Bottle Sanitiser design - Your thoughts please

[BrewStew]

Well, i'm still enthusiastic that I can build something bigger and better than that crappy plastic thing that wont last the ages.

Way I see it, even if this thing costs me £200, if it lasts me a lifetime of brewing and bottling it's money well spent

So tonight i'm off to Wickes again to grab a length of 15mm copper pipe. This will be crimped at the end, so shouldn't foul on the bottle neck

I thought about how i could enlarge the end of the 10mm pipe to give a tighter fit inside the 15mm so it doesn't leak and forces the 15mm pipe to slide up the 10mm, so it touches the base of any bottle size. My conclusion was a compression ring it's overall dimension is about 14mm. I'll glue this on with my glue gun :)

more experiments and pictures to follow later tonight :party:

 

[BrewStew]

http://www.pvrdirect.co.uk/productinfo.aspx?catref=Wolfcraft-WFC2200

Found another pump. Looks more durable and i'd imagine (although it doesn't state) that the PSI/BAR is a little stronger than the cheaper one as it'll go up to 40m high.

Made of metal, and mountable.

I think this one is going in my shopping cart if you guys think it's any good?

 

[Vossy1]

Looks like a reasonable pump, though it does have quite a high self priming head.
I'm not sure if that's an issue as I haven't used one of this design....yet

 

[BrewStew]

what does self priming head mean?

 

[Vossy1]

what does self priming head mean?

It means that for this pump to self prime it needs a hydrostatic head on the inlet side of 4 meters.
That means that it needs the supplied water to be at least 4 meters above the pump so the pressure of the water self primes the pump.

AT least that's what it means to me but that seems very excessive for this type of pump.
Hopefully I'm wrong and someone will correct me

 

[BrewStew]

ahhh gotcha thanks :)


Right... more piccies... and i reckon i've nailed it sprinkler design wise now. The slider thing was *****. wouldn't work... BUT the sprinkler head sprinkled a lovely set of thin streams in all directions

stuck it in the bottle, and VOILA:

we have complete internal coverage at a low pressure :party: :clap: :party:

this is using 15mm copper, and better yet, with a normal copper end stop, it fits even the tinyest of magners bottle necks:

This design is definitely the best so far:

this has 1.5mm holes

this works much better than 10mm copper piping for two simple reasons: 1) better internal coverage no matter what angle the bottle sits at 2)because it's wider the bottles sit much straighter on the sprinkler so less likelyhood of getting any unwashed areas.


my only problem now, is pressure. so i thought i'd test to see what i could expect with 20 sprinklers.

I took a decent length of 15mm pipe, glued and end cap on (i'm not buying a blow torch until i'm certain this will work) and i drilled 100 1.5mm holes in it. this will be the total amount of holes for 20 spinklers (5 holes per sprinkler), so i figured this'll be the cheapest way to test how much (or how little) power it'll have when i buy a pump for upgrading my brew length instead of spending all that money just to find it aint powerful enough.

abismal it trickled out with my cornie at 1 bar. tap water pressure wasn't much better. I can't be bothered hooking up and trying my jet washer as it was quite a pain last time, but i think with the wider piping there could be potential for more flow rates.

I'll test it again when i've dried off a bit with my cornie at raising pressures but i'm not going to dare take my cornie past 60 psi... i know they take 100 but i dont want to risk going too far past halfway to breaking point :?

 

[Wez]

Im following this with interest

I like the piccy where it looks like you're trying to water all of the hanging baskets at once :grin:

 

[BrewStew]

:lol:

well test complete. 60PSI or 4bar produced a fair result for a brief second before it lost pressure. didn't even have time to take a pic

I really think though that a pump of equivalent rating would work better because its the same bore as the piping. Running this test through a thin dip tube and thin pipe from the JG fitting, i would've thought will restrict it considerably. Not to mention that i'm using a compressed gas to force the water across that thin tubing.

I'm quietly confident that a 4bar pump will do the job so to ebay i go!!!

 

[A T]

Great work mate, you'll get there :clap:

 

[BrewStew]

I hope so AT otherwise my efforts and cash (well some of it anyway as i'm going to make a double IC out some of the parts) will be wasted :?

fingers crossed that i can find a high powered pump for it.

the question is though, are pumps controllable? (as in speed wise, without using the method Vossy suggested) so could i use say a 4 or 5 bar pump for my future brewery upgrade?

 

[Vossy1]

the question is though, are pumps controllable?

If your not going to bypas the output from the pump then you have only one option, to my knowledge, and that's a mag drive pump.
They can be restriced to next to nothing without damaging them, that's the way I'd go.
Simply place a ball valve on the pump oultet and restrict to suit your needs.

http://www.totton-pumps.co.uk/product7.html

 

[BrewStew]

thanks V

 

[A T]

Or you could buy the same pump off cornie Norm for cheaper. They're relabelled scotsman pumps but as far as i know they are the same pump

 

[Phil]

Yes they are the same pumps.

/Phil.

 

[BrewStew]

cool. i'll drop norman a line then cheers!

 

[BrewStew]

Norm got back to me, he's not got any in stock as he orders them as and when he gets requests.

He doesn'ts know the specs of them unfortunately

this is the photo of it that he sent me:

does this look suitable for my purposes? it looks different to the totton pumps pictures

 

[Vossy1]

I'm pretty sure those are the pumps Phil uses, have a look here

http://www.philrobins.org.uk/

 

[BrewStew]

yeah they're definitely the ones, but i wonder if they'll be stong enough (4 or 5 bar) to blast water through the bottle cleaner as well as around the brewery

 

[Vossy1]

Personally I wouldn't say so, have a look here

http://www.totton-pumps.co.uk/c2/uploads/gp20_12.pdf

Give Totton a ring see what they recommend...and then find it on flea bay

 

[A T]

Personally I wouldn't say so, have a look here

http://www.totton-pumps.co.uk/c2/uploads/gp20_12.pdf

Give Totton a ring see what they recommend...and then find it on flea bay

:lol: :lol: :lol: