I'll tell you what I've done, but take all of this with a grain of salt, it works for me. I heat water on my gas range, but brew less than 15 feet from that stove and I'm a big dude, who used to deliver water as a business, so lugging 5 gallons, of even hot water, is no big deal for me. A nice pair of leather gloves and my arms is all I'll ever need.
Sounds pretty manageable. I know this is a newbe question but...What's your process for transferring the sparge water from your brew pot to your MLT?
I just lug it from the stove to my MLT. As I said before, the weight is not an issue with me. so I just dump my strike water right into my MLT. Being careful not to splash of course.
Do you just pour straight from the pot or are you using silicone tubing to transfer?
See above - for more water, I just use a pitcher to dip and pour the first couple of gallons, if I'm worried about splash over.
Also, are you crushing your own grain or buying it crushed?
Crush my own. Barley Crusher Malt Mill. Love it. I would suggest if you are doing all grain all the time, get your own mill. Having the option to crush as you need it, is invaluable, imo. There are 10X the opinions on what mill to get as there are mills available, so I'll let you decide that by searching the site.
I had pretty much decided I'd pick up a 44Qt Bayou Classic kettle ($84 on Amazon) & then the weld less fittings from brewhardware.com and put together a decent HLT....then I was distracted by something else shiny...Well sort of shiny. I came across the aluminum electric HLTs from highlanderbrewingsupply. They are about $75 more than the BC kettle and outfitting it myself.
I heat my strike water and sparge water in an old aluminum 7gal. Bayou Classic turkey fryer pot. Works great for that. I keep my boil kettle strictly for collecting wort and boiling.
I think the biggest draw for going with an electric HLT is not having to either lift a big pot of 165+ degree water or putting my propane burner on my garage work bench so I could gravity drain....Ahh decisions...I need to have a home brew & think about this some more.
Lifting can be tough. I would never advise it to anyone I haven't met personally. I look at brewing this way, what I have now, works perfect for me. I heat my strike water, by the time it's ready, I have my grain milled and my MLT pre-heated and ready to accept the water. I mash in. My sparge water is always at temp at around 50 minutes, so when that alarm goes off, I know I have to starte getting ready to sparge. Right now it's the perfect solution for me.
Obviously, if price is not an issue, I would always suggest going for what you will need in the future and adapting now, as opposed to scrapping what you have now, later.
I will say this though, my plan all along was for a fancy brew rig, but honestly, with my storage constraints, and how much I enjoy the process as it is. Where I'm at right now is almost perfect for me. From day one though, I always planned on expansion. So, I always bought a little bigger or better than needed because I knew, after my first extract brew I was hooked. Don't save $50 now, just to throw $100 away later, is my personal belief. Most of what I have right now is far bigger than I need, but everything I have can easily be converted to another piece in a 10 gallon operation later.