Improving my CFC?

[Munkee915]

I have a CFC I built last November that I am looking to improve on. I live in TX and when I used it last November it worked ok w/ the ground water and got my wort down to about high 70s in one pass. I tried to use it again this past sunday but my ground water is so hot it barely made a dent.

I thought about building a prechiller coil and splicing between my line from the faucet and letting it sit in an ice bath. My issue with this is that I would like to move away from using the faucet at all because it seems to waste lots of water when I do this and I dont feel like running line from the faucet to my brew rig.

My 2nd thought was to use a pump to push chilled water from a bucket through the CFC. I had a pond pump laying around from a previous project so I hooked it up and gave it a shot. The pump works but the water coming out the other side of the CFC is barely a trickle. It's a 400+ GPH pond pump but I guess it cant handle the lift of the 25ft CFC coil. I even tried feeding the water in from the top of the CFC and letting it flow down but its the same results. My current idea is to strip the outer layer of the CFC (garden hose) and just place the copper coil in a bucket. I would drill holes and place nipples for the in and out of the coil, then fill the bucket with ice water and use the pond pump to circulate the water inside the bucket and add more ice as needed. Almost like a reverse HERMS setup. Any thoughts?

Or can someone recommend a cheap pump that may be up to the task of pumping water through the CFC? Doesnt have to be food safe since it wont be touching the beer at all.

 

[Malticulous]

I'm thinking about making a CFC. I've thought of running the cooled wort out of it through my IC submerged in ice water. I've used a pre-chiller but it was better at melting ice than cooling wort.

 

[number40fan]

Save the water. Use it for plants, top load washer, making ice for the next batch.

 

[nisk916]

I bought a cheap 12 dollar heater core from a Ford truck at the local parts store and added two feet of heater hose on the ends. The hose got terminated with garden hose repair ends.
Once I hit cooling threshold for groundwater I would throw it in a bucket, cover with a couple pounds of ice, and add directly before my immersion cooler. It was normally good for another 15 degree drop below ground temps, and cost maybe $20-25.
You could do the same with a pump easily, but with high ground temps, you will still have to dump the water several times BEFORE icing it. I say keep using the cfc, use a chiller after 80 but capture and repurpose the water.