My Chiller Build

[Coastarine]

It took me nearly an hour to boil the water though. It was 45 degrees and windy outside and the wind was killing my burner efficiency.

Go to the hardware store and get a 7$ roll of aluminum flashing to make a nice little windshield. It's with the roofing supplies I think. It's thin enough to be cut with regular scissors. Shown here integrated into my brew rig:

 

[JMSetzler]

Go to the hardware store and get a 7$ roll of aluminum flashing to make a nice little windshield. It's with the roofing supplies I think. It's thin enough to be cut with regular scissors.

Thanks for the tip. I think I'll do that. That should take care of wind issues pretty quickly

 

[duckmasher]

I just built my first chiller and cooled my 4 gals of wort down to 70 in 9 minutes with only 20 feet of copper. Reason: I took a 350GPH fountain pump and submersed it in a small cooler full of water and ice. Just re-circulated the water. Never even melted all the cubes!! Worked like a champ. No need for 50 feet of copper unless boiling more!!!

 

[JMSetzler]

I just built my first chiller and cooled my 4 gals of wort down to 70 in 9 minutes with only 20 feet of copper. Reason: I took a 350GPH fountain pump and submersed it in a small cooler full of water and ice. Just re-circulated the water. Never even melted all the cubes!! Worked like a champ. No need for 50 feet of copper unless boiling more!!!

That definitely works well too. I'm thinking about trying something like that in the warmer months. There are a lot of things you can do to improve the efficiency of a chiller. Ice water would have been about 15-20 degrees cooler than the water coming out of my hose this afternoon. I checked the temp of the hose water just because it was my first time (after my initial test) using this chiller. The water was running right at 50 degrees.

Do you have any pics of your setup?

 

[AzironaZack]

I'm gonna have to find some help for drilling out the hose connectors to fit on the copper tubing...

Instead of going through all that trouble just head down to a real plumbing supply store (every town, even little ones, has a plumbing supplier somewhere) and pick up a sweated pipe to pipe thread adapter.

You can get them in male or female orientations. You sweat the one side to your chiller and then use regular threaded plumbing parts (and teflon tape, which is truly necessary here) to go to the brass hose connections.

Here's a picture of a female one:
http://www.plumbingfittingsdirect.com/press/images/10100t.gif

Here's a male:
http://www.plumbingfittingsdirect.com/press/images/10800t.gif