submersible water pump.

Ok after last nights brew, I found out that my water hose with my immersion chiller is just not going to cut it. I could only get to 100 degrees. So i was thinking of getting a cheap submersible water pump, to pump Ice water into the chiller. I am sure someone has done this. What would be the optimal GPH that I would need? I am assuming their is not reason why this would not work.

I use a 258 GPH submersible fountain pump from Harbor freight. I put ice and water in a cooler with the pump and lines going to my homemade wort chiller. I can bring the wort down from 200 F to about 130 F in about 10 min. Problem is I need to get a bigger cooler for the ice, water, and pump so I can replace the warm water. So far it works me.

By the way Harbor Freight sells other pumps too. Depends on how much you want to spend.

I use about 10 gallons of 55F water for a 15 minute cool down. There's a limit to how fast the heat can transfer through the wall of my chiller & higher flows didn't make much difference. I'd say somewhere around 20-30 gph.

newguy... I have your fix. First, run your tap through the chiller untill you hit 100-120F. You're wasting the ice until that point. Second, don't recycle the chiller output back into the icebucket. It's going to be hotter than your tap water so you'd be better off trickling tap water into the bucket to make up the loss. It sounds like a lot of switching, but you can use cheap garden hose quick disconnects to make it really easy.

1. Garden hose from tap -> inline valve -> female QD.
2. Pump -> hose -> female QD.
3. Chiller ->short hose ->male QD.

This allows you to swap the chiller between the two water sources quickly.

Keep in mind that the GPH ratings of pumps are way overrated to begin with but even worse with any head pressure. The flow rate really goes down quickly if you ask it to pump uphill. You can always throttle back a bigger pump with a valve.

I'd go with this one... and I probably will for only $25. It even has a flow control valve on it.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=47117

Cool thanks for the info, I think ill go with that one at Harbor Freight.

You may want to think about a prechiller. Drop it in a bucket of ice and your tap water will be colder going into the IC. Could be cheaper than a pump.

If you can find 25' of 3/8" copper for less than $25, you might be right. I'm not convinced you can find it though. It'd be closer to $45.

I second the "don't waste the ice water" comment above. I use a cheapo aquarium pump that probably cost about 10$ and puts out 2-3 gal/min. The flow through my chiller isn't the rate limiting step - it's the surface area and rate of heat diffusion. That said my chlller is 3/8" copper about 25 feet long - a bigger chiller with more surface area would likely be limited by my small pump.

Length of tubing, tubing size, and elbows/bends all afffect flow rates.

http://www.pumpworld.com/headcalc.htm

This will be better. Has various pumps to choose from so you don't have to look up charts or contact manufacturers. The head losses that we would see will greatly reduce pump life, but for the short periods it's used, it will be pointless to worry about it.

http://www.reefcentral.com/calc/hlc2.php

It's all about temperature differential. Like bobby said, use your tap water to get the wort down from boiling to ~100˚F. There is a large temp differential between tap water, even during the summer heat, and boiling wort. Then switch the hose connections and recirculate the ice water, again creating a large temperature differential. In all the experimenting I have done with pre-chillers and such, recirculating ice water with a small submersible pump is the most efficient use of ice. I can get 5 gallons of ~100˚F wort down to 55˚F in less than 10 minute using only two 5 lb bags of ice.

It's not even rocket science, it's basic common sense. A prechiller is one more barrier to heat transfer. Ice cools water faster than icewater can cool flowing water behind a wall of copper. Simple.

Bobby_M said:

1. Garden hose from tap -> inline valve -> female QD.
2. Pump -> hose -> female QD.
3. Chiller ->short hose ->male QD.

This allows you to swap the chiller between the two water sources quickly.

Click to expand...

Nevermind...figured out how to connect.