Heat Belt Problem

[white.grant]

Been a bit cold in the gong and I have been using my heat belt snugged around two fermenters in the last week.

I have been controlling the temperature with my fridgemate, and covered both of the fermenters with a nice woollen blanket for insulation. Everything seemed to be working quite well, maintaining 18c, until last night when I noticed that the heat belt has scorched the outer casing.





The scorching is worse where it wasn't in contact with the fermenter and the outer casing is now brittle. The belt was still working, but I am alarmed by the damage and wonder just how far a fire was away. Glad it wasn't my electric blanket.

cheers

grant

 

[Fourstar]

Those things scare the hell out of me, my housemate had one. I thaught this would be good tomaintain temps in winter.... WRONG.

i plugged it in to check the temp with my sight thermometer. 1st of all it was too hot to handle, secondly it was registering 93 degrees!

Yeahh... i want to boil my fermantion do i. :huh: Maybe i will wrap it around my HLT to help bring up to dough in temps! :lol:

 

[Sammus]

I've been using em in the winter for years without seeing that happen, I guess they need something to dissipate their heat into. I use just one per fermenter

lol fourstar: good luck, theyre only 25W. What are all these chumps doing with 3600W elements when a simple heatbelt will do! quick better let all the biab no chillers there's an easier way!

 

[Fourstar]

lol fourstar: good luck, theyre only 25W. What are all these chumps doing with 3600W elements when a simple heatbelt will do! quick better let all the biab no chillers there's an easier way!

One cannot recognise sarcasm?

Not that i have used one of these horrible things as i'd always prefer a colder ferment that a hotter one (minimums i usually hit are 16deg ambient anyway) but how long do you usually keep these on? For the whole ferment or to bring it up to 18ish deg, turn off, then turn on, etc etc?

 

[white.grant]

Hey Fourstar, they work well when you regulate the temperature with a tempmate or similar, but like I said both fermenters were happily sitting on 18 degrees but the belt wasn't happy.

 

[wambesi]

Yeah I've used my two for years with fridgemates to regulate the temp.
My orange one has some slight scorch marks but not brittle and still serves me well.

I have now started to use it sitting on the inside of my old chest freezer (metal plated) to keep the ambient air temp inside it and it seems to work well.

 

[Fourstar]

Hey Fourstar, they work well when you regulate the temperature with a tempmate or similar, but like I said both fermenters were happily sitting on 18 degrees but the belt wasn't happy.

what about uncontrolled.. whats their usual max temp?

 

[Sammus]

One cannot recognise sarcasm?

Not that i have used one of these horrible things as i'd always prefer a colder ferment that a hotter one (minimums i usually hit are 16deg ambient anyway) but how long do you usually keep these on? For the whole ferment or to bring it up to 18ish deg, turn off, then turn on, etc etc?

Lol seems like you had trouble recognising it too ahh the joys of text based communication.

anywho, temps drop below 10 here in winter, and sometimes only get up to 14-15 during the day. I have a heat belt plugged into a fridgemate on 'heat' mode with a probe on my fermenter. Keeps it happy :icon_cheers:

 

[Brewmeister70]

I agree that they have their place in keeping temperature constant but do benefit from having a controller.

My set up includes a couple of controllers. One controls the chest freezer and sometimes need to be set lower than the desired beer temperature when the brew hits high krausen but a single temperature belt on one of the fermenter is set to the low-end temperature and connected to a controller.

It works well because both ends of the temperature spectrum are covered and the controllers don't work against each other because I dial both in to where I know they work considering the differentials between models (one is analogue doing the freezer and the other is from Craft Brewer).

Probably far easier to have a dual controller from Craft Brewer but if it works...

cheers,

Brewmeister70 B)

 

[white.grant]

what about uncontrolled.. whats their usual max temp?

Will depend on the volume of the fermenter, but I'm guessing a nice fuselly 27-30 degrees wouldn't be out of the question if you let one go.

 

[wambesi]

what about uncontrolled.. whats their usual max temp?

I remember seeing 26deg on the packaging, but not sure if that was an upper or lower number.

 

[Sammus]

yeah it seems like mine is rarely on, I reckon itd have to get up to the high 20s pretty easily...

 

[Fourstar]

yeah it seems like mine is rarely on, I reckon itd have to get up to the high 20s pretty easily...

yeah, with its operating temp of 95 deg i wouldnt be suprised for 23L.

Heh just out of interest i might wrap the heat belt around my stock pot/HLT on Thursday night with 15L of tap water overnight and see what temp it gets to. (rather than plastic, i dont want the above to happen)

 

[Sammus]

I think the above only happened where the heatbelt wasn't in contact. I reckon itd be fine as long as its touching something to take the heat its putting out.

 

[technocat]

what about uncontrolled.. whats their usual max temp?

I left mine on and forgot about it. Had a blanket around it, ambient was 13C and beer in fermenter climbed to 32C.
Bought the temp down in the freezer in a couple of hours and happy to say the beer survived without any noticeable off taste.

 

[afromaiko]

I've had a heat pad melt too, in similar circumstances.