Pigs & Little - our electric brewery

[Crouch]

I sent them an email saying I am building the same control panel that Kal built for his brewery at theelectricbrewery and I want the same set of tags (27 in total). Pretty easy, had to give them my CC details via email though (not sure how you'd feel about that) and about a week later got the tags in the mail. I did forget to mention that my build is 240v so I have 1 tag that sits under the panel next the pump plugs that say '15a 120v' ... not too much of a problem.

 

[Crouch]

So now the plumbing is pretty much complete, and whilst i continue waiting for components for the control panel to arrive I thought I would jazz up the fridge with a coat of (very badly applied!) blackboard paint. My tip to anyone wanting to do the same, get a small cheap roller, you'll end up with a much better finish then the botch job I did on this one with a brush!!

I also changed one of my taps to a SS Perlick. After some stuffing around and extending the beer line (~4 metres, 5mm ID) its pouring lovely, smooth and fast pints.

The beer on tap at the moment is an American Pale Ale I have called 'Simple' - its one of the DME+Crystal kits from Keg King, come up a fraction shy of 5%.

 

[bazfletch3]

Hey Crouch

Did your work around for mounting the elements through the boxes end up working mate? Im just waiting for my elements to arrive and was going to buy Jaycar boxes just like you, so yours was a very timely post! I also have an existing pot which I plan to keep which is alumininum, so has thicker sides - which Im now thinking will make things even more difficult!

Cheers

Baz

 

[Crouch]

Hey Crouch

Did your work around for mounting the elements through the boxes end up working mate? Im just waiting for my elements to arrive and was going to buy Jaycar boxes just like you, so yours was a very timely post! I also have an existing pot which I plan to keep which is alumininum, so has thicker sides - which Im now thinking will make things even more difficult!

Cheers

Baz

Hi Baz. Yeah it worked. Cutting a large hole that the entire element can pass through, covering that hole with (in my case) a piece of sheet metal from the side of a computer case, cutting into that a hole just large enough for the threads of the element to pass through (but not entirely) gave me enough length inside the pot to attach the nut. I also applied a load of silicon inside the element housing before passing the element through, just to add to peace of mind ... here is a pic from the inside:



You can just see the thin piece of sheet metal between the enclosure box and the pot wall - it was attached to the enclosure box with JB Weld


I used water proof cable glands to attach the power cables through the side of the enclosure walls ... it does mean I have a bloody great cable flapping around when I need to move the pot, but I can deal with that

 

[bazfletch3]

Nice to know, as I suspect I'll have to do the same.

Just quietly, that's come up looking better than the Elec Brewery mounting box if you ask me- those aluminium boxes match in perfectly!

Cheers

Baz

 

[Crouch]

The switches I was waiting on finally arrived today, so with those in place I attached the tags that came in a few days back and now the Control Panel looks very much the part ... the only challenge now is to actually make it work!

 

[mofox1]

Damn, looks good. Good pickup on the enclosure box, the guy you picked it up from doesn't seem to be selling anything on ebay anymore..

Impressed with your build timeframe - mine is very, very incremental.

 

[Crouch]

Damn, looks good. Good pickup on the enclosure box, the guy you picked it up from doesn't seem to be selling anything on ebay anymore..

Impressed with your build timeframe - mine is very, very incremental.

Man that's a bummer, was such a good deal. Re: time frame, I'm very lucky that I have great staff and don't need to be in the office fulltime ... and a very understanding and amazing wife!!

Made some progress on the control panel wiring tonight ... installed the plugs and ran all the ground connections off to the earthing pin, nothing amazing but its progress. You can see the one lose cable with the spiral wrap, the connects to the control panel door.

All I am waiting on now is the relays to arrive from China - if its anything like other aliexpress purchases they should be in here in around a month

 

[gava]

Man that's a bummer, was such a good deal. Re: time frame, I'm very lucky that I have great staff and don't need to be in the office fulltime ... and a very understanding and amazing wife!!

Made some progress on the control panel wiring tonight ... installed the plugs and ran all the ground connections off to the earthing pin, nothing amazing but its progress. You can see the one lose cable with the spiral wrap, the connects to the control panel door.

All I am waiting on now is the relays to arrive from China - if its anything like other aliexpress purchases they should be in here in around a month

What gauge wire is that? You said you'll be running a 32amp control panel.. That wire doesn't look like 32amp wire, it more looks like 20amp.. might be a littler hard to see in the picture but thought I'd ask the question.

Gavin

 

[sjp770]

I'll be running 4mm wire as the max draw of these panels is less that 24A depending on the pumps. They are setup to only allow you to run 1 or the other heating element, although you can run a heating element and 2x pumps plus all the meters.

