How to stop a leaky immersion chiller

One of the earliest upgrades I made to my brewing setup, in fact right after my first brew, was an immersion chiller. I bought about the cheapest one i could find on Amazon, thinking what the hell its just a coil of copper how could they mess it up. Well, the hardware the included was tubing that was just a bit too big (it slid right over the copper - not snug) and hose clamps.

After fiddling around with the setup for three brews i got sick of having to cut down the chewed up hose, trying to tighten the hose clamps correctly, and wrecking the ends of my copper, sometimes to no avail, still having small leaks.

So, I went to ace hardware and bought 50$ worth of brass fittings and copper, yeah almost as much as the chiller itself cost. It would have cost less if my copper ends weren't so gnarled but the needed to be cut down and then extended out.

anyways what i have now has two hose fitting on each end and is 100% water tight, if anyone is curious to the process/parts I can get the names but I cant remember off the top of my head

I was able to solve a similar problem I had by putting a second hose clamp right next to the existing one, but rotated 180 degrees. Old dude in the plumbing dept at Home Depot suggested it

That's what I did with my SS imersion chiller as well. Those are comression fittings and they work great. No more leaks. By the way, I only did this to the input side. Since that side is under much more pressure, it always leaked. The outlet side is under very little pressure, so I left the hose clamp and vinyl hose on it without a problem.

bcrawfo2 said:

i was able to solve a similar problem i had by putting a second hose clamp right next to the existing one, but rotated 180 degrees. Old dude in the plumbing dept at home depot suggested it

Click to expand...

+1

Just a tip if anyone has a leaky IC that is already in the kettle. I take a small piece of tinfoil and wrap it around the copper coil in the path of the leak. Then I form a little stalactite type thing at the bottom end of the foil which the water runs down instead of the coil and drips harmlessly to the ground. I should have taken a pic yesterday when I had to do that.

bcrawfo2 said:

I was able to solve a similar problem I had by putting a second hose clamp right next to the existing one, but rotated 180 degrees. Old dude in the plumbing dept at Home Depot suggested it

Click to expand...

That should work perfect for me. I have a small leak on the input side of my chiller (not really too big a deal as no water was getting close to going into my kettle, but it was still annoying me).