Tom Hargrave

I compared the two side by side and I liked the black iron flange better than the galvanized.

Cooling is a challenge. We manufacture and sell beer tower coolers that work great in standard beer towers but the cold air just cools the center of this T-tower. If I ever take this tower apart I'm going to add a tee and tubing that reaches across to the elbows then I'll plug one of my beer tower coolers into the tee. This way cold air will dump out at the elbows.

I used a deep well socket to tighten the two nuts. But the hardest part isn't tightening the nuts, the hardest part is fishing the beer lines through the pipes. I ended up making a hook from a piece of 1" wide alminum to pull the tubing down into the center pipe.

The bushing will unscrew without a problem. One thing I did but did not put in the instructions is I twisted the bushing counter clockwise before threading it into the elbow. This way I actually unwrapped the twist in the line as I screwed the bushing into the elbow. I don't remember how many turns - 3 or 4.Also, I've worked on beverage equipment for years and I've not seen a Oetiker clamp that's installed right leak yet. I've seen lots of screw type clamps leak, but they put uneven pressure on the hose.I drilled a smooth hole. I wanted to drill then tap the hole but it's extremely hard to tap stainless steel with hand tools. If you want to try the thread size is 7/8 X 14.

I'm not familiar with the brand so I looked them up. At least they are a good looking part.... Since my article I discovered an easier way to judge the part's current rating. I found out that the lower current TRIACs are mounted with screws while the higher current parts are sweat soldered to the base. The higher current parts need the sweat solder bond you can't get with thermal compound. It would be worth looking for a threaded hole on the back side of your failed SSR before breaking it apart.

Yes, if you can place the panels where they will receive a decent amount of light. Also, HFT's latest version of this kit is rated at 100 Watts - that's quite an improvement over the kit I based this article on! Tom

Also, street elbows will look really nice. I decided against them because I wanted the width I have.

Pipe sizes are in ID and the hole size for 1/2" pipe is .840". The hole size for 3/4" pipe is actually 1.05", way too large for a 7/8" hole. The threaded hole sizes are also larger then the pipe size to make allowances for the pipe's OD. We use a carbide tipped hole saw to drill these holes.

I guess it would not. The heat flooding around the edge of the pot would melt the wire insulation in a hurry. A much better solution is to use a RIMS tube and still use propane to bring system up to mash temperature.

It's amazing what you can do with a little technology and some planning. There are some small charge controllers available through Amazon that don't cost much but still work well like this one for about $11.00.https://www.amazon.com/Controller-Control-Regulato...

Sure, it should work great.

OK, so instead of going to a prototyping board you are using the ribbon cable to wire directly to a relay board? Should work as long as what you are driving is rated for 3.3 volts.

Mounting the element from the top was a consideration, but you have the opposite problem - part of the element is exposed to trapped air and over heats. The best solution is to mount your RIMS sideways as shown in this article because it naturally drains and purges of air. Regarding stainless steel - you have to be careful of what you buy. The market may have changed some today but at one time we bought one of every stainless steel element we could find on-line, including the ones at Home Depot. And every one we bought had a stainless element pressed into a mild steel base. The CAMCO #02922 element has a stainless element pressed into a zinc plated mild steel base. You can prove this with a magnet test - a magnet will easily stick to the base of the element.We've gone two steps further ...

Mounting the element from the top was a consideration, but you have the opposite problem - part of the element is exposed to trapped air and over heats. The best solution is to mount your RIMS sideways as shown in this article because it naturally drains and purges of air. Regarding stainless steel - you have to be careful of what you buy. The market may have changed some today but at one time we bought one of every stainless steel element we could find on-line, including the ones at Home Depot. And every one we bought had a stainless element pressed into a mild steel base. The CAMCO #02922 element has a stainless element pressed into a zinc plated mild steel base. You can prove this with a magnet test - a magnet will easily stick to the base of the element.We've gone two steps further with the ones we sell on Amazon.com, we use 100% stainless steel heating elements including the element base and we build them with a sanitary fitting in the middle so the tube can be split in half to drain and dry out. We have the elements made for us in China and I test a sample of every lot that comes in with a magnet. 304 Stainless will have a weak magnetic attraction while mild steel will have a strong magnetic attraction.

It should work as long as he wiring is still the same - pin for pin.

I agree with you for most dogs because they have no winter coat. But these are Siberian Huskies and they do fine outside in the cold.

The string wattage should be on the LED light package. Just divide the wattage by 12 (for 12 volts) and you have Amps. So, let's say for arguments sake that the string draws 2 amps and you want the lights on for 4 hours. Power draw would be 8 Ampere Hours (2 Amps X 4 Hours)The harder part is figuring out how much energy you can gather in a day. This kit is rated at 45 Watts, which is 3.75 Amps. So, if you have 10 hours of direct sunlight you would gather 37.5 Ampere Hours of energy. But this is perfect conditions with the sun shining squarely on the solar panels and reality is your solar panels will only be pointing directly at the sun for part of the day! You need to know how much to expect from your solar panels and fortunately others have done this for us.http://www.bigfrogmountain.c...

The string wattage should be on the LED light package. Just divide the wattage by 12 (for 12 volts) and you have Amps. So, let's say for arguments sake that the string draws 2 amps and you want the lights on for 4 hours. Power draw would be 8 Ampere Hours (2 Amps X 4 Hours)The harder part is figuring out how much energy you can gather in a day. This kit is rated at 45 Watts, which is 3.75 Amps. So, if you have 10 hours of direct sunlight you would gather 37.5 Ampere Hours of energy. But this is perfect conditions with the sun shining squarely on the solar panels and reality is your solar panels will only be pointing directly at the sun for part of the day! You need to know how much to expect from your solar panels and fortunately others have done this for us.http://www.bigfrogmountain.com/SunHoursPerDay.htmlThe rest is based on experience and I figure that since the solar panels are only perfectly aligned once a day I could half what the chart says and be close enough. Tampa is rated at 5.67 hours average, so half that is 10.6 Ampere Hours (3.75 X 5.67 / 2).The other things to do are buy a large enough reserve battery to bridge shady and rainy days, and to limit your LED light usage. Not many of us are out all night and it's best to leave them off when you aren't in the back yard.

I still work on and restore vacuum tube radios from the 1920's, 30's, 40's and 50's. It's a great hobby and there is some great Engineering in old hardware. Not everything relevant was designed in the last 5 years!

Explain to me why I'm wrong? I was just explaining current flow which does all the work.And the center tap neutral is just as 'hot' as the other two legs, it's just referenced to earth ground so we have no current flow between neutral and ground. For example, if one of the 120V legs were tied to ground instead of the center tap and you touched neutral you would definitely feel a 120V shock. This is because now that 120V leg would be referencing ground. Also, the other 120V leg would now be 240V from "ground".

You should be able to use a larger battery for one of these solar panel kits, but "how large" I don't know. This is because the real limitation is the total amount the solar panels can charge your battery between uses and how much energy you use between charges. But even if you pull more from your battery than you charge, a larger battery might still be to your advantage. For example, you could leave home with a fully charged marine battery and bump the charge every day with the solar panels, extending you usage a couple of days. Tom

We used to own a whole computer in a keyboard. It was called a Commodore 64!