I gave it a shot and things didn't go so well.
I mashed out and got it to 165 with Beersmiths directions which was pretty close. I figure next time I'll get the mash out water 3 degrees hotter so that should fix that. I added 175F water to the HLT cooler figuring that after the temp settled after losing some heat to the cooler I should be at around 170F.
I had calculated the drain rate and valve positions to be open about 3/4 of the way to give me a 60 min. sparge.
I did the vourlof and started collecting the wort in a 5gal bucket. When I got about 1" above the grain I opened the valve on the HLT cooler to start the sparge. Now the fun begins. The sparge arm spun around twice and then got stuck. I helped it spinning again and after 2 times around it sticks again.
After a few minutes playing around with this thing I decided I better check the water temp coming out and it was 155F. I'm now about 25 minutes into this process and and thinking WTF have I gotten into here.
I stopped everyting and checked the water temp in the cooler and it was 160F. I then realized I had left the top off of the cooler and all the heat was going straight up.
So now I'm thinking abandon ship and finish up the rest with a batch sparge. By now the grain bed temp is about 158F. I had about 3 gal of hot water left in the brew pot which was heated for the sparge water so I fired up the burner and got it to 175F. I drained the remaining wort from the MLT while the water was heating and added 2 gal to finish with the batch sparge.
I collect the 7.5 gal needed for the boil pot in 2 5 gal buckets. Now I'm thinking cool I fixed it and am back on track so I grabbed the first bucket and started pouring it in the boil pot and by the time I realized I hadn't dumped the remaining gallon of hot sparge water from the boil pot and shouting oh Sh@#. I had poured about 3 gal of wort already into the pot.
After a few minutes of cursing I poured the rest in and figured add an extra hour to the boil before any hop additions and I should be good.
We will see how this batch comes out. I think I will go back to batch sparging for a while. Maybe I'll give fly sparging another try in the fall when it won't be 90F on the patio.
I documented this entire disaster in the beersmith recipe just in case this turns out to be the best batch ever