Johnson Controller HERMS

[TampaTony]

Greetings. I currently do 10 gallon all grain batches and would like to do a HERMS setup without spending a bunch of money or hiring an electrician. I have an old Immersion Chiller that I was going to use for re-circulation and was thinking about making a heat stick like this one: http://lovebrewingcompany.com/brewing/diy/heatstick plugged into my existing Johnson Temperature Controller (why buy a PID/SSR when I already have a JTC?) to control my HLT water temps once I get the water to around 152 using propane burner. After the Mash I would also like to ramp up the temp to 170 for a mash out using the heatstick. My questions are:
1. Has anyone done this with success?
2. Is the Johnson temperature controller/heatstick combination accurate enough for controlling the mash temp to precision?
3. If you are doing this, where do you put the Johnson Controller temp probe? In the Mash tun or other?

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[rcgoodfellow]

Have you heard anything about this? I am thinking about doing the exact same thing. I already use a heat stick for my boil anyway, and I have a Johnson controller. Just curious if you had any success / experience since your post.

 

[kenh]

A Johnson controller will not do a good enough job of temperature regulation. It's a electronic thermostat.