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I've built a "long draw" draft system to get beer from a keezer in the basement up to taps in my living room. I bought a trunk line from Micromatic and would like to cool the beer lines using a propylene glycol loop through the trunk line.
The attached diagram shows how it is set up. The glycol reservoir is in a separate freezer from the kegs, to enable me to get the glycol much colder than beer serving temp.
To move the glycol, I ordered a 800GPH submersible pond pump that had a claimed 10ft lifting ability. I knew this was marginal but I wanted to keep the pump power as low as possible to prevent excessive heating of the glycol reservoir. In retrospect, it was very dumb to pick a pump this small because it's not strong enough to push glycol through the whole loop. I tried priming the lines by pushing glycol through them under CO2 pressure and that worked for a while, but this pump is obviously not the right tool for this job so I want to get something else.
The glycol lines are 3/8", the total run length is about 15 feet, with a vertical lift of 8-9 feet.
Anybody have experience with a similar setup to recommend a good pump? How many watts can I get away with from a submersible pump in the glycol reservoir (5 gal)? I'm open to the idea of an external pump as well.
The attached diagram shows how it is set up. The glycol reservoir is in a separate freezer from the kegs, to enable me to get the glycol much colder than beer serving temp.
To move the glycol, I ordered a 800GPH submersible pond pump that had a claimed 10ft lifting ability. I knew this was marginal but I wanted to keep the pump power as low as possible to prevent excessive heating of the glycol reservoir. In retrospect, it was very dumb to pick a pump this small because it's not strong enough to push glycol through the whole loop. I tried priming the lines by pushing glycol through them under CO2 pressure and that worked for a while, but this pump is obviously not the right tool for this job so I want to get something else.
The glycol lines are 3/8", the total run length is about 15 feet, with a vertical lift of 8-9 feet.
Anybody have experience with a similar setup to recommend a good pump? How many watts can I get away with from a submersible pump in the glycol reservoir (5 gal)? I'm open to the idea of an external pump as well.