Is There An Easy Way To Join Two Bigw Pots?

[Beerisyummy]

Or you could cut the bottom off one and make the cut off bottom end the top of the double pot. So join the 2 original tops of the pots, being the same size.

Not that I think your plan will work but please keep us posted.

:icon_cheers:

Thanks for the input.
I'm not sure if I'm reading that right. From what I can tell the joint would be tiny and wouldn't hold much.

At this stage I'm tempted to go to the garage and do it, just to prove a point. For now I'll leave it as the simple question that it was until I see a few more setups in action.

It's funny how much attention this post got on a safety standpoint when most posted DIY setups involving electricity are seriously dangerous.
I guess I'll just go watch my reef, which is held together by nothing more than silicone, using joints much smaller than proposed, carrying over half a meter of pressure and being subjected to the constant back and forth of the standing wavemaker.
I'll take a beer along of course.

Cheers.

 

[mje1980]

Hi AHBs,

After my first brew on a new rig I've been looking at the cheapest way to up the volume without buying bigger pots. Is it possible to just cut out the bottom of a second pot and just silicone them together?
There are plenty of silicones available that are food grade and allow for temperatures over 200c. Can anyone see any drawbacks to this method?
There's hardly any pressure on a joint that's only ever going to be 200mm under the surface and the strength should not be an issue. As a builder and fish guy I sleep well enough with half a tonne of water just off the bedroom and plenty of fixtures around Sydney that rely on nothing more than silicone adhesive.

Cheers
Ross.

If you're that tight, drive past a pub/bowlo late at night and grab a keg.

Seriously, read Thirsty boys 3rd point 3 or 4 times. Do it once, do it right.

 

[mje1980]

Thanks for the input.
I'm not sure if I'm reading that right. From what I can tell the joint would be tiny and wouldn't hold much.

At this stage I'm tempted to go to the garage and do it, just to prove a point. For now I'll leave it as the simple question that it was until I see a few more setups in action.

It's funny how much attention this post got on a safety standpoint when most posted DIY setups involving electricity are seriously dangerous.
I guess I'll just go watch my reef, which is held together by nothing more than silicone, using joints much smaller than proposed, carrying over half a meter of pressure and being subjected to the constant back and forth of the standing wavemaker.
I'll take a beer along of course.

Cheers.

What point would you prove? that bodgy crap can be done?. Even if it held up for years, its still a bodgy setup. If you're happy with that, go ahead. Comparing a fish tank and 2 pots stuck together with silicon for boiling liquid is a little different.

 

[Batz]

Thanks for the input.
I'm not sure if I'm reading that right. From what I can tell the joint would be tiny and wouldn't hold much.

At this stage I'm tempted to go to the garage and do it, just to prove a point. For now I'll leave it as the simple question that it was until I see a few more setups in action.

It's funny how much attention this post got on a safety standpoint when most posted DIY setups involving electricity are seriously dangerous.
I guess I'll just go watch my reef, which is held together by nothing more than silicone, using joints much smaller than proposed, carrying over half a meter of pressure and being subjected to the constant back and forth of the standing wavemaker.
I'll take a beer along of course.

Cheers.

I use silicone in power stations that will withstand 800C, food grade it is not. You want to try it B.I.Y. then have a go,

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now..
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

[tourist]

It makes me happy to know I'm not the only person who has stupid ideas.


Good luck with it, but I have a feeling it won't be worth the time/money/effort.

 

[scottc1178]

sounds like you may be handy with the silicon gun, so you probably have a better idea of what will hold than i do, but the other point that hasn't really been mentioned is that joins or seams aren't ideal in any brewing vessels, as they can harbor bacteria, something seamless or at least incredibly smooth is going to be easier to keep sanitised. go the keggle, you wont look back.

 

[browndog]

You can't rely on the silicone to hold the pots together, it will eventually give. However, if you were to add 10 or so rivets around the join then they will take care of the structural side leaving the silicone to do the sealing. I reckon even a Builder can put a couple of pop rivets in.

cheers

Browndog

 

[Beerisyummy]

Not me poppa, I've never joined two pots together.

