Home Distiller

I was just getting up to temperature on a spirit run when I heard an awful humming, reminded me of transformers overloading.....

I looked at my power controller, was reading 240v ( uses a PSR-25 PAC) but amps were 0 on the meter but clamp on amp meter said there was just a hint of some power flowing. Disconnected the power. my breaker did not snap open at the electrical panel.

I took the tower off my keg( Tri-clamp connection) but I still could not see inside the keg for all the foggy hot vapour that was wisping out the keg fitting.

Luckily I have a 1/2" drain and could decant the low wines back into the carboy with a stainless steel canning funnel and some welding gloves.

Thats when I could see the element blown wide open. Off to the home depot to get another..... good thing I still have a jar of waste alcohol for redoing the cleaning runs on the element. They start off looking shiny until the coating gets cleaned off the copper element sheath.

PS: the warping of the element was mostly me having to pull the element out with some force. When the ekement blew open, the folded back part of the element warped just enough that I could not get it to start back through the threaded coupling on the side of the keg.

Wow. Could have been worse..

How many hours of running were on that element? Glad nothing worse happened.

looks like it was run dry maybe???? I turned on my water heater after draining it (forgot it had an upper element too) and the resulting burnt element looked just like that including the damage from me yanking it out.

Been using that element for about a year i suppose....

Never run dry. I am either doing a 40l strip or a 28l low wines run and the element is positioned just above the bottom of the keg. Never comes close to running dry by design. The'll just look like that due to 18 amps running wild.....

Dammit, out of 4500 w elements at the home depot.... may be out of luck for tonight..

I get mine from Amazon.ca, they have the ultra low watt density elements and only take a couple days to ship.
http://www.amazon.ca/Camco-02923-Heater ... ords=Camco

Home depot don't have the 5500 w ones? You should be able to run one of them. I like the elements at ace hardware much better myself.

And it looks like one that has been dry fired. Don't ask how I know. Two in one week.

The element can DRY fire in a sense. If it gets a pit or burr on the surface that will be the hottest spot on the element. It will boil the liquid away from that tiny spot. I am super careful not to scratch the surface or nick it when installing. Just bad luck sometimes too.

Unfortunately no. Seems the maximum wattage here in Nova Scotia is 4500w and Ive checked everywhere.

However, I have managed to source a 4500w element at the third big box hardware store in the city and am now back home with the new element installed and burning the coating off with some old heads and tails watered down to about 30% as we speak.

I set up the still with my detuned (empty) 2' riser section, the boka head and condenser. was just going to use condenser mounted directly to the riser but. wanted to mount a thermometer for the fun of it.

Get a heater made out of Inconel. They last until you run them dry.
I never liked the idea of having a plated element that shed it's coating in my still.
The copper that's left looks pretty but it don't last.

Where would a person get an Inconel element? I have the "Twin" to this unit and I'd like to get one. I agree the notion of having to strip away a coating doesn't excite me but then again it isn't all that hard either and done in advance of making something we consume. I'd like to get a spare element and it might as well be Inconel provided the cost isn't crazy.

Anti cake elements are often inconel.