Cooling idea

[07rangerfx4]

After finishing my still and doing a cleaning run I found out I need a more efficient way to cool the worm.

I have been reading about the pond pumps everyone is using for the lidbig condenser.

I was thinking about using a pond pump with a cooler setbeside or across from my worm to feed water in the bottom of the bucket and let it drain back into the cooler ontop to cool back down.

My two questions is this. The worm is in a 5 gal bucket and the worm is 3/8 inch.

What size pond pump do i need to have enough flow and what size cooler do i need in order to keep the water from heating up too much in the cooler?

[Hound Dog]

How long is the 3/8" worm? How big is your boiler? I would suggest forgoing the pump and cooler (I assume you are thinking of shock cooling with ice in the cooler causing problems for you) and put the worm in a Rubbermaid trashcan that is 20 or 32 gallons depending on your boiler. Then you won't have to worry about it and only have to add a little fresh water here and there throughout a long run.

[07rangerfx4]

No, I was not going to use ice water. I was wanting to use a cooler or trashcan as a water tank. Have a pond pump in the cooler where the water is and have a line run into the bottom of the 5 gal bucket and a overflow line run out the top back into the cooler to let it cool back down. The still is a 5 gal pot still.

[Hound Dog]

The cooler will keep it hot since it is insulated. Using a 20 gallon trash can for a worm barrel would work great. You would probably not have to add any water to run a five gallon boiler. If you want to pump it back and forth though, most any pond pump will work. You just need to look at the "head lift" of the pump to see if it will lift high enough to get from one container to another. That is what people run into with reflux stills, the pump won't pump water to the top of the still. You can find what you are looking for at Lowes for less than $40.

[pot belly shine]

Ranger, I have a 15 gal pot still. I use 25' of 5/8 copper into a 55 gal drum. I've never had an issue but now I'm doing multiple cooks in a day so I added a second 55 gal drum that I put a pump in. I plumbed it up to my worm barrel on the bottom with a control valve to regulate water flow and then put an overflow towards the top. Works very well for me. I've done as many as 3 cooks without an issue

[07rangerfx4]

Well I decided to give it a try since I already had a pump laying around. I have a large cooler with the pump in it and its working great. Had it going for over 2 hours now and only thing ive had to do is regulate the pump flow. Believe I will have to do this for a while just until I can get a larger bucket for the worm.