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[Hawkbox]

3000W boil looks to turn my garage into a sauna and could be upward of 6-7L boil off in a hour based on eyeball measurement.

Annoyingly the element connections started leaking like a sieve when I turned the heat off so going to have to account for that.

 

[thunderwagn]

3000W boil looks to turn my garage into a sauna and could be upward of 6-7L boil off in a hour based on eyeball measurement.

Annoyingly the element connections started leaking like a sieve when I turned the heat off so going to have to account for that.

How did you install your elements? Weldless bulkhead fittings? Where are they leaking from?

 

[Hawkbox]

they are threaded and I drilled the holes and put them in then used a nut. Not entirely sure if these count as weldless. It's pretty obvious what failed though.

 

[Nosybear]

they are threaded and I drilled the holes and put them in then used a nut. Not entirely sure if these count as weldless. It's pretty obvious what failed though.
View attachment 10681

Yep, they're weldless, and your leak is coming from the inside of that nut. Other possibility is you've crushed that gasket to the point it didn't seal. I've never been able to make anything like this work.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

you need to add a large flat washer after the nut before the seal

 

[Craigerrr]

you need to add a large flat washer after the nut before the seal

Yes,this, and don't over tighten

 

[thunderwagn]

Brewhardware has great bulkhead weldless fittings. They work great.
https://www.brewhardware.com/category_s/1838.htm

 

[Hawkbox]

you need to add a large flat washer after the nut before the seal

Never even thought of this but it is a perfect solution. Craigerr there is no such thing as to tight!!!11

 

[Hawkbox]

Brewhardware has great bulkhead weldless fittings. They work great.
https://www.brewhardware.com/category_s/1838.htm

If I were American that would be fantastic. Sadly Canada has much fewer options.

 

[Hawkbox]

Luckily for me, found a store in Regina that had most of what i needed, never heard of them before but I'll call it a win. Ordered up a bunch of parts. So sometime around wednesday I should be able to try this again.

 

[Craigerrr]

Luckily for me, found a store in Regina that had most of what i needed, never heard of them before but I'll call it a win. Ordered up a bunch of parts. So sometime around wednesday I should be able to try this again.

Shipping would be a bit more than here in Ontario, but look at Ontario Beer Kegs (OBK), they have mostly everything you could ever want. Alternatively ask your LHBS if they have an account with OBK, maybe you could save some shipping costs if they do higher value prepaid orders. One of my LHBS shops has a reseller discount, I pay the OBK price, and no shipping. I just have to wait until he is ready to place a stock order.

 

[Hawkbox]

OBK was out of orings and didn't have any grooved nuts. So I ordered some from prairie brewing and some from OBK. That's not a bad idea though. I need to hit up the lhbs for some Marris Otter and maybe a half sack of Pilsner next week anyway.

 

[FrostyBeach]

Started on a glycol chiller built from a little eskie and 5.00 Craigslist 5000 BTU window AC unit. The AC unit had a bad thermostat, but that's not a problem since I'm replacing that anyway. The thing was filthy so I took it all apart and cleaned it. Next I took the evaporator fan off and got the evaporator moved into the eskie.

I have some evaporator cleaner so I soaked it overnight. Had to rinse it about twenty times to get the dirt out of the fins.

:

Now I'm building the enclosure mostly from scrap on hand.

 

[Hawkbox]

Nice.

My parts should arrive today for me to run kettle test 2.

 

[GFHomebrew]

Started on a glycol chiller built from a little eskie and 5.00 Craigslist 5000 BTU window AC unit. The AC unit had a bad thermostat, but that's not a problem since I'm replacing that anyway. The thing was filthy so I took it all apart and cleaned it. Next I took the evaporator fan off and got the evaporator moved into the eskie.

I have some evaporator cleaner so I soaked it overnight. Had to rinse it about twenty times to get the dirt out of the fins.

: View attachment 10772

Now I'm building the enclosure mostly from scrap on hand.

He'll yeah you should start a step by step thread on here so we can refer to it if ever trying the fit glycol route. Cheers

 

[Hawkbox]

I swapped the silicon washers with some o-rings and grooved nuts and it looks like I solved the leak issue. Not 100% sure how I will maintain heat right now but that's a challenge I can work on. If it doesn't leak when chilled my first BIAB attempt will happen tomorrow.

 

[FrostyBeach]

He'll yeah you should start a step by step thread on here so we can refer to it if ever trying the fit glycol route.

Hey Ben, there are a lot of those out there already so I don't think so. Many different AC unit's and the hard part is determining how to bypass the controls it has. Mine is working. Ran out of sheeting to make a top, need to scrounge up something for that. The only other thing you need is a pond pump and a controller. I'm using an Inkbird 308 . Not certain how to do the controls yet if I add more than one fermenter. I could also write something to monitor the evaporator temperature and shut off the AC unit when it's approaching freezing. Right now the pond pump and the AC energize when the Inkbird controller calls for cooling.

I tested it with tap water as the coolant and chilled 12 gallons of 100 degrees F water to 60F in one hour and two mins. Then I tried to lower the temp to 34 and the evaporator started to ice up at about 50F.

I'm still getting a lot of dirt out of the evaporator so it'll need more cleaning before I add the glycol.

Oh I also added sealing quick disconnects to the lines that go to the fermenter, the bit with the orange button on it in the photo.

I'll make a list of the bits I used later.

 

[FrostyBeach]

Also I swapped ends so i can plug them together while disconnected. Nice to keep the QDs clean:

 

[GFHomebrew]

Hey Ben, there are a lot of those out there already so I don't think so. Many different AC unit's and the hard part is determining how to bypass the controls it has. Mine is working. Ran out of sheeting to make a top, need to scrounge up something for that. The only other thing you need is a pond pump and a controller. I'm using an Inkbird 308 . Not certain how to do the controls yet if I add more than one fermenter. I could also write something to monitor the evaporator temperature and shut off the AC unit when it's approaching freezing. Right now the pond pump and the AC energize when the Inkbird controller calls for cooling.

I tested it with tap water as the coolant and chilled 12 gallons of 100 degrees F water to 60F in one hour and two mins. Then I tried to lower the temp to 34 and the evaporator started to ice up at about 50F.

I'm still getting a lot of dirt out of the evaporator so it'll need more cleaning before I add the glycol.

Oh I also added sealing quick disconnects to the lines that go to the fermenter, the bit with the orange button on it in the photo.

I'll make a list of the bits I used later.

View attachment 10789

You might have to control the pump and the air con on sepperate temp contollers so the pond pump turns on to chill the fermentor and the AC unit runs to keep glycol at a set temp.
I know @Bubba Wade runs a glycol fermentation system.

 

[Bubba Wade]

@Trialben . I agree that the set up will be a bit easier to manage if one temperature controller is used for the glycol reservoir and another for the pump/fermenter control. Another advantage to this method is if you decide to add another fermenter, you just drop in another Inkbird/pump set.

My setup is slightly different in that I use a deep freeze as my glycol chiller, but the two controller setup is the same.