water conservation ideas for chilling?

[Kyle]

I'd like to reduce my water usage and chilling time. I'm wondering about using an old boil kettle as a reservoir, filling with ice water (I have a chest freezer, so ice can be made easily and in large quantity), and using a pump to recirculate on the cold side. Has anyone done something similar? I have a sump pump for the recirculation on the cold side, and a March pump for the recirc on the wort side of the plate chiller.

I figure the sump pump will rest on the bottom of the reservoir and the hot water return would be at the top.

how much ice (in pounds, litres, or gallons) do you find you need (using chill city water) to get 5 US gal of wort to pitching temp?

[Chris Craig]

You'll want to chill with cold tap water until you reach ~120F before you start to recirculate.  You'll go through your ice very quickly if you don't.

[chrismccull]

I'll be posting a Jockey Box cold plate for sale tonight, I wonder if you could use that?  It is one like at the top of this page http://www.lagersclub.com/assets/img/Junemeetpix/various%20coldplate%20specs.pdf.  Mine has three inputs/outputs and a small Jockey box cooler to go with it.  Perhaps you could feed hot wort into the plate which would be cooled by ice in the cooler and recirculate until cool?

[Richard]

Chris: how much you want for that? I'm interested.

[chrismccull]

I'll snap some pics tonight after work and create a post in the Marketplace, if you are interested, we'll work something out.