Some rims tube design issues

Northern Brewer General
1

Hey gang. I’m building my RIMS tube and struggling with a couple of design issues…

  1. How to house the base of the element. Can anyone point me to any ideas? I did some searches and came up empty. Obviously I want to keep it water tight with the contacts covered. I thought of using a junction box and drilling a 1 1/4" hole through it, but most “normal” junction boxes would not be water tight. The marine grade junction box looks like it would probably be too thick - there wouldn’t be enough thread left once the element passes through the junction box to catch the fitting on the RIMS tube.

  2. There are two plastic sleeves about 1" long on the legs of the heater element as they attach into the base. Any reason I can’t cut these off?

thanks