Washing/sanitizing long neck bottles is a pain, so, I decided to try to build a bottle washer similar to what I've seen here and on youtube. I won't bore you with too many details here as I know just about anybody can build a 1/2" pvc grid attached to a pump... I have a spare 585 gph pond pump and attached it to a grid of 15, 1/2" pvc standpipes, each if which is about ten inches tall. A series of Ts and elbows joins it all together. Of course, I found the pump would just barely gurgle the water out of the top of the stand pipes, so, after some trial and error I knew I needed to restrict the flow a bit. Not knowing how much to restrict I stumbled upon some beveled faucet washers (old school black "OO" size). The beveled end made a perfect start into the end of the 1/2" pvc and with a slight tap with a rubber mallet the washers press fit into the pvc. After hooking everything back up I found the stream of water out of the top of each standpipe was a perfect 10-12". One point I should make about the pvc. Apparently the inside diameter of different manufacturers of pvc varies. I originally experimented with pipe from HD (Charlotte Pipe, Flowgaurd Gold) and the "OO" size washers fit nice and snug. I did not have enough to complete the project so I was at a Menards and bought a different brand of pvc. I came home and after cutting all the stand pipes discovered the inside diameter of the Menards pipe was so large the same washers fell right through. Back to HD to get the other pipe. The pipe and fittings (if I had had the right diameter in the beginning) were less than $10, I bought a $9 Rubbermaid roughneck tub to place the washer in and catch the overflow. The rubber washers cost about three bucks for 20 of them. I had the pond pump which would probably cost under $100. Hope this helps if anyone wants to try to build an easy washer/sanitizer.