The Electric Brewery says its a 30A panel, i think it come down to the most common plug thats above the draw. I'm sourcing all Australian plugs in 25A instead of the twist lock stuff.

The switches I was waiting on finally arrived today, so with those in place I attached the tags that came in a few days back and now the Control Panel looks very much the part ... the only challenge now is to actually make it work!

That panel looks amazing! did you do the paint job?

 

[Crouch]

What gauge wire is that? You said you'll be running a 32amp control panel.. That wire doesn't look like 32amp wire, it more looks like 20amp.. might be a littler hard to see in the picture but thought I'd ask the question.

Gavin

I read your post on sjp770's thread about slowing things down and really understanding what you are doing (and playing with!) ... I've been shocked before on other things I've messed around with, not a pleasant feeling. I guess that's what forums like this are great for (and what sjp770 is doing better then me), communicating with people, asking questions etc.

I never went ahead and asked, checked, I just went ahead and did it - might be the first of many problems? - the wiring is 2.5mm core, the 'recommended' wiring from 'the other site' (its beginning to feel like a bad word now) was 10 gauge - given we dont use AWG here I looked up the equivalent mm to 10 gauge, 2.59 - so I figured wire with a 2.5mm core would be fine ... I'm wrong, right?

 

[Crouch]

I'll be running 4mm wire as the max draw of these panels is less that 24A depending on the pumps. They are setup to only allow you to run 1 or the other heating element, although you can run a heating element and 2x pumps plus all the meters.

The Electric Brewery says its a 30A panel, i think it come down to the most common plug that's above the draw. I'm sourcing all Australian plugs in 25A instead of the twist lock stuff.




That panel looks amazing! did you do the paint job?

4mm huh ... right. The only 4mm cables I have around the place are for my 3-phase equipment, does it really need to be so big?

Yeah, I painted that cabinet - same type of paint as you used, except a different colour.

Cheers

 

[sjp770]

Use the 4mm on the feed cables for the input and through the relays up to the SSR's and back to the heating elements sockets. Everything else should be OK being 2.5mm. I'm only running 2.5mm for now because I dont have the draw from the elements. Before they get connected i'll replace all of that wiring. (anything behind the 7A fast blow fuse should be 2.5mm, anything DC can be 300V Telphone type / speaker wire)

Obviously error check everything I say lol, I am getting a shafting in my thread for not understanding things before I did it.

What flex power cable did you use for your heating elements? I ended up with 6mm twin and earth flex from an irrigation shop for about $10/m. Overkill but not a bad idea

btw, im stripping my 4mm from twin and earth power cable meant for in the wall.

 

[gava]

Obviously error check everything I say lol, I am getting a shafting in my thread for not understanding things before I did it.

I'm not trying to shaft you, I've built a couple of panels before and want to give out some advice that I've learnt over the years.. hopefully you don't run into the same issues I did which hold your build back.. Also when ordering form aliexpress you can't really afford to blow up your bits or else it puts you back a min two weeks, average 1 month.. thats all. sorry if it came across as a lashing..

As for my gauge of cable, Not sure I went into a electrical store and ask for wire that handled 20amp I can't remember what it was.. 2.5mm sounds familiar

Gavin

 

[Crouch]

Yeah I noticed, but there have been some good posts ... I think all the site veterans have seen many people post about their panels and (rightly so) dont want any fellow brewers getting zapped by their breweries.

I've done loads of reading, on this site and the forum at kals site but I'm not feeling too confident any more. I thought I understood things well enough to 'have a go', but when you're playing with 240v I guess that's not good enough.

For instance, my elements are rigged to run off 2.5mm twin core with earth ... I've had them running and the cable didn't feel warm to me so I figured that would be fine ... might strip them back, undo all my wiring and start from the beginning, do more research and actually ask questions before i go ahead and 'have a go'

 

[sjp770]

My feed to the Shed is 4mm, and based on how its run it can support 25A load. General Cable state that it can take alot more, up to 39A when burried in ducts.

Look at this page for the ratings, although thats with the extra white insulation and doesn't say about when its run in panels.

http://www.generalcable.com.au/getattachment/560b5019-35c2-4b28-bdb0-7e5abead163d

My father in law is a sparky as well and most sparkys will run slightly bigger than needed. Put it this way, would you downsize the normal panel wiring? if not why run the most demanding component on the same wire?

 

[sjp770]

I'm not trying to shaft you, I've built a couple of panels before and want to give out some advice that I've learnt over the years.. hopefully you don't run into the same issues I did which hold your build back.. Also when ordering form aliexpress you can't really afford to blow up your bits or else it puts you back a min two weeks, average 1 month.. thats all. sorry if it came across as a lashing..

