25 or 50 foot CFC?

Water temps have always been a huge problem here in the summer. my ic is just not cutting it anymore. I have a gift certificate for a big box hardware store and thought i would make a CFC and use my IC as a pre-chiller. i hate to spend the $$ and not get the job done, so i was thinking 50 foot would be good, even if it is overkill. any thoughts or advice on building a CFC? Thanks!

If you've already got a pre-chiller in the mix, there's really no reason that a 25 foot IC shouldn't do the trick - especially if you put a ball valve on it's outflow side so you can throttle it down a little bit if you need to, just to increase the contact time inside the CFC. My CFC is 25', and depending on the time of year, I sometimes have to throttle the garden hose input so I don't overchill the wort!

so I made a 50 ish footer because I had the stuff so figures why not. and let me tell ya I can have my cooling water at a trickle and still be chilling perfectly. I will say though that with just gravity it is way slow! Im sure I'm reaching my equilibrium around half way or so with gravity at least but a pump is my next purchase so I figure that I will be able to pump at full throttle and get a great chill super fast where with the 25' i may have to throttle down.

If you have a pump I'd go CFC, just personal preference. If you plan on doing large batches ever in your life I would build a 50' IC. That said a solderless copper CFC would be a slight step up in price but IMO a better solution. You can gravity feed a CFC and people do it without issue but I've never tried it. Whatever you build post some pics. Good luck.

I think a 25' 3/8" CFC is perfect. Any more and you're just wasting money on copper and slowing your wort down too much.
If you do a 50' 1/2", that might be a different story, though. 50' of 1/2" copper is gonna be some serious dough though these days.

I just converted my 50' 3/8" IC into a 50' CFC and it works great. Why use both a CFC and pre chiller when you can make life simpler with a larger CFC?

3BB001 said:

I just converted my 50' 3/8" IC into a 50' CFC and it works great. Why use both a CFC and pre chiller when you can make life simpler with a larger CFC?

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If your tap water temp is higher than your pitching temp, your cfc could be 1000 miles long and not be as effective as a 25' cfc with a pre chiller.

Wunderduck said:

If your tap water temp is higher than your pitching temp, your cfc could be 1000 miles long and not be as effective as a 25' cfc with a pre chiller.

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Good point.

I just noticed you are talking about making a CFC, I thought you were debating making a 50' IC or a 25' CFC, my bad.