With all the talk of getting even flow through the grain bed during sparging, has anyone experimented with altering the number of slots per inch in the tubes as you get further away from the drain? It would sure seem that the slots in the tube nearest the drain of the manifold would have much higher flows than those at the end of the tubes resulting in lower efficiencies. I was thinking of putting fewer slots in the manifold close to the drain and more slots the further away I got from the drain. While thinking on this subject, I became concerned with having too few slots near the drain and having them clog up sufficiently to reduce flow in these areas too much. Another concern while determining the number and placement of slots is getting the right flow rate. If too many slots are cut all over, the uneven sparging occur but too few and attaining a proper flow rate may become an issue. Has anyone given any thought to this or experimented with this? I was thinking of running some experiments using drops of dye in the water and seeing which gradients got more or less flow and adjusting the slots accordingly.
