new march pump and therminator setup

I've finally got everything I need to use my therminator and march pump setup. I'm going to do a test run in two days by boiling water in my kettle and running it through the pump and chiller. I'm curious if anyone has any advice to share about march pumps and plate chillers. I'm particularly interested in avoiding pump cavitation and curious how people prime their pumps.

These two items may seem obvious for many, but I discovered them first hand a few weeks ago when I first integrated my first march pump into my set up.

1. There is alot of discussion about the orientation of your pump head. From my experience, a vertical orientation is better (with the outlet at the top). I was told this by my LHBS owner as well as several posts on here, but ultimately found it was true under my own experiments.

2. This one may seem really stupid... but, the pump route must be an open circuit at least to start with. The main use of my pump is to recirculate wort back into the kettle and across the IC I use. Because the return is under the surface of the wort, air is trap initially by the pump and hosing. It didn't take me long to realize my return needed to be above the surface of the wort (and free flowing) to allow that air to purge the line.

Long story short: whatever your set-up is, make it easy for the air to be pushed through the system in front of the wort and you should avoid cavitation as much as possible.

Hope it helps!

There is a sticky (or a post) from the March pump dude somewhere. BobbyM(?) also has a short video on priming.

If you need to throttle/restrict the flow do it after the pump.

Have the output at either 12:00 (vertical) or 3:00 (horizontal). I have two pumps and have both scenarios. I rarely prime my pumps. Normally I just pulse them.

The vertical pump is only a couple of feet under the source. It's a grant and at the most only has a few pints in it. I just pulse the pump until I see some bubbles coming in reverse direction into the grant. Sometimes it takes five or six pulses to get it to go, but it never screeches (once you get one you'll know that sound). If I had a drain valve I wouldn't have to do so many pulses.

The horizontal one is actually easier to get going. But it's about four feet below my BK which has 6+ gallons in it. Also it's fed with silicone and I can see the wort and if it has air in it. Now out of the two at time this pump will just start to complain. It's rare but does happen. It might be a combination of being horizontal and pucking boiling wort.

All in all the pumps are great. Just don't weld them into place until you understand them


So you want to use yours to feed a plate chiller. I imagine that you will have to have a ball valve. I'd put it after the pump and before the chiller. Having the chiller at the some height or lower would be best. This would be easy to prime. If the carboy is high just feed a bucket on the floor and once you get flow close the ball valve and more the hose. I don't have a plate chiller and I only use my pump to whirlpool. After I'm done chilling with my immersion chiller I gravity feed through my pump.

Thanks for the advice guys. The dry run helped me identify some leaks and the fact that I needed a different hose attachment. Having the pump verticle does seem to work best. Now have a double batch of my falconer's flight pale ale fermenting.