Greetings!
My name is Walter, and I work for March Pumps here in Glenview IL. I have recently got a few calls regarding these Chugger pumps from a number of people in the past two weeks. I Never heard of them till now and dont know anything about them, so I was doing some surfing on the net to see what they were about and found this posting. Took me quite a while to read through all the posts but I felt compelled to just register and clear up a few things mentioned in the postings.
1. ALL of our castings for the pumps we make are made right here in the USA! Our 316 stainless is made in Pennsylvania. Our Bronze castings we get from a major mfg of household faucets in that's headquartered in WI. And for all our plastic pumps, we buy the raw materials and do the injection molding right here in-house.
2. For beer brewing applications, you really don't need anything more then the Polysulfone plastic pump. Unless you have rigid plumbing putting stress on the plastic fittings, or want sanitary fittings, would you need to get the stainless pump. The polysulfone is food grade plastic, but we do NOT have NSF certification for the pump. Why you ask? Well to get an NSF rating the pump would need to be nailed down for one specific application. Like lets say beer brewing...but the first time someone puts any other compound through the pump (like a cleaning/sanitizing fluid) the rating would be null/void. We have a number of company's we supply to that have gone through the NSF process for their systems that use our pumps, and we have yet to have any one come back saying they were not granted NSF rating due to our pump! Also for anyone thinking about using a brass/bronze pump for handling anything you will be ingesting, I would call the mfg and ask what the lead content is.....most company's will cast the bronze with up to 6% lead content. Also keep in mind that when used for hot water recirc systems, the bronze does not get exposed to hotter temps then 140* +/- 10* from your hot water heater. So when you guys are brewing beer and moving 205*F+ liquid through a bronze pump is there any risk of lead leaching out of the casting and into the liquid???
3. I have seen the Little Giant 3-MD pump mentioned. That's the same as our Series 3 pump. Our Polypro pump has a rating of 190*F and our Kynar is rated to 200*F. Yes there is a "fudge" factor built into the pump and for short runs you probably wont have any problems.......but we do not warranty anything hotter then the rating because we have no way of making sure its being used properly by the consumer. We do however have parts made from Polysulfone for a number of our other pumps...we just don't advertize everything or we would have a catalog as thick as a dictionary!!!
If you are looking for a pump that has a bigger output then the 809 or the #3 pumps then you should check out the new AC-5B-MD beer pump: 17 gpm and will do 27' of head height and made from the same Polysulfone as the 809 is.
Oh and one more thing I can mention that may help in your brewing adventures. During the mfg process each part has tolerances that must be met. For the impellers there will be a min/max of the inside diameter of the shaft bore. Same will go for Outside diameter of the stainless shaft the impeller rides on. If you by chance get an impeller on the "tight" side and a shaft on the big side the pump will still function properly at first....but if its not cleaned out properly after each use then you can get a sugar buildup between the two and the impeller will seize up on you eventually and wont pump. I see one of these almost monthly in Service and Repair. Easiest thing you can do to keep this from happening is to go to your local hardware store and get yourself a 17/64 drill bit and pass it through the bore of the impeller opening it up slightly. It wont hurt anything performance wise and will help in the long run to keep everything clear and clean.
If anyone has any questions, or needs any help with trying to size a pump, or needs part numbers to maybe convert a March Pump for beer brewing, feel free to call me at March or PM or email me.
Cheers!
-Walter
