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Thread ID: 121115	2011-10-12 06:59:00	Water heating element	pine-o-cleen (2955)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1237026	2011-10-12 06:59:00	I'm planning on building a sous vide temperature controller (something like this (techcrunch.com)) except instead of having an attached water heater, I plan to have it output to a power point, so that I can attach whatever sort of water heater I want. I was thinking something like this (www.amazon.com), but I can't seem to find a 230v equivalent in NZ? Anyone have any idea where I'd get one?	pine-o-cleen (2955)
1237027	2011-10-12 07:05:00	On second thoughts, the one in the link wouldn't work as it needs to be 'dumb'. That one shuts itself off at a factory set temperature.	pine-o-cleen (2955)
1237028	2011-10-12 07:16:00	?? You want an immersible thermostat that will switch 5A? You might be able to make something up with a hot water cylinder thermostat (which I don't think is directly immersible) cabled to an 'interrupted phase tap-on'	BBCmicro (15761)
1237029	2011-10-12 07:27:00	It doesn't have to be 5A, in fact that might be a little over the top. It needs to heat ~ 30 ltrs of water to between 60-80 degrees c. It seems 'bucket heaters' are fairly common in the US, I just wondered if I could get something similar here.	pine-o-cleen (2955)
1237030	2011-10-12 07:50:00	Playing around with mains switching and water may be hazardous to your health. If you could remove the thermostat element from This (www1.jaycar.co.nz) and make it submersible, it might be more reliable, but you will still have to woek out how you are going to heat the water or whatever. Perhaps if you fleshed out your proposal a little more it might all come together. There are probably ready-made cooking appliances that can do what you want. Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
1237031	2011-10-12 07:59:00	It's a long time since I made home brew. I used two immersion heaters for the boiling - a 2kW washing machine element and a 1kW hand-held immersion heater. During the fermenting I used a fish tank heater and thermostat Instead of using a thermostat you could use a stove simmerstat which doesn't actually measure the temperature but is simpler. You just adjust it to get the temperature you want on a thermometer	BBCmicro (15761)
1237032	2011-10-12 08:24:00	Playing around with mains switching and water may be hazardous to your health... There are probably ready-made cooking appliances that can do what you want. Cheers Billy 8-{) I realize that water + electricity = fun times and a trip to the hospital. There are ready made devices that do what I want, they just cost several thousand dollars. Hence the large amount of DIY type projects of this type documented on the internet. I'm not after a submersible thermostat. I just want the heating element. The project that I'm planning on building goes like this: 230v in > PID temperature controller (with submersible thermocouple probe) > solid state relay > heating element. So only the thermocouple and the heating element actually touch the water. I've been reading up and people that have made similar setups have used a rice cooker in place of the heating element, which is what I plan on starting with. I would however like to expand later, and wanted to price up a heating element to do so in a larger (custom) container, with some sort of water circulation for even-ness of temperature.	pine-o-cleen (2955)
1237033	2011-10-12 08:25:00	?? You want an immersible thermostat that will switch 5A? You might be able to make something up with a hot water cylinder thermostat (which I don't think is directly immersible) cabled to an 'interrupted phase tap-on' I see where the confusion began. I mis-read your post. No, not a thermostat (I'll be using the PID temperature controller for that). Just the heating element. In other words, the switching would be done well away from the water bath.	pine-o-cleen (2955)
1237034	2011-10-12 08:27:00	Having looked up Sous Vide, I see now that it is simply slow cooking in a sealed environment. That is pretty much the same as crock-pot cooking, and you sure as hell don't need 1150 watts of power to cook like that. One of the examples I found referred to cooking for several days, so even less power is needed for that duration. Why not beg, steal, buy or borrow a crock-pot, you can cook in a sealed oven bag to stop evaporation, and running at low temperature it would probably do pretty much what you want. If it got too hot you could connect a light bulb in series with the element and by varying the wattage of the bulb from say 75 watts up to 200 watts you could tailor the final temperature quite nicely. We do a lot of crockpot cooking in winter and I have managed the temprature via a series load to extend the cooking time when it was a meat that would normally be too tough to give your dog, and it just melts in your mouth at the end of the cooking period. If playing with electricity though, you need to know what you are doing, you want to cook the food, not yourself. Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
1237035	2011-10-12 08:39:00	I once ruptured a water element at work in a large water distiller/ionizer required for chemical testing, by forgetting to add sufficient water. We purchased a new German made element from a local chemical supplier company, which should also sell water baths, thermo couples, electric stirrers, temperature controllers, etc. So try lab supply companies, e.g. lab supply pierce. But tend to be a bit pricey, as they are generally premium products from Europe.	kahawai chaser (3545)
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