How high up the keg is your HERMS coil upper fitting?

[mattoak]

I know this is probably very trivial, but I need to drill my upper hole for my HERMS coil fitting. I can't decide if I should drill it higher or lower. See the picture for reference. I am split between those two spots for the "Out" fitting. I know it doesn't matter much, but help me decide!

Where do you have yours, and why? I figure the upper located will allow the coil to be spread out more and get slightly better heat exchange. My coil is 25', so they aren't touching in either location, but I still don't know which one to go with. I'm also not too worried about having it too high because I can always just add enough extra water to the HLT to account for the extra height needed, and just have some left over water at the end of brewing in there.

 

[Yooper]

Mine is where I had to have it because I'm all electric so it's above the heating element.

The thing is, I treat my water by diluting with RO water (or using all RO water) so I wish it was lower because to fill my HLT completely with RO water that isn't needed is a waste. I have to have it at about 7 gallons to cover the HEX, and since I now do 10 gallon batches that's ok.

But when I did 5 gallon batches, it annoyed the heck out of me and I either didn't use it since I didn't want to run more RO water just for the HEX or used it ineffectively.

If that isn't a concern for you and your water supply, either way would be fine!

 

[mattoak]

Mine is where I had to have it because I'm all electric so it's above the heating element.

The thing is, I treat my water by diluting with RO water (or using all RO water) so I wish it was lower because to fill my HLT completely with RO water that isn't needed is a waste. I have to have it at about 7 gallons to cover the HEX, and since I now do 10 gallon batches that's ok.

But when I did 5 gallon batches, it annoyed the heck out of me and I either didn't use it since I didn't want to run more RO water just for the HEX or used it ineffectively.

If that isn't a concern for you and your water supply, either way would be fine!

Thanks! No RO water here, but also electric. My lower fitting is located so the coil is about an inch above the heating element. I'm leaning towards having more spread in the coil being better, and since I will be using 5500 W and garden hose water to fill, I don't have too much of a concern over extra volume being an issue. I think the difference in height is only like 2 gallons of water anyway, which at 5500 W is barely any additional heating time.

Just wondering what other people did and if there were preferences either way! I'll also be doing mostly 5 gallon batches.

 

[iijakii]

I doubt you'd see any increased heat transfer from the coils being marginally spread out. I wouldn't go high enough you have to put excess water in personally.

 

[Yooper]

I think the key for good heat transfer is agitation or recirculation of the water and the water covering the coils, not the space between them.

 

[jmark]

What Yooper said... if you can, try and get the coil as low as possible and if you can recirculate water to avoid stratification. I made the same mistake you're thinking of doing... now my upper hole is way too high and I end up having to "waste" a lot of water, especially when I do smaller batches. I end up using the leftover HLT water for cleaning purposes, but since I use RO, there's still water going to waste.

One of these days, I'm going to drill a new hole lower down and re-do it... the only reason I haven't done it yet, is that it was a HUGE PITA getting the coil hooked up to begin with, many finger cuts and curses... not looking forward to doing that again.

 

[mattoak]

Thanks. Ended up going with the upper fitting on the low side of the bump on the keg.