tank heater jackets

[piggy]

Does anyone have any experience of thermostatically controlled tank jacket heater, used on stainless settling/bottling tank, or warming cable type tank heater. Cheers in advance.

 

[MartinL]

No,








Sorry, couldn't help myself

Are they commercially available or are you after modifying something Horticultural?

Only issue I could see would be where you'd put the thermostat?

 

[Hivemaker.]

Does anyone have any experience of thermostatically controlled tank jacket heater

Yes.

These are good as well, thermostatically controlled water jacketed. https://www.mannlakeltd.com/shop-al...pplies/70-gallon-840-lb-264-6-l-bottling-tank

 

[piggy]

I was thinking of modifying my ss bottling tank , with an electric jacket or soil warming cable, for not much money. Any ideas or experiences would be most welcome. Cheers

 

[MartinL]

My father had a simple get up for his home brew, beer & wine.

Modified his tropical fish heaters & thermostat and just popped them in the brew, he them put a demijohn in the middle for his wine.

You could try a water bath around your tank?

As said before, (with the difficulty of placing the thermostat to pickup average temp over the heated area) soil warming cables would have very hot spots .

 

[wmfd]

Yes, I use one of the Lidl jam makers as a water bath, enables me to soften a tub of OSR honey overnight, makes it soft enough to cream it in the morning for jarring.

I don't trust the thermostat on the jam maker so used an STC 1000 controller, which I had previously used for homebrewing. The probe sits in and controls the temperature of the water which in turn warms the honey,

David


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[oliver90owner]

Soil warming cables come in different wattage per unit length, so with selection they should be perfectly OK if installed sensibly. Not good for melting honey, perhaps, but OK for warming a fluid.

 

[Little John]

I was thinking of modifying my ss bottling tank , with an electric jacket or soil warming cable, for not much money. Any ideas or experiences would be most welcome. Cheers

Soil-warming type cables would be a good choice - I still have several tens of metres of them left over from my days in industry. 15w/metre ex RS. Very versatile. If you wrap them around the tank(*) there shouldn't be any hot-spots if the tank is S/S, as that metal will spread the warmth around fairly evenly. I'd suggest building a plywood housing around the tank to keep the heat in, lined with polystyrene but NOT placed in contact with the heating cables. You could also do a lot worse than place a small fan inside the plywood jacket to circulate the trapped air, which will further even-out the heat source.

Inside the tank there WILL be a gradual migration of heat towards the top of the stored honey, in the same way as happens in a domestic hot water tank heated by an immersion heater. The only way to equalise the temperature gradient within the honey itself is to stir it in some way. Good luck with that !

The best place for the thermostat is somewhere near the top of the tank - that will be sensing the highest temperature (safest position). The honey WILL be somewhat cooler lower down, and away from the sides and bottom of the tank ... that is, until you stir it ...

Good luck
LJ

(*) For example (say) spacing the cables every 2" apart near the bottom, 3" apart around the middle area, and 4" apart towards the top. But - what you need to find out first is the approximate total wattage recommended for this application.

 

[For want of a better word]

Simple solution was to buy three pet electric blankets.... and wrap around the SS bottling tank held in place with elastics over a metal foil windscreen blanket
The ones I got from China have a 2 position thermo switch... keep tank and honey warm enough to flow after taking the stored honey from the warming cabinet and fine filtering into the bottling tank.
(Keep an eye on the temperature as you could end up bottling "Bakers Honey!!... ref Honey regs)

Yeghes da


eBay item number:
252765297706
Pet Warm Blanket Cat Dog Cooking Heat Pad

Singapore... well near to China ... buy3.. get one free... then another 3 when postal service looses it!

 

[piggy]

Thanks for the replies. I will try some 30w per metre soil warming cable, plugged into my ATC 800 controller that I also use for my incubator/brew fridge. I'll try rapping an old sleeping bag around the tank with celatex on the lid. Give a test full with 2:1 syrup.