Starting HERMS build, guidance before drilling hole appreciated.

[Herms bay]

I am starting a HERMS build and am using a 70/50/70 litre setup with 5500w elements in the HLT and Brew kettle. I am ok with electrics and control and am just seeing if there is any practical LFE out there that would help my Mech build. For instance; how high to put the element from the floor of brew kettle to aid whirlpool, pickup placement and whirlpool type and placement. etc.
All advice before i drill holes greatly appreciated.

 

[user 18729]

I am starting a HERMS build and am using a 70/50/70 litre setup with 5500w elements in the HLT and Brew kettle. I am ok with electrics and control and am just seeing if there is any practical LFE out there that would help my Mech build. For instance; how high to put the element from the floor of brew kettle to aid whirlpool, pickup placement and whirlpool type and placement. etc.
All advice before i drill holes greatly appreciated.

I’d suggest as low in the vessel as you can really in case you want to brew smaller batches one day. If you use an elbow on your pickup it gives you more wiggle room if you’re a bit off. Hope that helps

 

[Herms bay]

I’d suggest as low in the vessel as you can really in case you want to brew smaller batches one day. If you use an elbow on your pickup it gives you more wiggle room if you’re a bit off. Hope that helps

Yes, thanks, I am putting the coil just over the element, that said it will need 32l of water in the HLT to maintain temp over all coils. Someone suggested that you enter coil at the top and extract from the bottom so you don't have to cover all the coils as long as your temp is constant and measure wort return temp.

 

[Buffers brewery]

Probably not what you want to do, but after I fitted a HERMS coil to my kettle/HLT I decided to make a separate, smaller (-20 litre) HERMS tank, using a small flip top waste bin, copper coil, kettle element, 12 v.d.c. pump and ink bird.

This lets me get the HERMS tank up to temperature while I’m preparing the mash and heating the strike water. At the end of brew day the hot water is used in the clean up.

 

[Herms bay]

With my old kit I have a PID boiler I could use.
I plan to fill HLT to 65l and heat to mash temp 74C and transfer 33l to mash tank. I then top up HLT to 45l for reciculation then sparge, and set to 67C. Meanwhile I then mash in my grain (11kg), when done It should be near to correct to recirculation and mash in temp. I could have used boil kettle to do strike water in conjunction with the HLT if I had gone with 3kW heaters instead of 5.5kW. may change to that if its a pain but i'm impatient when it comes to boiling and only wanted 1 element in each.

Very imaginative setup, The use of a bin is ingenious but I hope it was new!! .