Controlling Two Freezers On The Same Circuit

[chief764]

Good afternoon everyone. I am planning to use a BCS-460 to control two freezers/heaters on the same 20-Amp circuit. I have not seen this configuration in the forum so I will submit my "drawing" here to see whether I am on the right track or completely out to lunch.

Will the SSRs be sufficient for controlling the freezers or do I need a contactor?

The plan is to install two split-receptacle outlets and control them with 4 25-Amp SSRs. Each freezer is 1.69 Amps according to its label. They are small 5 cu ft. freezers.

Thanks for the help!

BCS Wiring Diagram Fermentaion Control.jpg (122.6 KiB) Viewed 6605 times

[JonW]

Looks good to me!

[chief764]

Thanks, JonW. Gonna order my BCS tonight and get to work!

[JonW]

Can you please tell me what you meant by “neutral connecting tab remains intact”? The diagram looks fine and it’ll the distribution will work.

A standard duplex wall outlet has a connecting tab on each side of it that is electrically bonding the two outlets together. If you break the tab on the hot side (like shown in his diagram), you can run two different circuits to the outlet. Since it's not required to have separate neutral connections, you can leave the connecting tab intact on that side of the outlet so you only need to run one neutral wire to it.

[MoreHopsPlease]

Hey all, first post here, and I was hoping I could get a little help. I really don't have much of a clue as to what I'm doing on the electrical end, so I was very much relieved to see that Chief had the same idea as me to control 2 fermentation chambers with the BCS and already had made a wiring diagram for it. The only difference between what he did and I want to do is that I would like to be able to ferment two different beers at two different, although close, temperatures, so I'll need two heating elements per chest freezer. I modified his diagram (I hope you don't mind Chief) to reflect this:



I really had two main questions about this:

1) Will this still work with the changes I've made?

-and-

2) Will I be able to use 25a SSRs? I only have one of the chest freezers so far, and it is 3.0 amps.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[JonW]

Sure, you can do what you're proposing. Not really sure how you plan on implementing the two heaters, but you may need to code in a few state changes to get the scenarios you want. Not hard though.

Yes, the 25A SSR's will be just fine for this.

[MoreHopsPlease]

Sure, you can do what you're proposing. Not really sure how you plan on implementing the two heaters, but you may need to code in a few state changes to get the scenarios you want. Not hard though.

Yes, the 25A SSR's will be just fine for this.

Thanks for the quick reply, Jon. All I had in mind was to use simple code to turn on the heater if the temperature was below what I wanted and the freezer if it was above what I wanted. I was also thinking about adding a barrier in the middle so the heat from one beer won't affect the other. The heating elements I have are the Fermwrap heaters, so they will be directly attached to the carboys. I'm definitely open to suggestions though as I'm sure there's a better way to do it. Can you give me an example of what a few state changes would be? Thanks again.