low temp liquid with march pump

what is the lowest temp liquid you can pump though a march pump? I am thinking about getting a march to recirc mash and transfer to kettle and I was thinking of pmping ice water though the IC if the pump can handle it.

Um, yeah, you can pump ice water through it, no problem!

for a sec there I thought he had invented some way to use liquid nitrogen in the brewing process..... not that I want to brew with it.... I just want an excuse to have some around to play with...

I think I would avoid pumping actual ice cubes through the pump. You should have some way of seperating solid ice from entering the pump.

Ice water = water at near freezing temp. Sorry for the confusion.

Seabee John said:

for a sec there I thought he had invented some way to use liquid nitrogen in the brewing process..... not that I want to brew with it.... I just want an excuse to have some around to play with...

Click to expand...

That will be coming.... "I can chill 10 gal of boiling wort to pitching temps in 33 seconds with my march-pumped, inverted bi-linear, whirlpooling, nitrogen filled counter-flowing immersion chiller"! :rockin:

You should be fine if the water is above freezing, just don't actually pump ice...

If you go sub-0 you might have to replace some o-rings, but honestly with the short amount of time the thing will be running you probably won't care.

I've run -20cish glycol through a few unmodified o-ring sealed pumps before with no issues. Only the worst pumps are going to have trouble with cold water.

You are better off using a pond pump. These are already equipped with hose fittings and you just place it right into the ice water and hook up the hose to the chiller. This keeps your march pump sanitary and ready for other tasks.

WBC I hear what your saying and in fact i have a sump pump that doesn't seem to be working for pumping ice water, I have to talk to northern tool about that, but if I can get away with one pump for everything I would like to do that.

I am thinking of copying The Pol's setup as far as how he uses the pump, but I am happy with gravity feeding the carboy from the kettle so I wont need the pump to be sanitized. I am trying to reduce the heavy lifting that i am doing now.

thanks for everyone else who chimed in. I just wasn't sure if the water had to be higher than say 50 degrees or something like that.

Thanks, you can copy anything you want... I am flattered