Spinny sparger

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Andy
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Spinny sparger

Post by Andy » Tue May 09, 2006 1:16 pm

How much water head do users of Phil's Sparger (spinny sparger) find necessary to drive it successfully ?

When I first used mine I found that it kept stalling and so increased the water head height so that when there's minimum water level in the HLT there's still about a metre of head. This means I use about a metre's worth of tubing to connect the HLT to the sparger.

I'm now wondering if I can actually get away with a much reduced head high *if* I reduce the length of tubing accordingly as I believe the water resistance generated by the length of tubing is actually quite a significant factor. When I initially had the stalling problems I was still using about a metres worth of tubing so the water from the HLT had to overcome the tubing resistance of that length presumably resulting in reduced flow rate and sparger stall. Another benefit of reducing the tube length would be a reduction in heat loss from the HLT to the sparger.

Comments anyone ?

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Andy
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Post by Andy » Tue May 09, 2006 1:59 pm

Oh, I'd missed that!

:pink

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Post by Andy » Tue May 09, 2006 3:22 pm

:lol:

DaaB you are a star!

My spinny sparger would never get down to the low rotation speed in the 6" clip, it would just stop. Perhaps I need to lube the pivot point with some food grade KegLube.

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Post by Andy » Tue May 09, 2006 3:31 pm

QUOTE (Daft as a Brush @ May 9 2006, 04:29 PM) Do you bike geeks still use GT85...thats silicone based isnt it?
We do and it is (well, Teflon based) :D

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Post by Andy » Tue May 09, 2006 3:35 pm

I'll try rigging the sparger up to my submersible pump and continuously recirculate water through it, that should wear it in nicely.

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Post by Andy » Tue May 09, 2006 4:00 pm

on a water meter here :rolleyes: Recirc'ing a small volume of water sounds best to me :D

bod

Post by bod » Tue May 09, 2006 4:49 pm

do you have a job DaaB? ;)

Road Runner

Post by Road Runner » Wed May 10, 2006 4:45 pm

Here's my set up:

Image

I use 12" of tubing & the tap is about 8" above the top of the Spinny Sparger. With the down tube of the Spinny Sparger, that's about 14" of head from spinning arm to the tap. The water boiler then had around 15/20 litres of water in it at the start of sparge.

I had to add 6 clothes pegs to the water tubing to slow the flow rate down at the start of sparge, as it was trying to go into auto rotation. With the clothes pegs, I then got a steady rotation probably around the speed of DaaB's 6" mpeg.

As the level of head water in the boiler decreased, I reduced the clothes peg restriction system down to 3 pegs when the boiler was pretty much empty, to maintain a slow rotation.

Unfortunately, my boiler tap is either fully open or closed, I can't control the flow rate with it.

Bigster

Post by Bigster » Wed May 10, 2006 8:54 pm

:lol: Daab you are a brewing legend :lol:

Great timing for me as I did a 'dry' run tonight and sparger worked a treat. Will post a picture when I do it for real

If this is brewing geekness then send me a badge and membership card.... :D

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