So far so good with the march pump

[bigjoe]

I haven't brewed with my pump yet but I've been setting it up trying different configurations to figure out what will work best. I plan on no sprage direct fire recirculating for a good part of the mash. I plan on gravity feeding from the mash tun to kettle so I drain the grain bed dry with the pump. Then pump back to the mash tun.

I don't think they're as bad to deal with as I have read. You need to make sure the air is purged from the supply line as those who use it successfully have noted. I've pumped about 6 ft vertical with it and I know it could go higher if needed. I only need to go about 5 ft vertical though. I found that squeezing the silicone hose to push the air through the line back into the kettle makes priming a snap. I just basically squeeze the line just below the bubbles and push them up the hose back to the kettle. The dip tube is tricky as some have noted on here and you have to make sure the air is purged from it also. It seems the line wants to fill up to the point where the dip tube is in the kettle then get a huge air bubble in the line.

Once you have a decent prime its cake.

I've set everything up 6 or 7 times and tweaked the setup I want to use on brew day. I unfortunately haven't had the time to brew. I'm confident with it now so when I go to brew I can troubleshoot the problem. I couldn't imagine having hooked it up out of the box and trying to brew with it like some posts I've read.

 

[garretto]

This post gives me hope.
I've only ran my new pump for about 20 seconds. After reading all the priming horror stories, I was wondering if I should've even bought one, but as already stated, thanks for giving me hope bigjoe.

 

[bigjoe]

I haven't brewed as I said but I've done just about everything up to that point. I've messed with it for hours. Defiantely do your homework on it. Priming is the big thing really.

 

[Homercidal]

As long as the pump is below the level of the wort, shouldn't it prime automatically?

 

[bigjoe]

Homer that was my exact thought. I think the dip tube plays a role in kind of screwing you around with the prime. Might be different with a "normal" flat bottom kettle.

Like I said it seems that the hose fills up to a certain point. Once I cleared the big bubbles from the tube though it went nice. I'm no hydro engineer so I'm not exactly sure whats happening with it, but it seems that the air in the pump wants to go up the outlet and inlet. it seems to do it with the outlet open or closed. Its not a huge pain as I have read. It takes all of 20 seconds to clear the line. Some of the set up seemed counter-intuitive.

The first couple of times I did practice runs with it I was thinking my wife wasted $140 on me with this pump.