Brew Sculpture Plan (diagram) - Advice welcome and appreciated!

Here is a diagram of my current plan:



It is a pretty simple 2 tier setup. Boil on the left, mash tun keggle on the right. I plan to use a cooler on top to hold sparge water. The frame is 2" 14 gauge A500 mild steel square tube.

My brewday will work as follows:

Heat water in the mash tun, dough in, and start a mash recirc with the pump. The PID (in the center control box) and honeywell valve fires on the burner as needed to keep up temps. While the mash is mashing I'll heat sparge water in the kettle and pump it up into the cooler. I sparge from the cooler as I pump the first runnings from the MLT to the kettle and start the boil. I will cool the wort Jamil style with the pump whirlpooling hot wort around my IC.

Please feel free to point out any flaws before I start this build and waste precious beer money. Thanks!

What size cooler are you going to use?
Your process will work, but why not just use the cooler as the MT, and then heat your strike and sparge water in both keggles?

If you only have one pump how are you going to transfer your sparge water from the keggle to the cooler with it while you are recirculating the mash at the same time?

tally- I'm going to use my 10 gallon cooler. I want to mash in the keggle so that I can direct fire, heating the mash through steps and intermittently to keep temps stable during steps. I like the idea of recirculating for most of the mash to create clear wort.

3BB001- One pump was a crucial part of my "keep this project cost off of SWMBO's radar" plan. I intend to shut the heat and recirc off of the mash tun for a couple minutes, just long enough to move the water, and then resume. It will take less than 5 min and so the mash should remain stable enough. I plan to outfit the brewery with camlocks and the distance from the MLT valve and the BK valve is the same. Its a matter of flipping the hose fro mthe MLT to the BK, disconnect the recirc hose, plugging it into the HLT, repriming and pumping. I am a fan of no-sparge brewing anyhow, so I won't sparge most beers below 1.055.

Does anyone with more experience with the March 815 know if it can fill a ten gallon cooler 3.5' above the pump from the bottom up? Will I have to install a fitting on the top of the cooler so the pump won't have to push against the weight of the water as the cooler fills?

Actually, it will be easier and faster to fill from the bottom(if the source is below the upper vessel), as the head pressure will be constantly changing (= to the 3.5' + the water level).

If you're filling from the top, your head pressure, and thus flow rate, will be constant, and equal to the (3.5' + full height of water column) or at the slowest flow rate you would see from bottom-filling.


Might be counter-intuitive, but this site gives a decent breakdown of pump mechanics and simple fluids.
http://www.mcnallyinstitute.com/06-html/6-01.html

Looking at the 815 curves below, between 4-6' of head you'll see ~6-7gpm flow rate.
http://www.marchpump.com/site/files/966/112279/382929/524649/Performance_Curve.pdf






Science is fun, but beer is funner!

That blows my mind. Good news though!