First All Grain and First Lager...need advise

Sorry for the long post but I have really learned alot from this forum and really appreciate everyones help. I am brewing my first all grain brew tomorrow. To make it more interesting it is also my first lager. Here is my plan and just wanted to get any feedback/help.

- Pre-heat cooler mash tun
- Heat 4 gallons of water to 170 degrees (assuming 1 gallon will be absorbed in the 8.25 lbs grains, 1.12 gallons per lb of grain roughly .99 gallon)
-Add 8.25 lbs of grains and mash @ 150 degrees for 60 mins
- Drain wort into pot until a couple of inches remain above grains
- Add 3.5 gallons of sparge water @ 170 degrees
- Sparge for 20 mins and collect roughly 6.5 gallons of total wort
- Boil as normal
- Cool wort to 51 degrees and pitch starter at 48 degrees
- Ferment @ 51 degrees for 10 days (or 75% of total fermentation)
- Raise temp to 68 degrees for approx 3-4 days
- Lower temp by 5 degrees each day until down to 34 degrees, then transfer to secondary
- Lager @ 34 degrees for 5-6 weeks

Thanks for any help

with strike temp of 170 you can use that to preheat your cooler - 20° above your mash target should be more than enough to preheat and then allow you to hit your mash temp. you can use beersmith or greenbay rackers to calculate your target temp before you dough in if you haven't already.

also make sure you stir really well and don't just dump in the entire grain at once - you wanna make sure there are no dough balls (clumps of dry grain)

keep a pot of boiling water near by as well as some cold/ice water near so you can use a Little at a time to hit your temp - key is a little at a time, you can also stir for a bit longer if you are only a few degrees too high

sounds like you are batch sparging so you can completely drain the mash tun before adding the sparge water - you'll want your sparge water to be hotter than 170 before you add it, you want the grain bed and water to reach 168-170 to end conversion (mash out) you don't need to wait a full 20min, but you may want to start draining your runnings slowly and gradually open the valve up all the way if necessary

make sure you have a BIG starter - use mr malty or yeastcalc - likely to be around 3000-4000ml depending on your gravity

the diacetyl rest could happen sooner or later than 10 days, watch when your airlock slows down and take a gravity reading

Also, rack to your secondary after the D-rest. Then start lagering. The goal of lagers is to get them as clean as possible by getting them off the yeast cake as soon as possible. I hope this helps.

Here is a very helpfull link on lagering.

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fermenting_Lagers