OVHA Chat

I'm putting together ideas / items to build my Glycol Cooling system.

I have 1/2" & 1/4" stainless steel tubing - to build the glycol cooler in the fermenter, and lines for the pump.
Propylene glycol.
Small chest freezer - (glycol cooler)
Ranco controllers - for glycol temperature cooler control and fermentor temperature / pump control.

Not sure of the type of pump I need and the BTU load yet.

My first try was to build a foam formed sleeve with the SS tubing inserted close to the inside of the foam touching the carboy. I had planned on lifting the carboy into & out of the sleeve every time. I have 3 different size of carboys 6 1/2 glass, 6 BB and 5 glass. I don't have the room for 3 or more different coolers.

I do have my refrigerated cooled fermentor which will hold 4 carboys at one time. I can build a heat exchanger inside it, but then I will need to keep all the carboys at the same temp. This will work most of the time but I like the idea of being able to crash cool one carboy before kegging and running the others at 32 - 70 degs.

Does anyone have experience with glycol coolers / pumps?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Don, we recently moved a company from Maine that made Glycol cooled dump loads for FM and TV transmitters. I have built two myself but have not yet had to fill them with Glycol. I was told that if the load was to be tuned to a frequency, we would use the gravity method (not a pump). I know this does not help, but I wanted to help in any way possible. We do fill them with water and then pressurize them with 85 psi of compressed air to make sure they dont leak.