Chilling on the Cheap

[Ozwald]

Unless I am missing something here, the spring benders work just fine for this; as that is how I built my coil for my in pot HERMS setup, you do the bend then you slide the spring a bit, bend a little more then slide the spring a bit more. I actually had to go over it a couple of times to get the diameter of the coil right.

First I actually went out and bought a very expensive tube bender, but this was very hard to control and get the curvature just right, the spring bender worked tons better.

Maybe I'm missing something. I only looked at them briefly in a small hardware store before I said screw it & freehanded my first one (which I've done since). Maybe we're talking about different styles of bender or maybe my memory's just fuzzy. I seem to remember that there were 2 or 3 different lengths & designed for a short end of the pipe bend where you'd solder on a fitting. Not sure, I've never looked at them since.

[TheHamNerd]

Okay,

Here is my finished home-made 50' 3/8" copper immersion chiller I made using a Home Depot bucket and my spring type benders.
It's not pretty as a store bought one, but it should work fine. I bought a small pond pump to force ice water through it, and it just does not have enough balls to build up pressure. Anyone have any ideas on what size pond pump from Home Depot I should get? Size in GPH flow rate? I do not want to spend a lot of money on a march pump right now. My pump cost $15, maybe one of the $30 to $50 pupms might be better....?

Here are the links for the chiller I made

http://www.flickr.com/photos/102045522@N02/9908932504/

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/102045522@N02/9908926774/

I will try to get the size of the pump I have and repost, but it is going back for store credit toward a stronger one this weekend.

l8er

[TheHamNerd]

The pump is called "TotalPond" and it's 130 GPH max. It might not be strong enough to do the job, or I might try to have my bucket, or cooler with the pump higher than the brew pot with the wort. This way gravity will work with me instead of against me. The pump cost $21 from Home Depot.