This was the first outing of my new HLT with ballvalve, the idea being I can fly sparge without the need to run about with jugs of water. Really worked a treat.
Note though, I need to keep an eye on the level of the water in the mash tun. It got a bit high and caused the manifold to block up a bit, so I had to free it, but it was fine after that. I noticed there was a lot less muck in the boiler too, looks like the combination of using this method of sparging (which you can see in the pic how I've kept the water disturbance to a minimum) and the lack of any disturbance to the grainbed has resulted in a much better grain filter. 
Anyhow, here's the recipe I ended up with:
3400g crushed Pearl malt
170g crushed crystal malt
40g challenger for 60 mins
40g challenger for 15 mins
1 No. whirlfloc tablet
US-05 american ale yeast
This was also the first time I've treated the water, so here's what I used based on plugging most of the water report figures into Graham's calculator, setting figures for a dry pale ale.
8.5ml CRS
13.7g gypsum
Then I added my usual 1/2 crushed campden tablet.
I was aiming to collect 28 litres preboil, ending up with about 25 litres post boil. However, when I collected 27 litres, the SG reading was 1056.
Maybe this is the increase in efficiency (partly) due to the corrected water? Now, maybe someone could shed some light on this, but I topped up the boiler with 6 litres of treated water, and the new 33 litres of wort was reading 1034. 
The temperature was pretty much the same (both figures corrected, although I cooled both samples to about 22 degrees so very little adjustment). 1034 was what I was aiming for though, but I am failing to understand how a) my first reading was so high (I stirred well before taking the sample too) and b) how it could have reduced by that much with only about a 20% increase in volume? I would have expected closer to about 1045 ish . . . . unless my theory on specifc gravity readings is up the spout . . . 
The final gravity was 1037 which is pretty much bang on really. If US-05 munches down to 1008 then it'll be bang on 3.6%.
Here's some piccies:
Grain being weighed out:
New sparging setup with HLT:
Clear runnings going into the boiler:
Post boil chiller in - looking very clear!
Lots of trub left behind!
Apologies there aren't many photos, it was a bit of a hectic brewday!
I used two FVs, a Better Bottle and also an old Boots bucket which I've previously used for grain storage. Just taken a hydro sample from the boots bucket . . . smells like vinegar and doesn't taste too clever either. 
) and dropped in.