Pre-chiller question

theganda · Jun 29, 2009

My tap water is warmer than I expected so I'm thinking about adding a pre-chiller to my IC. But I don't really feel like footing the bill for another length of copper tubing (plus I suck at coiling it!) and have a good 20 feet or so of vinyl tubing lying around. Anyone have any experience just running this kind of tubing through an icebath before the chiller? I figure it can't be too different.

JMSetzler · Jun 29, 2009

The idea is the same but the vinyl won't conduct heat nearly as well as the copper and it won't cool the water very much.

squeekysheep · Jun 29, 2009

depending on how fast you run your chiller(once it gets low under 90 i don't run my water fast) a small section of copper will do to cool the water. really if you can get any metal section to run in there it will help more then all plastic.

HomebrewJeff · Jun 29, 2009

If you can get a cheap pond pump, you can use tap water to get to around 100-110, then switch to a bucket full of ice water to drop it the rest of the way.

edit: oops

bikeboy389 · Jun 29, 2009

My tap water is 68 degrees, so I decided to make a pre-chiller too.

I got a 10-foot section of 3/8" copper from HD for something like $10 just the other day (get the refrigerator tubing). It comes already coiled in a box, so all I had to do was make the coil a little smaller and hook up the inlet and outlet hose stubs.

So cheap and easy I couldn't think of a reason NOT to do it. 'Course, I made my own IC as well.

Blender · Jun 29, 2009

HomebrewJeff said:
If you can get a cheap pond pump, you can use a bucket full of ice water and push that water to help drop the temps, then switch to your tap water.

This works better than the pre chiller only I use ground water first and then ice water pumped through the chiller to finish it off. If you want a pre chiller I will sell you mine since I don't use it.

pilotdane · Jun 30, 2009

I've seen video of people using the pond pump. They just put small pump in the bottom of a bucket of ice water and hook it up to the chiller. He had a valve inline so he could control the flow and slowed it down so the water leaving the chiller was warm to avoid pumping too fast and the inefficiency of letting cool water dump out of the chiller.