Possible Use of Drinking Fountain in Brewery

I've had a small, wall hung, water cooler sitting around the garage thinking that it might prove useful as part of my homebrewery. It is rated at 115v/4.5a with a 1/5hp compressor.

The only use I can come up with, other than cooling drinking water, is to use it as a pre-chiller for my counter-flow chiller. But before I go through the motions of modifying it, I wanted to get any comments.

Given that I know little of thermodynamics, below are the rough calculations that I've attempted. I may be off by orders of magnitude.

115v x 4.5a x 3.4 = 1760 btu/hr.
Since 1 btu is equal to 1lbH2O/1deg
1760lbH2O/1deg/1hr capacity
8.3lbH2O/1gal ==> 212galH2O/1deg/1hr

For a flow rate of say, 60gal/hr (1gal/minute) ===> 3.5deg cooling capacity

It seems that at that relatively low flow rate, I would gain very little in wort chilling capacity. I guess the bottom line is, any opinions on the value of the water cooler for this application, or should it just go to the garage sale?

Thanks

Hook it up to a keg of beer and have the most legendary water fountain of all time!:rockin:

If you used to chill a bulk amount of water in advance, and store it in some coolers, possibly.

I have access to the same thing, and have been eyeballin' it for some time, although I know squat 'bout them thermodynamic thangs'!

Oh no! Don't do it! Thats just not possible
Water coolers cool water thats under pressure,Right?
Well you C O U L D hook that sucker up to a keg EH?
Guess I'm seconding cfrazier77
What does Quagmire on Family Guy say?

personally i think this would be better suited as a fermenter chiller. add a coil and thermowell to your fermentation vessel, and hook a pump up to a stc-1000, some tubing and you're good to go.
but thats just me

nebulous said:

personally i think this would be better suited as a fermenter chiller. add a coil and thermowell to your fermentation vessel, and hook a pump up to a stc-1000, some tubing and you're good to go.
but thats just me

Click to expand...

You could I guess, turn it into a glycol chiller............