Home Distiller

So my cooling water discharges from the Liebig Condenser through a hose that runs to an outside drain. The drain is in my driveway and above my garage. I like this system because the water then runs out through the drain into the forest and I can avoid a lot of excess water around my garage. I feed the condenser with another hose from my garage utility sink.

During today's stripping run I decided to be efficient by putting the outlet hose into a keg I just bought of Craigslist so that it could rinse out the keg using the same water that would then overflow out of the keg and into the drain. So far so good, and am I proud of my cleverness! Stripping run ends and I am starting to tear down: first thing I do is disconnect the inlet hose from the condensor and then wander away back into the house for something....

You see where this is going: I've now opened up a siphon to the keg and water is flowing downhill back through my condensor and out the disconnected end.... I came back to discover quite a mess - 10 gallons or so on the garage floor.... No damage, except for the looks from my wife.....but she's stuck with me!

I thought I had that problem once....
I was draining into a lake via a long hose so the yard wouldn't get soggy and the heat wouldn't kill the grass.
After the run was over, had a few drinks before cleaning up.
Disconnected a coolant hose and water starts draining all over the place. My dumb ass smacks my forehead and runs DOWN to the lake to pull the hose out and break the siphon I just knew was gonna drain the entire lake right into the shed. Casually stroll back to the shed to see water STILL coming out of the disconnected hose. Um yeah, because it was hooked up to an open hose bib! Duh, the lake was downhill. Sometimes a little knowledge make one stupider.

Could have been worse. I had a gallon of 96.5% break in my garage. I opened the garage door turned my water heater off and quareteened the area until it was all evaporated and gone.
Zapata people automatically overlook the stupid easy cause, good story.

Yip, Iv had similar experience. Life is a good teacher. Nothing like a kick in the bum to concentrate the mind! Nice stories folks. Tks.

Gravity feed water works as well as a pump at times....At least you didn’t have to suck the end of it first

I had a similar incident in my garage. I was running on a winter day. Had a cooling water barrel in my garage. When I shut down I left the hose hnging down the side of the barrel. When I came out the barrel was half empty all over the floor. Good thing it was a 30 gallon and not a 55 Huh? So trusty shop vac sucked up the mess and I had a nice clean floor.

Using the first water out before it gets to warm you can also fill buckets and water plants.

If you ran it thru a sprinkler system would it cool before it hit the plants? (Thinking fine mist)

I connect right to the faucet so I don't use a garden hose collect my hot water into clean heavy glass carboy and melt my sugar for the next run the rest is pumped into an mash barrel to soak my grains when it drops to temperature add my enzymes when it cools enough then I re pitch my yeast why waste hot water.

Damn the laws of hydraulics.

But it is a law you must obey.

Runnin in the garage, I'll add ice to my reservoir and put the discharge hose from my worm barrel in a carboy to remove a bit of over warm water. Distracted talking to the missus yesterday and started ta hear whistle. Yup. Sucked the barrel almost dry and piped all the cooling water into (and out of) the big carboy. Hell of a wet mess in the garage.

Thanks for the lesson. Im just getting set up and using the pool as cooling water with a small pump. I'd hate to siphon 6000 gallons into the back yard.