Newbie - My first home made boiler

[stevetk189]

Continuing on from yesterday's mash tun building exploits and using up the remains of my plumbing bits and pieces I started building my boiler today.

I still have to fit a thermometer - I want one of those really cool looking, steampunky dial types that stick out of the front.

For now heating will be handled by a gas burner - I need to do some sums before I decide to go for built in electric heating. Electric is pretty cheap over here but I think gas is cheaper... we'll see.

As always, comments good and bad welcome. And now, da pics.

[GrowlingDogBeer]

In a similiar vein to the Mash Tun, you want the holes on the bottom side of the pies ideally, this will reduce your deadspace.

Apart from that it looks good.

[stevetk189]

In a similiar vein to the Mash Tun, you want the holes on the bottom side of the pies ideally, this will reduce your deadspace.

Apart from that it looks good.

Ahh right, the holes do go underneath as well but would it have been better if they just fed from the sides and underneath, rather than than top, sides and underneath?

[GrowlingDogBeer]

Yes, it is better if they are just underneath, the lower you can get them the better, mine are on the bottom and about a third of the way up each side, it gives me about .5L deadspace.

On a large pan, which yours looks to be, the deadspace can be quite significant, in my pan, every centimeter up from the bottom of the pan equates to 1.5 Litres, so assuming you are using 15mm copper pipe, which due to the elbows is not touching the floor of the pan you probably have holes about 18mm above the base of the boiler, this would give you a dead space of about 2.7 Litres.

It would be worth testing it all out with water anyway to ensure it syphons out correctly as well.

[stevetk189]

Cheers for your help Steve,

The pan is 34l which I think off hand is around 7.5 gallons. I don't intend to fill it as being new I wasn't sure how much head space was best left when at the rolling boiling stage. I didn't want a risk of a boil over.

The whole pipe assembly is currently 14mm and sits flush to the floor, the fittings do keep the drilled pipework about 1mm maybe 1.5mm off the base. So yes I see what you mean, the top holes are not far off 18mm from the base. Buggrit!

Bit miffed about drilling the top holes now, I'll give it a test run with water to see how it syphons. I've run it today with water but really only to check the valve seal was ok. So I'll get a proper pipe on the tap, get a bit of head height and run it off to see what dead space ans volume of water left there is.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

[GrowlingDogBeer]

As its only a 34 litre pan you will probably only have just over a litre of dead space then so not too bad really, it looked more like a 70 litre pan to me from the photos. You should be safe to start the boil with about 28 litres in there, which post Boil should mean you have about 23 litres of beer.

[stevetk189]

<homer>Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm 23 litres</homer>