So in the past, I ran a copper-scrubber packed column with insulation on an 1800w plate. My coils up top are a bit small... but they do an alright job until the recirculated water gets almost hot and then I have to change the water bath. I estimate it might be able to reasonably handle 2000w with cool water.
After reading a lot about rad's success with marbles, their behavior similar to SPP, and how a 2" marble column can take a good bit of power compared to scrubbers... I went to the craft store and picked up some marbles. Rad and others pulled some great ABV and speed off of small diameter columns. So I shoved the copper scrubbers out, filled up 33" of marbles, and wrapped my insulation. I fired up a few gallons of MUM-Hybrid wash with about 3000+ watts to speed up the boiling (New beefier heating setup
). Once the heat reached all the way up the column, I got a WHOLE lot of venting out the top. The cooling water tub was cool... so it wasn't hot coolant. Now this was not all that surprising to me, as I normally run about 1500-1800w during the spirit run and estimated I probably can't handle more than about 2kw with my puny coil. So I dialed my heat back for a moment and thought about it. I really wanted more heat to increase the reflux and drive the marbles hard. But, alas, my coils are puny. So I pulled off the insulation and was able to deliver the full 3300w of my heating capacity! What a difference. As long as the coolant water stayed warm at most, my coil could knock down everything. Simply pulling off 36" of insulation shed about 1kw or more! While the increased cooling response to insulation removal was predicted, I was surprised it worked so well.
I'm in the process of building a better monster coil right now anyways (probably going to run it straight off the faucet too) but even when finished, I'll probably forego the insulation in the future. I feel like marbles center the reflux naturally and fight wall-channeling; so there's less benefit in avoiding wall-condensation.