Just finished the build...here is the breakdown...
1. I made it 20 feet instead of 30, some of the posts on the blog had said they'd done 20 and it was fine, I had plenty of hose and the copper at Home Depot comes in 20' coils, so I figured I'd give it a go.
2. Instead of soldering hose connectors onto the chiller, I used hose clamps and the connectors that came with the hose that I had just cut up.
3. I used the "hot water trick" that is mentioned in the blog replies from someone who hooked the hose up to hot water and ran it opposite to the copper once the pushing of the copper into the hose got hard, worked like a super hot damn.
Cost breakdown...
I already had everything needed for the soldering, so that cost is assumed near nil. The parts to be soldered I've given approx cost.
Copper Tube $29.89
Hose on special at HD today, $13.99
2 Tee's $ $1.48
2 Reducers instead of end caps $3.08
4 Hose Clamps $3.76
6' of 14/2 Wire which when stripped of all insulation and using the ground gives 18' of wire, had it, but it's worth $2.00
Total about after adding some solder, flux and propane, say $60 with taxes in.
The only results that matter...
Heated 21 litres of water (not going to test on wort) to boiling, used a siphon to remove the "wort-water" from the kettle.
Cold water entering the cooling jacket at 52F. Was exiting at 90ish, when I slowed the tap down I saw the exit temp get up to 110F, but didn't have enough water in kettle to experiment too much with the exit "wort" temp in relation to exiting water temp.
"Wortwater" was entering at close to 210F, and exiting at 61F.
Time to cool 21 litres of Water pretending to be Wort from boil to 61F, about 5 minutes.
The thing seems to work like a hot damn, or would that be a cool damn!
JW
