wattage

[eddyh]

Does anyone have a rough ideal the kind of wattage required to heat a 3x3x3 well insulated honey warmer as i was going to purchase one of those tubular jobbies off a auction site,thanks.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Does anyone have a rough ideal the kind of wattage required to heat a 3x3x3 well insulated honey warmer as i was going to purchase one of those tubular jobbies off a auction site,thanks.

Inches, feet, yards, metres?

 

[eddyh]

Sorry i should have said feet but definitely not inches.

 

[JohnF]

I have a converted freezer that has 2x60w heaters

 

[stenibee]

got a 80watt thermostatic tube heater and it is plenty for that size. made mine myself

 

[oliver90owner]

a 80watt thermostatic tube heater and it is plenty for that size./B]

Steady on. That volume could easily contain 27 x 10 litre buckets!

Melting that much honey with 80W would take some time! I would never go that route, but maybe the poster is taking outside dimensions?

Now let's have some meaningful dimensions? My freezer is 370 litres volume.

 

[MartinL]

It's not as simple as it sounds!

If you want to dissipate the heat within a heavily insulated structure you have conflict!
Something extra would be required to circulate the energy.

Maybe stand the containers in a water bath enclosed inside the insulation and heat that? If you're looking to fleabay tropical fish tank heaters / thermostats?????

 

[For want of a better word]

So many variables here... volume of containers... ambient temp... how well insulated?


Work in SI units.. a cubic meter is quite a large space... I would have thought a 3KW fan heater would be more up to the task, with air space all around the honey buckets.... several 5kg buckets will come to 29.5 degrees more quickly than one 25kg bucket.

Better to go for overkill rather than something puny that will struggle and burn out!

Yeghes da

 

[JohnF]

Mine is 19w X 25h X 16d (inches that is)
It is an old upright freezer and takes 50sec to raise it by 1C, 4m 16 sec to drop by 0.1C.
Control differential is set at 0.6C
Actual Overshoot >1.3C , <0.2C
I have the option to switch one heater off.
Control is by a STC1000

 

[oliver90owner]

Heating or cooling air is not the same as that needed for heating a liquid, nor for changing the state of crystallised honey to a liquid. Warming honey with air as the transfer medium is a slow process as air has such a low specific heat content.

 

[For want of a better word]

Heating or cooling air is not the same as that needed for heating a liquid, nor for changing the state of crystallised honey to a liquid. Warming honey with air as the transfer medium is a slow process as air has such a low specific heat content.

A hot water bath would be better.. possibly more complex to construct?

Yeghes da

 

[Gilberdyke John]

So many variables here... volume of containers... ambient temp... how well insulated?


Work in SI units.. a cubic meter is quite a large space... I would have thought a 3KW fan heater would be more up to the task, with air space all around the honey buckets.... several 5kg buckets will come to 29.5 degrees more quickly than one 25kg bucket.

Better to go for overkill rather than something puny that will struggle and burn out!

Yeghes da

As you rightly say "so many variables" however I don't have any particular problem with warming honey slowly and made my warming cabinet out of a non working under worktop kitchen fridge. I bought an stc 1000 to control the heater and used one 60 watt tubular heater set just off the floor of the fridge. A few inches above this is the original bottom wire grid shelf. I put a plywood heat barrier slightly larger than the bottom of the honey bucket onto the centre of the shelf to avoid uneven heating of the bucket bottom.
I left the space around the plywood barrier so convection could take place and have the temperature sensor at about 3/4 of the way up the chamber.
I was prepared to use two heaters if needed but trials showed that one could warm a bucket of set honey to 40 degrees over 24 hours which is fine for the way I work.
I was also prepared to add a fan to circulate the warmed air but this also proved unnecessary in practice.
Of course if you want faster heating you can achieve it but the higher the rate of heat input the more sophistication required to prevent overshoot of the set point and oscillation of the controlled temperature.