As for my gauge of cable, Not sure I went into a electrical store and ask for wire that handled 20amp I can't remember what it was.. 2.5mm sounds familiar

Gavin

I deserve everything i'm getting there, don't get me wrong. In this case I think there are 3 types of posters, one that openly shares mistakes and risks the wrath of the internet, one that watches to see how the first one goes, and one that actually knows what they are doing commenting on the first one. In all cases as long as all three are there everyone learns

 

[Crouch]

Righto ... so I'll just put this out there for 'feedback' from people who've done their panels - and may perhaps be familiar with the 'instructions' from Kal's website.

I am using Sestos PIDs & Timer so I am going to have to wire things up differently then his 'diagrams', thus there will be some reading and learning involved and this gives me time to ask, understand and comprehend the what's and why's of this control panel.

As far as components are concerned, I have followed Kal's build ... sourcing 240v components where necessary.

One issue I have seen on the forums at Kals site is the wiring requirements. In his instructions he references wiring up various parts of the control panel using various 'gauge' wiring, according to the AWG (American Wire Gauge) standards. As we don't use that standard I have been using this site as my reference for finding alternate cabling here in Australia.

Being the typical 'back-yard builder', I figured I could source cables either from Bunnings or Middys (where Bunnings didnt stock what I needed). As such, where Kal mentions using 10 gauge wire, I grabbed some of this flex cable and ripped out the cores. According to the site listed above, 10 gauge wire is the equivalent of a 2.59mm so being the 'back-yard builder' type I figured that would be fine. I did the same things for the 14 and 22 gauge wiring he lists.

So my first question to those who have done their own panels
How did you go about selecting your cables, did you rip the cores out of flex cable or buy rolls of single core cabling?

I have decided to use the larger 5500w elements (apparently I bought these in October last year!!), where as many people here seem to have used smaller wattage elements to avoid the issues with upgrading power circuits in their homes. Using smaller elements might have been a good idea, but as I eventually want to have an electric system capable of 100l batches I wanted the bigger elements. Given that, the cabling for those elements needs to be thicker. When I first got the elements, in my excitement to 'test them out' I rigged them up to a regular 10amp extension cord (which was probably 1mm 2 core + earth) ... needless to say that cable heated up pretty damn quick and I shut things down pretty damn quick.

Looking around at cabling now (and referencing our AWG conversion table) I noticed that there seems to be a difference between Diameter (mm) and Cross Sectional Area (mm2), and further looking around several sites (such as this one) always talk about the load of cable being measure in mm2. Many sites mention that a cable of 2.5mm2 is capable of running 20amps (there are some caveats I'll go into shortly), so again looking at our conversion table a cable with 2.5mm2 is roughly 13-14 gauge (1.6-1.8mm diameter). Therefore (again using my back-yard builder brain) I figured a cable with 2.5mm core (which I assumed to mean diameter) would be the equivalent of 10 gauge wire and thus ~5mm2. Therefore I have used this cable to run from my control panel to my elements, it seems to be sufficiently capable of running those elements - according to what I have just been through.

My second question to those using larger wattage elements
What cable did you use and how did you go about selecting it?

(getting nervous about hitting the wrong key on the keyboard and losing this post, will continue shortly)

 

[Crouch]

Continuing on from the previous post about wiring.

For my power in, I have chosen to use 4mm 2 core+earth cabling (from Middys) as according to my research is more then enough to support the draw of the approx 25amps the control panel will draw, given that one element, both pumps and all meters, lights etc are running.

For my pumps, I use the little green ones I have used a regular extension cable with 1.5mm cores as they draw very little amperage - according to the sticker on the side of the pumps.

So I have this:

Power cable = 4mm 2 core + earth
Element cables = 2.5mm 2 core + earth
Pump cables = 1.5mm 2 core + earth

Does anyone see anything wrong with this?

Onto the wiring inside the panel shortly.

 

[sjp770]

I know that post is for people with completed panels, but my basic theory was this:

- Strip wires from computer power leads. I know what sort of draw these can stand up to and i'm comfortable using them on 90% of the panel.
- Research to a great extent what current my 'current' shed circuit can handle based on 4mm2 cable. Get sparky to up the breaker, plan on a sub board. This is 25A btw.
- Use the same gauge wire that's running to my shed for the items using 90% of the current available.

I tried to match the flex cable I use as close as I could to Kals build but ended up just asking the local electrical wholesale place for twin and earth flex for up to 30A, they recommended 6mm flex.