Increasing Volume

[Steve3730]

New still I built has a heating element, works great but I have 5 gallons of low wines @ 37%abv to do a spirit run with and at 3 gallons the heating element is just getting covered. Would adding water to increase volume and keep the element covered drastically impact my run? Or Should I use some feints I have from previous runs to increase the volume? Option 3 would be running my old still but it has a 4.5 gallon limit and is not as easy to run as the new one.