WTB Chinchilla Pre-Chiller or the like

Living in Dallas can be wonderful, but with the summer heat fast approaching, my ground water will be in the 80's. I need a pre-chiller or I won't be able to get my wort to pitching temp despite my nice new 50' IC. If anyone has an extra chiller or a Chinchilla they are willing to part with let me know, and I'll buy it up.

I ditched the prechiller awhile back and got a sump pump. I freeze ziplock bags filled with water, place them in a bucket of water with the pump. I use the pump to recirculate this cold water through my chiller after a couple of minutes of straight tap water. You can get down to lager pitching temps fairly quickly and it saves water

I live in Dallas too and know what you mean about high water temps. I would ditch the prechiller and get a cheap sump pump from Harbor Freight. What I do is cool my wort with ground water until about 100* then switch to ice water run through the sump pump into the IC.

A few people have noted that even using a prechiller doesn't get their ground water cool enough to chill. Plus you're going to use a lot more ice this way.

Indytruks138 said:

Living in Dallas can be wonderful, but with the summer heat fast approaching, my ground water will be in the 80's. I need a pre-chiller or I won't be able to get my wort to pitching temp despite my nice new 50' IC. If anyone has an extra chiller or a Chinchilla they are willing to part with let me know, and I'll buy it up.

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A cheap alternative would be to just submerge a garden hose (or whatever type hosing you affix to your IC) in a bucket of cold water.

jww9618 said:

I live in Dallas too and know what you mean about high water temps. I would ditch the prechiller and get a cheap sump pump from Harbor Freight. What I do is cool my wort with ground water until about 100* then switch to ice water run through the sump pump into the IC.

A few people have noted that even using a prechiller doesn't get their ground water cool enough to chill. Plus you're going to use a lot more ice this way.

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I am open to this idea. It seems more expensive though. The pre-chiller looks to be $30 new, whereas the cheapest sump pump I can find is $50. What do you put the sump pump in? Just a big bucket?
Do you have to get many convertors for the output of the pump into the IC hose? I can't tell what kind of output they have.

Harbor Freight has a submersible fountain pump for like 20 bucks. I cant find it on their website, but I think I remember it being somewhere around 400 GPH.

I have this pump. http://www.harborfreight.com/264-gph-submersible-fountain-pump-68395.html

The nipple looking thing on the top is the output. It comes with a couple different sizes. All I did was connect a piece of hose from the pump output to the IC input. I used QD's but you can you whatever you want. I put the pump in an ice chest with ice water. When the ground water cools the wort to around 100* I shut off the water, connect the sump pump to the IC input, and turn on the pump.

I have never tried putting a garden hose in a bucket of ice to cool the water but I wouldn't think it would work very well. It's the same thing as a copper prechiller except not as efficient. Bobby_M has some great posts about prechilling that you should search for.

Thanks everyone for the ideas.

I did the search on Bobby_M's posts and think the fountain pump is the way to go. I will be getting one at Harbor Freight. Hopefully we get another solid month before ground water hits about 80.