New Member - building HERMS

[Elteedee]

Howdy,

Just starting out, decided to build a HERMS so I can start having fun with grain.
Just trying to sort out my electrics. I intend to run two elements one in HLT and one in Boil Kettle. I have two PID controllers and two magnetic drive pumps. Plumbing is easy, just looking up some wiring schematics. i have SSRs to switch the elements.
Schematics I found on internet have all been US based and we know they got different power.
Any help or advise would be appreciated.

Cheers
Luke

 

[pcqypcqy]

What size vessels are you talking about?

I have a keg for my HLT and find that a single element works well enough to bring it up to temp. I'd suggest you might want to put the 2 elements on your kettle instead, and just leave 1 for your HLT.

As for wiring, I don't have any schematics for you but short answer is you're really just switching the active (red/brown) wire into the element with your SSR. The rest is just getting power to the PID unit, and getting your SSR connected to your PID.

I did this for my coffee machine and it was fairly straight forward. Try an image search like this and see what it gives you: link

I haven't gone full electric myself, but I know guys who have and they wire it all up themselves and have a sparky just do the checks. Dunno if that was a mate of theirs or Joe Blogs out of the phone book though.

 

[Camo6]

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/72614-my-brew-controller-box/

Have a read of this thread. Was a big inspiration for my build and, inadvertently, my career change.

And be sure to get it checked by someone qualified for the job.

 

[Elteedee]

Thanks for the input,
I have adapted a schematic from what I have seen so far and will run it by a sparky (and yes also get him to check out before I flick the switch).
Let me know if you guys see any glaring faults so far... I plan to run a change over switch and two contractors to isolate HLT and Boil Kettle elements so only one can be switched on.

(Brown - Active / Blue Neutral - PID outputs to SSR Red/Black for 12V)

Cheers
Luke

View attachment HERMS Schematic.pdf