plumbing my rims

I was wondering if anyone could tell me the best way to plumb my brew system. My system is base on the sabco Brew Magic. The kegs have 1/2 mnpt couplers welded to them. I am using one March 809 pump. Was wondering about the following:

Rigid SS tubing VS. Silicon
Valve placement
Tri clover VS. QD VS. compression Fittings
Pump cavitation
sanitation of plumbing and pump
ID of tubing to use
threaded fittings

Anything else that needs discussed about the issue

also i grabbed up some 1/2 OD .049 wall 316L SS tubing at a fairly cheap price. Ends up a little over 7/16 ID.
Thanks, MB

I use 1/2" x 3/4" Silicone tubing, it's easy to clean and see what's going on. If you use SS and do a proper CIP procedure then that might be better depending on what you really want to do. With fixed tubing you need more valving and planning because you are not hose swapping at all.

Tri -clovers are nice and I use one for my RIMS tube, but I like Quick disconnects better. I am using the polysulfone Colder QD's but if I was going to do it over I would have gone with the more expensive SS QD's, or currently in vogue SS camlocks.

Not had any pump cavitation issues since fixing the clamping of my tubing on QD's and reorienting my pumps north/south instead of east/west.

Sanitation is pretty simply running hot water/Oxyclean through the system after brewing.

bargainfittings.com has some of the products mentioned above that you might want.

Actually your stainless steel tubing has an ID of .402 which is less than 7/16ths but it is still usable with a little flow than 1/2 ID. If you have the tubing use it to hard plumb your brewery. You can use Swagelock compression fittings or if you really want to get fancy weld it. In my automated clone of a Sabco Brew Magic I use Tri-clover fittings with Swagelok fittings. See Below:

Ooooo preeeety! My next iteration of my brewery will be hard plumbed with stainless...

Nice set up guy. Oopps I only figured one side of the wall. Thanks for the edit.

So do you get any cavitation with your pumps? Also i was thinking of buying 1.5 tri x .5" mnpt fittings to attatch to my kegs, tees, cross, rims tube, ect. Then welding my SS tubing to 1.5" tri clover caps to complete each connection. This will enable me to break down the entire system if needed. What are your thoughts.