Advice on a MLT

Alright I bought a 12 gallon square Igloo cooler and will fit it with a ball valve. However, Im wondering if anyone out there has made a false bottom or if I should go with the typical 1/2" cpvc manifold. Any advice/pics would be much appreciated.

I saw a great pic on here of a stainless steel spring inserted in a braided steel toilet hose last night.... I will see if I can find it

I have two coolers, 1 is a ten gallon round Igloo water cooler MLT and the other (for big beers and my 15 gallon batches) is a 70 qt Coleman Extreme. Both use the stainless braid manifold and both work great providing 80%+ efficiencies in extracting sugars from malt.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/mlt-cooler-conversion-crushproof-braid-122433/

This looks pretty nice! I just have a beat up tattered looking braided hose with no spring.

mrk305 said:

I just have a beat up tattered looking braided hose with no spring.

Click to expand...

A simple braid installation will work very well IMO...if you care to jazz it up w/ an internal spring and tee the braid in a loop...great. If you just want to install a plain 10 inch single braid, that will work just as well IMO.

I've never seen a false bottom that would fit a square cooler, and I wouldn't like to try and make one.
If you are fly sparging, I would definitely go with a manifold as described in How to Brew - By John Palmer - Building the Manifold
If you are batch sparging, I think a braid would work every bit as well as a manifold, and should be cheaper and easier to fabricate (although I don't think it would last quite as long).
I've never used a manifold, but I have batch sparged in a round cooler with both a false bottom and a braid. I found the braid worked every bit as well as the false bottom.

-a.