To our original poster go with a keg mate, I'm sure someone here would have one for you.
I have one here that a once mate asked me to look out for, yours if you can get it.

Batz

"To the bat cave". I've got one too. A little tight on space though.

Fire up the bat mobile and punch in the address on the GPS. I-t-'-s -n-o-t -o-n -the....... Thanks for the offer nonetheless.

Have a good one.

 

[Beerisyummy]

What point would you prove? that bodgy crap can be done?. Even if it held up for years, its still a bodgy setup. If you're happy with that, go ahead. Comparing a fish tank and 2 pots stuck together with silicon for boiling liquid is a little different.

All I did was pose a question. To have several people call me an idiot for suggesting a product will do exactly what it's designed to do seems stupid to me. It was just a question after all and not all that unreasonable.

How hot does boiling water get again? hotter than the 250c plus rating on a basic structurally rated adhesive silicone.

Anyway, my intention was not to annoy people. Bodgy crap as an end result works as a negative against joining two pots for me.

 

[Beerisyummy]

I find this quite an interesting idea - more interesting given the fact that it is being floated by someone with extensive experience using silicon in a non trivial way.

Concerns for me would be

1 - OK silicon is strong. Is it going to stay that way after it gets heated to 100 for a couple of hours, cooled down again and repeat..... presumably dozens of times. I have no doubt it would hold the first time - will it hold the 20th or 50th time? You dont want to find out the answer is no just as your favourite kitten walks past the brew pot. I've never heard of silicon being used in this sort of application before... maybe it is and its just something I've never heard of, but it would be worth checking out before you decide to go ahead. If its not used this way, there's probably a reason.

2 - My shower. In my shower there is silicon sealant stopping the water I rinse my goolies with, from falling on the downstairs neighbor's heads. It doesn't leak - but there is an impressive array of unscrubable mold growing between it and the tiles. Unscrubable things make brewers sad. No idea if that would happen with the way you intend to bond the surfaces - but you're the pro and its a question I'd be asking of you if this were my idea

3 - Internal shame. You spend $40 on 2 woolies pots, an hour or two of your time cutting them up and sticking them back together again and you will have.... an ugly, cheap arsed, stuck together work around pot. Sure it might work perfectly and if ghetto cheaping out is your thing - it will probably bring a smile to your face every time you use it. BUT - if you're like most homebrewers I've ever met - what'll actually happen is that you're going to spend the next year or so looking at that thing and dying inside a tiny bit whenever you see it. Eventually you'll cough up the cash to buy the pot that deep inside you always knew you should have bought in the first place, relegate the silicon wonder to the darkest back coner of the shed and wish you'd saved yourself the $40 and the thinning of your self esteem.

I sort of want you to do it just to prove it works - hell, I remember asking on this forum once why people were so fixated on tig/mig welding of fittings for brew vessels when a nice silver solder job could be done at home by anyone with a bernzomatic torch. People howled and told me how the solder would melt on my burner and how it would never be strong enough. I considered offering to solder two bits of brass together and paying $1000 to anyone who managed to get them apart again with anything short of a pair of bolt cutters and another torch.....

I dont think its that good an idea and I dont think you should actually do it ... but I do like the lateral thinking and I do think people need to open their minds up a bit on occasion (except me of course)

TB

All good points. Thanks for the detailed response with useful input.

 

[ian_2005]

I picked up a 50L keg from Gumtree for $20, and another 2 on ebay for $35 each

Try placing a wanted ad on gumtree, you never know your luck, and its free !

 

[stakka82]

As above, 2 Big W pots cost $40.

I got my 32 litre pot from a 2 buck shop for $40.

 

[Beerisyummy]

Thanks for all the replies. I have enough info now.

Is There An Easy Way To Join Two Bigw Pots?, just playing with the idea for now.
The concensus is no.

After my first brew on a new rig I've been looking at the cheapest way to up the volume without buying bigger pots.
The concensus is don't bother and buy more gear. Awsome.

