Conclusion to Part 1 – here
When we last spoke about the chicken scalder we discussed the components and some of the basics in assembly. Here are several of the final photos, pointers and decisions we made.
Several people on the web that have built their own scalders have chosen to fill the bottom with concrete to level it off for drainage purposes. The fact of the matter is, we decided that the trade off in cleaning convenience didn’t offset the less efficient design for heat transfer – so we didn’t fill the bottom with concrete. Actually the design and usage of the metal hand-truck allow this scalder to be tipped to the drain and allows almost all the waste the drain out that way.
Another consideration in design was the decision to attach the water tank to the hand-truck by nylon straps in case we need to easily get the tank off the hand truck. Now – it won’t just come off – the gas valve is attached to the plywood sheet along with the electronics – and that’s attached to the hand truck via sheet-metal screws.
You can see a metal sheet that covers the electronics and vale configuration – that is mainly to prevent accidental splashing in the scalding process from even having the opportunity to bug the components. A little prevention that should keep things functioning fine on processing day.
The direct view of the “control board” is very straight forward. The ETC on the left, the transformer on the right – powered by a 15′ extension cord that we cut the female end of the plug off of. We mounted the temp sensor for the ETC inside a cut off brass fitting from the tank and made it leak proof by filling the outside end of the fitting with 2-part epoxy – the probe is centered, gets good water circulation and is even with the edge of the inside of the tank so a chicken being sloshed up and down can’t cause damage to the probe.
The drain valve will get tested – it’s NOT a gate valve (the fullest opening kind to allow junk out) but it’s also not a ball valve (smallest opening) – it’s actually the valve we had at the bottom of a bucket of plumbing parts. When the scalder gets drained I will attach a section of hose to the fitting and let the hot water kill off some undesirable weeds.
The gas valve was new – the thermocouple and pipe to the burner are original to the tank – they fit and work great – why change?
Fundamentally when you embarking on building something to perform a job for you – you modify the design to solve your specific problem. For me – storage, portability and rugged construction were high on the list of important considerations – and this scalder design solves all those needs. I didn’t want to mess around with an “auto-chicken dunker” – because the reality is, should the farm ever get to a volume that needs that functionality – a hot water heater solution isn’t going to be it.
Perhaps someday – volume and demand for birds will dictate a much higher capacity setup of dedicated equipment – like those awesome ones sold by Featherman – but for now, this should work just fine.
fact is – processing day is the 25th – TOMORROW – so check back for photos, videos, and tales of how things went this first year of sales to customers!
