair dryer the might cut out.
 
it has crossed my mind as to what i'd do if there was a blackout while using my urn... i decided i'd just make it up on the spot :)

i guess if i was after bittering addition and before flavour, i'd just continue with planned boil times minus 15 minutes or so depending on how long power was out for. if it was after flavour addition i'd probably give it 15 minutes or so to see if power came back, if not i'd just thrown in the aroma hops and drop it into the cube - it will still be beer in the end. You could always adjust bitterness with hop extract or a small boil of hops in dry malt too.

in brisbane blackouts are fairly frequent in summer, both from sooks using too much AC and flogging the system and storms downing power lines etc. Most blackouts are pretty short, but I have also been out for 3-days only a few years ago.

i now live on the same section of the grid as a hospital which must have a lot of redundancy as blackouts are very rare for me now, that's my guess anyway.
 
Many variables to consider here mate, I'm not sure how to handle the blackout situation but if you're experiencing breaker trip due to overload that can be solved.

Forgive me if you're already aware of all this but in order to easily overcome overload issues go out to your switchboard and see how many power circuits you have, if you find there are a few try to discern which circuits cover which outlets. by this i mean:

1: See how many circuits are labelled "power"
2: Through a process of elimination find out which power points are operating on each circuit
this involves switching off the breaker at the switchboard then checking which power points DONT WORK
3: use your urn on a power point which is on a circuit that supplies the bedrooms and or lounge rooms etc ANYTHING OTHER THAN KITCHEN, BATHROOM OR LAUNDRY. (as the appliance here draw the most current, AMPS)

At most your urn could use about 10 amps, most power circuits are designed for at least 20 so by plugging it into a power point on a circuit with only say a phone charger, bed lamp and alarm clock, ie: Bedroom circuit, you wont experience overload tripping.

If this isnt helpful pm me mate im a sparky and happy to help.
 
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