Heating pads / belts

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Permalink Reply by Patrick on July 23, 2010 at 1:13pm

I got a single electric blanket from the warehouse for $17.99 - can't get much cheaper than that! It keeps the fermenter at a steady 20C on the lowest setting. My house is a drafty tomb though.

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Permalink Reply by Brett Mason on July 23, 2010 at 7:26pm

I'm currently using a light bulb shrouded with a malt extract can. $10 for the work light, $1 for the bulb. Linky

I am using a Fridge Mate to control the bulb but in theory you could adjust the wattage of the bulb instead but it would be difficult to keep things constant when the fermentation gets going. There are some temperature controllers on ebay.com.au which have been mentioned here which are cheaper than the Fridge Mate.

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Permalink Reply by HBay Masher on July 23, 2010 at 7:41pm

I am using a light bulb and one of these from Jaycar
http://www.jaycar.co.nz/productView.asp?ID=QT7200&keywords=ther...
Not a bad price and readily available. I modded mine by pulling it to bits then cutting out the thermistor and reconnecting it via some wire I found in garage so the sensor can be in the chamber with the light bulb and the brain with the readout is on the outside. Works well!

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Permalink Reply by martin w on July 23, 2010 at 9:08pm

i used to use a mirror demister which worked really well and i how use a heatlamp bulb under the fermenter which also works real well, i controlled them with an underfloor heating thermostat.you can also use a waterbed thermostat which are pretty cheap on trademe

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Permalink Reply by Fairlane on July 24, 2010 at 9:02am

Thanks for the replys guys.....I probably should have stated that I have a temp controller and the device is to heat an insulated keg....

http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/photo/chiller-unit?context=user

So the light bulb thing is a no go for me...

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Permalink Reply by Chris Banks on July 24, 2010 at 10:31am

Could you put an element in or under your glycol tank and use the temp controller to control the element whilst circulating with the pump as normal?

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Permalink Reply by Fairlane on July 24, 2010 at 10:44am

hmmmm not a bad idea there... I will have to work out how to put the controllers into reverse mode, but then I was going to have to do that anyway...

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Permalink Reply by Richee on July 29, 2010 at 5:56pm

Fairlane,

I use a cheap electric blanket and a controller. I set the controller to "defrost" every hour. An evaporator probe (in a bottle of water) is used by the controller to decide if the electric blanket should be turned on and when the defrost termination temperature is reached it turns itself off. Pretty effective really, just got to watch it closely.

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Permalink Reply by martin w on July 24, 2010 at 12:15pm

is it insulated underneath? or is the insulation removable? a mirror demister would work perfect under the insulation

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Permalink Reply by Fairlane on July 24, 2010 at 12:41pm

Yeah I can remove the insulation no worries.... another good idea that I'll be looking into..

cheers

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Permalink Reply by Nicholas Jones on July 28, 2010 at 7:31pm

Hey all, I use a 100W submersible aquarium heater on its lowest setting, wrap a blanket around the fermenter to insulate..on the lowest setting I get around 19-20 deg consistently. My only fear is it starts growing some nasties in the cracks and I dont get them out during sterilisation...but its a sweet $20 solution... :-)

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Permalink Reply by Fairlane on August 4, 2010 at 4:41pm

Well thanks to everyone for their input... I have come up with the following solution which will work fine as long as I don't have the need for cooling and heating cycles in the same ferment period.

I bought a wine tank heater (which is a flash version of the mirror demister) and some extra switches for my control box so that I can simply reverse the operation of the controller, and switch it on to either auto or manual heating...

It took me a little bit to get my head round as far as wiring it all up goes as I'm not a sparky.... But it hasn't exploded yet :)

Attachments:

• Heating.JPG, 606 KB
• Control Box.JPG, 396 KB
• Wiring.JPG, 553 KB

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