Wort Chiller w/ice water bucket - How big a pump?

I am going to build a copper coil wort chiller that uses a bucket with ice water instead of the faucet. It will be made of about 20 or 25' of 3/8" tubing.

How big a submersible pump do I need?

I am looking at a little one at Harbor Freight. It pushes 165 GPH, has a 47" lift and a 1/2" outlet.

Assuming a 20 minutes chill with 5 gallons of water, that would be about 11 cycles.

I use an aquarium pump for undergravel filtering. Not an extremely high gph. Slow enough that the ice melts really quick from really good heat transfer.

I just use one of those little pumps that goes on an electric drill worked great and was 9 $I have found that the slower the water goes in the IC the more heat transfer. Next time Try this run it at full blast then throttle down the water . The outlet water gets hotter

I tried one of the $10 harbor freight pumps. The POS didn't work, I'm not positive about the GPH, but it was around 200 I believe.

I bought a $35ish pond pump from Lowes, I think it's 300 GPH, and it works great. The harbor freight pump is garbage.

My Harbor Freight pump works like a champ with my CFC...

I used a harbor freight pump, too. It worked very well. Instead of recirculating the water back into the reservoir, I moved it to a drain. It didn't make sense to me to warm the cold water. Just keep filling the reservoir with cold water as needed.

this thread is worthless without pics

I am curious to see what this looks like and the fittings etc.

I use an immersion chiller. first i use hose water, then recirculate ice water with the 145 gph harborfreight mini submersible pump. That thing works great!

Duckfoot said:

My Harbor Freight pump works like a champ with my CFC...

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I bitched about the flowrate on mine when I bought it(supposed to be 195GPH), but now that I've used it, it's great.

6 gal. of boiling wort down to 60F in 30 minutes.

jtd_1 said:

I use an immersion chiller. first i use hose water, then recirculate ice water with the 145 gph harborfreight mini submersible pump. That thing works great!

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Exactly what I use and do. Works well

This is exactly what I do. I fill my laundry sink with water, drop this in:

Northern Industrial Submersible Pump — 1326 GPH, 1/8 HP, 1in. | Submersible Utility Pumps | Northern Tool + Equipment

and then run the water through a 50' x 3/8" chiller. After five minutes, I dump a couple bags of ice into the laundry sink. It takes 10 minutes tops to get 5 gallons from boiling to pitching, seriously.

For me the secret was getting all 50' in my pot since it was a wide and short 15 gallon pot. It's made out of two coils, one inside the other. BTW, that pump is crazy powerful. DO NOT plug it in without a hose attached, it will spray water to the roof of your garage which will then fan out and get EVERYTHING wet. I only paid $40 at the store. Read the reviews, its worth it and way better than those joke fountain pumps they sell at Lowes, etc..

does anyone know if using the submersible pump is easier than building a pre- chiller? Pre -chiller would go in a ice chest with ice?

I've gone the low tech route. No pump needed
I use my 5 gallon MLT to hold cold water (ice optional). It sits above the kettle and gravity feeds the 20' 3/8" copper IC.
I also have 20' of refrigeration copper tubing that is fed with an autosiphon from the MLT.
I just refill the MLT as needed with a hose. I hit pitching temps for ales in about 15 minutes.

JesseRC said:

does anyone know if using the submersible pump is easier than building a pre- chiller? Pre -chiller would go in a ice chest with ice?

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It definitely is. You could just as easily drop the sump pump into the chest with ice. The only problem there is that you have to constantly replace the water that is lost. Not a big deal though. Just use the hose that would normally be supplying the pre-chiller with water to refill the chest.

Personally, I think if you're not overly concerned with use of water (I'm not, there's plenty of it despite what environmentalists would have you believe and you're not using, just borrowing ) then a sump pump dropped into a tub of ice water is the way to go. It's so easy and the pump is also handy around the house for other stuff on occasion.

well actually what I meant was pre -chiller into ice chest with ice water >from pre chiller to the chiller in the wort. The whole thing is fed from garden hose pressure. NO pump. Would this work? THe ice chest would never lose water.

Yes, it would work and I understood what you meant. I just think its easier to buy the pump than build the pre-chiller and I don't think the price difference is that much either.

Essentially, you are achieving the same thing either way. The water going into the main chiller is at ice water temperatures. Also, both solutions will waste relatively the same amount of water. I think its a matter of personal preference in this case.

yeah, although currently i have a 25' chiller, i was thinking of building a 50' one. Thanks for your input. I think i could use the pump for other things too!

I have a 258 GPH pump that I tried using with 50 ft of garden hose from the pool through an IC, but it didn't work so good.

The stream of water coming out of the discharge hose of the IC looked like someone who had an enlarged prostrate problem.

I've been wanting to get a more powerful submersible pump to use for cooling.

What would be a good size GPH or GPM pump to get?

Thanks...

I guess I should have looked at the top of this page. Looks like I need at least a 1326 GPH pump.

LiquidGold said:

I have a 258 GPH pump that I tried using with 50 ft of garden hose from the pool through an IC, but it didn't work so good.

The stream of water coming out of the discharge hose of the IC looked like someone who had an enlarged prostrate problem.

I've been wanting to get a more powerful submersible pump to use for cooling.

What would be a good size GPH or GPM pump to get?

Thanks...

I guess I should have looked at the top of this page. Looks like I need at least a 1326 GPH pump.

Click to expand...

I think the issue is the 50' of hose. That pump would work much better with a shorter run.

I've done this during the summer to try to cut the time and water use but the ice melted well before the wort was chilled. I pulled the poppets from the posts and filled the keg w/ ice. Water from the hose went in the liquid side and pushed the ice water out the gas side. It worked ok but I'm going to a pump this summer when it warms back up.

I am going to need to invest in something like this as I just got a boiler maker and can no longer do an ice bath/IC combo. Are you guys sure a pre-chiller isn't the best solution?

I dump a 20lb bag of ice into a cube cooler and fill it with water. My little Harbor Freight submersible pump has suction cup feet, so it sticks to the bottom.

Since I have washing machine hose connectors on my IC, I can use the garden hose for a little while, to get the wort a little cool, before switching to the pumped ice water.

I use a pre-chiller all the time now and it works the best of all methods I've tried before.



The boiling hot water goes into a large bucket for later use, or just dumped down the drain. Since it's so hot the return water from the immersion chiller will quickly warm up the ice bath dramatically reducing it's efficiency. I started using the pre-chiller in the hot summer months when my tap water is 70-72F making it impossible to quickly cool boiling wort down to pitching temperatures. The tap water slowly flowing through 40 foot of 3/8 copper tubing submerged in 5 gallons of refrigerated water and frozen water bottles enters the immersion chiller at 60-62F.

Been doing this for quite a while. The real secret to getting the ice to last is to not use cubes.

What I do, a day or two before brew day, place some plastic containers filled with water in the freezer. And, nope, they don't have to be full but they do have to be shaped to get the soon to be frozen blocks out. I'll do a bunch, six or eight or so. Be sure they have time to freeze hard. Usually two days is plenty.

My wife used to sell Tupperware and the Freezer Mates are perfectly shaped to freeze blocks and pop them right out easy peasy.

Then using my little bitty "found in the trash" fountain pump and a $2 garage sale cooler, plus the IC from my sig line, I can have my wort at pitching temps in 10 to 12 minutes. And, yup, I usually just recirculate the water.

I have the pump in one end of the cooler, and the hot water return line squirting into the other, with the water and ice in between.

I've already posted a picture of my old set-up in my signature line, it shows the recirc pump in action.