Cheers

Ross.

 

[Silver]

For the sake of doing this project I can offer the following. As a sheet metal worker I would be inclined to consider a 20mm to 25mm lap joint and sweat solder with a 70/30 solder. If your joint is covered by a fluid there will be no concern with the solder melting and the join giving way. If you were to pop a few rivets in there you would need to sweat some solder around them also.

 

[tinnyhaha]

Hi all,

Silicon compounds react differently at varying temperatures, food grade or not. Be very careful with this project or at best you may note some unusual flavours in your precious beer.
More importantly WTF is wrong with you guys. Aluminium is absolutely off limits if you care about yourself or the health of those who drink your beer.
I personally support the idea of being inventive. If fact, as home brewers we probably spend more time creating then brewing but lets not loose site of the end result, which is great quality beer. Not some amber muck that tastes of a chemical cocktail and melts your brain cells to the point where you can't remember your own name.


Cheers
Tinny

 

[GuyQLD]

At the risk of going completely OT why is Aluminium completely off limits? Aluminium is one of the more abundant elements on this rock we live on and it's in almost bloody everything. The amount of Aluminium that comes off a pot of boiling wort an into solution is quite minimal and well within safe limits.

And if you've been told that Aluminium gives you alzheimer's there's been a bit of an update there. Alzheimer's isn't cause by aluminium build up in your brain, rather it causes aluminium to build up once you have the disease.

Can't remember if the OP was BIABing or not - any reason you can't just split your batches and double BIAB or maxiBIAB? or is this what you're already doing?

I can't tell from the OP as it only says "rig" but if I had on hand 2 19L BigW pots I'd be off to spotlight for 1 metre of voile for about $6 (probably just a bit more than your silicon) and have worry free and hassle free brewing.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Aluminium does so give you alzheimers....

It collects under the skin of your head forming a kind of internal tinfoil hat. This tinfoil hat blocks out the signals from the alien satelites - and as everyone knows (well, everyone who hasn't been eating food cooked in aluminium pots) your memories are actually stored on alien servers located in a crater on the dark side of the moon and bounced into your brain in a giant, planet wide, people based version of cloud computing - a term which you'd find terribly amusing if only you knew what they really stored in the "clouds".......

 

[petesbrew]

I'm glad to keep you entertained mate.
Not that it really bothers me, but in my own defence I use plenty of different products on a day to day basis and I'm well aware of the capapilities of different materials. Many people doubt the holding capacity of silicone and I suppose I would have had the same doubts 15 years ago.
Today I can safely say that your'e the one who sounds a little stupid, although I can see why you'd think it would fail. A lack of understanding is to blame and I wouldn't expect any less from a weekend warrior.
If you can't stick two pots together with the appropriate silicone and get 20+years of useful adhesion then maybe this sort of thing isn't for you. For fecks' sake, I haven't even said I'm going to do it. I was simply toying with the idea.

I assure you that if I did decide to stick the two pots together, without the use of a razor and some soapy water, no one on this forum would be able to get them apart. Flame throwers excluded of course.

On another note, WTF would anyone try to pick up a pot with 30-40l of scalding hot wort onboard? How does one do that safely?

Oh, I just read it again. "....when you need to pick up the pot? Seriously, dude, that's a pretty effing stupid idea." I couldn't agree more.

First things first. I'm not calling you stupid, just your idea. That's why we wear flamesuits right?

Yep fair enough, you obvoiusly know heaps more about silicon uses than me. To me it's those half used tubes that sit in the garage and are always clogged up when I need to use them.

Thirsty boy's points made perfect sense.
And the point about picking up a pot part filled with boiling wort? Depends on the situation, but sometimes it has to be handled.
The question still entertained me, and the replies a lot more helpful than mine.

Totally agree with your point on all the wiring questions regarding the STC1000's. Scary reading those threads.

 

[pk.sax]

That's it! I'll be making my next pot out of aluminium foil.

 

[JaseH]

Duct Tape FTW.. :icon_cheers: