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Cooling Water Temperature Monitoring

Hi all, just about to pull the trigger on my first SD rig (making Gin here in the UK) and was interested to know how folks typically monitor the temperature of their cooling water. I've trawled through all the great photos of people's setups but couldn't see an example of an elegant (and inexpensive) way to monitor inline. Any advice appreciated. Thanks!

Comments

  • You mean the temp of the cooling water as it goes in and as it goes out?

  • I measure it going into and out of the PC and out of the RC...

    you can use the factory SD thermo-tees and the low cost SD thermometers (they still should make an angle bracket to hold thermometers to make it 'elegant'... I remember asking 4-5 years ago for that)

    It you want to be fancier and have time(or a kid with interest and time is even better), get a RaspberryPi_ZeroW/ArduinoFeather/ESP8266/ESP32 and use 1-wire DS18b20 sensors to display on a small LCD or on a tablet or PC...

  • edited November 2018

    @Homebrew said: You mean the temp of the cooling water as it goes in and as it goes out?

    Yes. I'll probably start with a relatively small reservoir (200L) so will be important to keep track of how it's doing.

  • edited November 2018

    @CothermanDistilling said: I measure it going into and out of the PC and out of the RC...

    you can use the factory SD thermo-tees and the low cost SD thermometers (they still should make an angle bracket to hold thermometers to make it 'elegant'... I remember asking 4-5 years ago for that)

    It you want to be fancier and have time(or a kid with interest and time is even better), get a RaspberryPi_ZeroW/ArduinoFeather/ESP8266/ESP32 and use 1-wire DS18b20 sensors to display on a small LCD or on a tablet or PC...

    Wow ! Thanks for the shopping list - really appreciated. In time I'd love to do something like that. And thanks for pointing me at the SD Thermo Tees - I hadn't come across these as they don't appear on the European SD site - will have to check if I can get them as that would be the perfect short term solution. Yes, I'm surprised too that SD don't provide a simple bracket or pre-drilled hobby box to mount the thermometers in - looks pretty ugly sat alongside the rest of the beautiful kit. Thanks again for your help.

  • edited November 2018

    As Cotherman said, use the standard tees and digital thermometers.

    Just put them where you want to monitor.

    They are here:

    PushConnects Hoses @ StillDragon Europe

  • Thanks. Not sure how I missed them.

  • edited November 2018

    Hi @CothermanDistilling - just looking at this again (and getting excited). If you use those 6mm tubes to make your own probes, do they fit in the SD thermo tees as I thought they were 4mm bore ? Thanks.

    • ss tubes 10x6mmx100mm ebay redrose999 10 for 9.99
  • no... none of that stuff interchanges... the SD thermo-tees come with a brass thermowell included...

  • The 4 mm bore is approximately 20 mm deep. Can bore to 5 mm or 6 mm wider. But not at all sure how much deeper you'd be able to go?

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Push-connect fittings and tubing are a miracle of the 21st century. Easy, speasy, 1, 2, threesy.

    The only thing cooler are variable frequency driven motors. They are waaaaaaay cool.

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • Thanks to @CothermanDistilling's suggestions I spent some time building this. Many thanks for the pointers. At the moment it's just hooked up to my "apartment still" but when the SD rig comes in January it should be transferable (with a few mods). Happy holidays everyone.

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  • Congrats, looks great. Wish I had experience with the Arduino stuff. All I can do is PLC stuff.

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