Idea to increase the efficiency of my chiller...

ok, so i don't have a lot of coin to upgrade my chiller ad i don't have the luxury of super cool ground water (summer runs 7o degrees or so) and ittskes me almost a half hour to cool my wort to 80 degrees...har me out...

say i fill a nice big bin with ice water and extend my intake of my chiller into the ice bin, say 20 feet or so of vinyl tubing (coiled) resting in the ice water....i attach the hose to that, so now the water entering the copper chiler is much cooler than my standard ground water...worth it?

also, my question about th tubing is, will it crack in ice water? should I buy a specific tubing? I obviously don't want an insulated tubing, that would defeat the purpose and wouldn't be much different than sticking the hose in the ice water...yay or nay?

would it be worth it to instead stick a second copper chiller in the ice water and have the water pas through it first?? significantly reducing the temp of the water entering the chiller in the pot??

help

buy a cheap submersible pump, put it in your ice water, recirculate that through the chiller, add ice as needed.

copper or stainless will conduct cold much better than plastic tubing which will act as an insulator to a certain extent....

Use copper, not vinyl. Copper has much better heat transfer. Copper IC in icewater hooked up to copper IC in your wort will work awesome.

Edit: Wow, outgunned TWICE...you guys are quick.

shortyjacobs said:

Use copper, not vinyl. Copper has much better heat transfer. Copper IC in icewater hooked up to copper IC in your wort will work awesome.

Edit: Wow, outgunned TWICE...you guys are quick.

Click to expand...

By two first timers too. Wow

Parker36 said:

By two first timers too. Wow

Click to expand...

Aww sumbeach....that's not even fair!

Just an FYI, using a 2nd IC which is what you'd be doing in some fashion, is generally called a 'pre-chiller'. Should work well to reduce your times.

Plastic is an insulator by nature. It's going to prevent the cold water on the outside from chilling the water running through the tubing. Copper is a poor insulator. It absorbs the chill from the cold water and transfers it right to the warmer liquid.

What you'd be better of doing is buying a 25 ft coil of copper at lowes, a cheap garden hose, and some hose clamps. Beind the coil in the shape of an immersion chiller, cut off the ends of the hose and clamp it to the ends of the copper chiller, sink that one into a bucket of salted icewater and place it between the water coming out of the spigot and the hose feeding your immersion chiller.

It's a pre-chiller and should work just fine. Stick to copper and you are good.

damn it.. i take too long respond, sorry for repeating everything lol

don't really know how well it would work but they have little submersible pumps at harbor freight for like 13 bucks. if you try the solution i suggested thats about the only thing you would need in addition to what you already have. that seems like a pretty cheap solution to me. anyone else vouch for this technique?

hairnt said:

don't really know how well it would work but they have little submersible pumps at harbor freight for like 13 bucks. if you try the solution i suggested thats about the only thing you would need in addition to what you already have. that seems like a pretty cheap solution to me. anyone else vouch for this technique?

Click to expand...

Only problem with those cheapie little sump pumps is they are sloowwww....you need two things for fast cooling....wait three things: flow rate, surface area, and temperature differential....

Getting a huge temperature differential doesn't give you crap if you can't move the water through fast.....for that reason, I prefer the dual IC setup with one IC in an ice bath and the other in the wort.

I know many people have good results with the ice water sump pump method though, so what the hell do I know? I'm just guessing it takes a decent pump to get a good flowrate....

Don't know about slow, my Little Giant is 160 gph. That's about 5 times the flow rate you need. The main thing is lift/head. A pond pump may only have a foot of lift. You need a fountain pump, like the Little Giant.

Recirculating ice water works fine. I'd suggest starting with a pan of water at ground temperature, then when the wort hits 140F or so, dump the pan, refill and add ice. Or just use lots of ice. Both work. I used this method in California, but don't need to in Oregon.

This is what I have used for the past 2 years to push the cold water through my homebuilt IC. - Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices


It works sufficiently if time is not a concern. Usually takes about 20-30 minutes to chill the wort from 200 F to around 70 F. I use plenty of ice that I get for free at my work. I would like to eventually upgrade to this pump - Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices in the near future so that I can shave some chill time off and get fermenting quicker.

Oh yeah... I'd go with copper or stainless for your IC. Here's a table that I found on line: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/tables/thrcn.html#c1 Maybe this will help.