I know, I posted a thread earlier about this same thing (and got some good responses), but there's been a change in my situation lately, so I'm looking for some new advice. Hence, a new thread rather than continuing my old one.
My brew lab is getting an angel investor. Which is to say, an anonymous donor will be giving me some money to buy a lot of equipment, with the understanding that I then brew a lot of beer and give a lot of it to him. A nice situation all around. Here's what I've got on my wishlist so far:
3x 20gal boilermakers, 1 false bottom (MLT), 1 hop blocker (BK).
3x burners
At least 1 march pump
The questions I have are multi-fold. First: do I need a stand? The toptier system is relatively cheap (compared to other sculptures), but even that's a kilobuck. If I just got three burners (either blichmann ones or maybe even just some more bayou classic burners), can I just brew on the ground level? An extra pump to handle sparging on a single level is a lot cheaper than a brew stand, although a brew stand is clearly a more optimal situation. I suppose it's really only another $500 if I'm already buying three burners.
First-and-a-half: How much extraneous heat does the blichmann burner kick out? I typically brew in my garage, rather than outdoors. I can do that because I use a bayou classic burner on the ground. Putting a bigger burner five feet in the air seems like it's the sort of "hmm, I might burn my house down" kind of thing if you do it wrong. Maybe I should plan on a 2-tier gravity system with two pumps anyway, just to avoid having to put the HLT at head height.
Second: will my wort chiller work at 10 gal reasonably well? I have a home-made one with 50' of 3/8" copper tube. My groundwater is about 55F and I chill 5 gal batches pretty effectively. With a pump, I can do a whirlpool chill thing easily.
Third: what kind of plumbing will I want to order as goes-withs for this kind of setup? I'll need enough tubing to run the whirlpool and the various transfers during mash and sparge. I'd hate to overlook a significant expense in tubing and stuff, and I'm also a neophyte when it comes to understanding what kinds of fittings I'll want (npt? quick disconnect? bwaa?)
Fourth: If I do a 3-tier gravity system, will the march pump manage to get water into the upper HLT? It'd be at 5' or whatever.
Fifth: what kind of sparge arm do you all use on these boilermakers?
Sixth: What other things am I overlooking? I've been brewing a lot at the 5-gal level with a cooler-based MLT. This is clearly a pretty big process upgrade, and I'm sure I'll be forgetting something. If I put it in the initial proposal I'll be able to plan for the expense. If not, I'll end up either overrunning the budget or getting to a point where I have to buy a (say) auto-sparge out of pocket because I need it to make everything else work.