Warming buckets of honey in a Burco Boiler

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For honey warming - wax might need a bit more heat - next to -ugger all is needed, power-wise, especially if you add warm water at the start.

My old burco has three settings - high medium and low; it has two elements, no simmerstat and no electronics.

If one is clever enough, one can work out power for each of the settings. Just have to be clever enough not to use the high power setting if using something with lower contact ratings. The STC 1000 has contact ratings of 10 Amps, so reputedly good for a bit over 2 kW. My microclimate vivarium dimmerstats each have a power rating of 600W.

So not necessarily any power problem, one way or another.

If there were, it is not beyond belief that someone might think of adding an additional solid state relay as a total power regulator.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

RAB
 
... The STC 1000 has contact ratings of 10 Amps, so reputedly good for a bit over 2 kW. …
Oddly enough, the STC1000 is sometimes quoted as having 5A contact rating and sometimes 10A.
See for one example of 5A http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/STC-1000-...-Thermostat-With-Sensor-220V-AR-/350999385162
Perhaps there are production variations … ?

I think it is pushing the cheap little device to ask it to switch a 2kw load.


Now, o90o raises something else that I think worthy of explaining carefully.
Low/Med/High switching versus a tea-urn thermostat dial.
The Low/Med/High switching is not setting the temperature. It is actually changing the power of the heating elements. So setting it to Low, it might actually only draw 1000 watts or maybe less -- turning it down does reduce its wattage.
Whereas, anything with a thermostat (or simmerstat) knob to give different control temperatures (like the original Lidl 'jam maker') is going to have its element switched between full on and completely off. Turning the dial down would not change the wattage - simply how much of the time it is on.
So with something like the Lidl jam maker, turning the knob down to a low setting would not allow you to get away with using a switching relay with low-rated contacts.

The ancient Burco trick of running either just one element, or both in series or both in parallel, is valuable in this sort of situation! /// ADDED - allowing you to use a low-rated relay in a cheap digital thermostat.
 
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Plenty of uses for my Burco but warming honey ain't one of them - far too dodgy temperature control. A 35 year old winemakers heating mat works fine for me.
 
Arfermo,

You are missing the point entirely. Neither of my burco boilers has a thermostat.

Temperature control using a stat such as an STC 1000 or (in my case) a controlling 'dimmerstat' will allow the highest rate of heat transfer without overheating risk, so the melting of the honey is much faster while the temperatures are the same (actually better for the water bath set-up), especially if a small circulating water pump were utilised. The delta-T required between the warming fluid and the honey in the bucket is much reduced when using a fluid with higher heat capacity, the transfer within the bucket being the only limiting factor.

I have a dedicated insulated warming box with low wattage heaters, but I think the burco boiler might replace it and save me the best part of a day, or perhaps more, to melt a 10l bucket of honey. Probably melt and filter 3 buckets of honey in two days quite easily using both, I suppose. Or just use both burco boilers and do 4 buckets inside two days! Greater heat loss from the water baths but much speedier.

For those unable to work out the burco heater powers.

Each heater is 750W, so 1500W, 750W and 375W for both in parallel, one only and both in series.

As an aside, if adding an SSR to a heater with a powered control circuit (eg electronic), the SSR must only reduce the voltage to the heater and there may be some where the whole control circuit needs to be bypassed/replaced.

But nothing that is insurmountable.
 
Plenty of uses for my Burco but warming honey ain't one of them - far too dodgy temperature control. A 35 year old winemakers heating mat works fine for me.

I have a couple of those old mats, Afermo. Not sure they still work, but how long does it take?
 

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