Need second stage on fermentation chamber

[wlssox524]

Hey all,

I've had a chest freezer hooked up to a single stage Johnson A419 temp controller for about a year now and have had trouble during the cold season with the ambient temperature being slightly below my desired temperature. Basically I think I need a second stage. If I were doing this from scratch I'd buy a two stage controller and a heating element/freezer, but I already have the one stage controller so I'm not sure what to do. Should I just suck it up and buy a two stage? Is it possible to buy another one stage controller and easily use the two controllers in conjunction? Thanks!

 

[erikpete18]

I'd be worried about the two controllers trying to work against each other all the time. Are you using a thermowell? If you are, you might be able to get away with it as the fermenter should hold a fairly decent temp and you shouldn't have as much jumping around at the set point. Although I'm not sure how you'd get two probes in a thermowell, so that's another problem. If you're measuring in the air you might be able to get away with setting the temps a few degrees apart and letting them balance in the middle so that each isn't kicking on as soon as the other kicks off.

The other thing you could consider, depending on how you were planning on heating your fermenter, would be an automatic switch like those you use on lamps when you're on vacation. I've got one that's basically a circle separated into 0.25hr increments, and you can pick and choose whether each increment is on or off. If your heater wasn't so strong that the shortest amount of time (ie 15 min) would overheat the fermenter, you could play around with heating for 30min every 12 hours, then every 6 hours, etc until you got it to where you want it. Its not the automatic temp control that you're looking for, but is much cheaper than a dual temp controller.

 

[Shred]

The STC-1000 is perfect for what you're looking to do and it costs MUCH less than the Johnson controllers (I think I paid $20). I have a little $15 space heater hooked up to the top outlet and the freezer hooked up to the bottom outlet (if you break the bridge in a standard outlet you can control each individually). The only downside is that it measures in Celsius so I keep a conversion table taped to the top of the freezer.

 

[angrysparrow]

Buy the two stage controller, and then sell your single stage controller to recoup some of the funds.