You could heat your strike water higher than normal say 180° then drain what you need into a 5 gallon igloo cooler. That should keep it hot enough to sparge with. Just add a bit of cold water to get strike temp to where you want it.
Thanks for the info guys. I Made another starter out of one of the jars last night. Looks like it is doing fine on the stir plate. I am making a 10 gallon ipa with mosaic hops and el dorado hop hash( first time using hop hash). Pretty excited to see and taste the results of the hop hash. Cheers.
I made a 2000 ml starter of conan. I cold crashed after 36 hours. I left it in fridge for 1 week with foil on top. Today i went to split it into 2 jars and it is very carbonated. Is the yeast still good? Is the yeast infected. I dont see how foil could keep enough co2 in to carbonate the starter.