a racking cane and a march pump

[killian]

How much of a pain would it be to prime a pump with a racking cane?

 

[beerthirty]

Provided you could apply enough suction to the outlet of the pump to start the siphon it would work. I would worry about when the pump airlock in the middle of the flow. Now you have hot wort to deal with while trying to restart the siphon. I would just install a weldless fitting instead of dealing with the racking cane headache every brew.

 

[ScubaSteve]

Why would you want to do this?

 

[killian]

beer thirty hit the nail on the head. I'm trying to avoid using any kind of "bulk head" in my boil kettle.

 

[The Pol]

Eeeesh...

Good luck. This sounds like a PITA after using plenty of March pumps. If you are already siphoning to "prime" the pump... why pump at all?

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Maybe an autosiphon and a march pump? Still kinda pointless but, easier to prime.

 

[OMJ]

Im with Beerthirty. Sounds dangerous trying to siphon 150+ degree wort if you were to lose a prime somehow. Installing a weldless fitting would save you a lot of head aches

 

[The Pol]

I am trying to wrap my head around this...

Why do we want to siphon, to a pump... to pump when we already created a siphon?

It is one thing to run a trickle through a March pump... passing fluid through the head, is not priming it... my worry is the flow will not be sufficient to really prime it and drive the air out of the head.

 

[killian]

I would like to whirlpool with the pump during chilling.
Could I set up a way to re-prime the pump maybe using two ball valves on the pump out or something?

 

[IrregularPulse]

Whats the big deal about adding a bulk head? It makes life 1000000 times easier.

 

[Reelale]

I'm kinda new, but wanted to chime in anyway. IMHO you're fixin' to get into a real mess trying to siphon/pump as you describe. I would HIGHLY recommend the proper fittings on your pump and vessels. It's no big deal to install them, there are several threads on here detailing the procedures. I just converted a sanke keg using bargainfittings.com weldless fittings, and all is well. Took about haf an hour.

You can still whirlpool while chilling by a simple addition of one more short length of copper tubing to your IC ala http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php. These pumps can be finicky, and the last thing you want is to lose prime and have to manually siphon to get it back, well...pumping.

There, I'm through chiming....carry on.

 

[OMJ]

Whats the big deal about adding a bulk head? It makes life 1000000 times easier.

Agreed why are you against adding a bulkhead??

 

[jtrainer]

HeHeHe I can tell you from experience, IT FECKING SUCKS!

While assisting a fellow brewer his dip tube stuck ( I had warned him this looked like it would happen). What we did was:

• Use a barb based shut off valve he had,
• put it on the racking cane hose
• other side of valve (valve open) another small hose
• Sucked the liquid but was very careful to trap it in the longer hose and used the shut off valve to hold it.
• Attached hose to barb on pump
• vented pump and allowed gravity to prime

We whirlpooled and filled fermenters this way. It worked and I'll only try it again in an absolute dire need.... but I'd probably walk away from that...

Do yourself a favor... skip the idea and go install a bulkhead fitting.

 

[killian]

thanks for then input, the more I think about it it would be a pain.

 

[BargainFittings]

thanks for then input, the more I think about it it would be a pain.

It would be more a safety issue than anything. Quite likely would be some pain involved.

If you do this try it with cold water until you really get good at it!