Anyone got experience with glycol temp control at home?

[Chad Keven]

Ive got brewer's brain again, but this time its getting serious; I'm entertaining the idea of building a conical fermenter, mostly to up scale, so i can brew with mates who are keen. this leaves me with a few new hurdles; the main one being temp control, atm my fridge/freezer only just fits my fermenter, which dosnt matter cause it still works well. if i build this new monstrosity it will stand higher than the fridge.

i could get a bigger fridge, but this would restrict me in a couple of ways; a) space b) only one temp at a time.

ive been trolling the interweb and found a few hardcore dudes in the states who have aircon units with the radiator part submerged in glycol in a chillybin, fitted with controllers like this ,to circulate the coolant which is a bit techo/expensive for me.

so looking for elcheapo alternatives; could a resevoir of glycol in a deep freeze do the same? keep the glycol at aprox -10C and fit the temp controller to the cooling side to activate a pump that circulates the glycol around the copper coil on the fermenter?!

this has the advantage of fitting more than one pump/controller for more than one fermenter.

does anyone out there have experience with this sort of thing in a Homebrew situation?I

how big would the tank of glycol need to be to keep 100L of beer at 0C?

has anyone in the Auckland/Waikato region got somthing like this opperating that i could have a look at?

am I barking up the wrong hop bine thinking about this shit?

I suppose some experimentation might be in order

the second hand guy down the road said he would do me a swap on a deep freeze, (which will acommodate my current fermenter aswell)

all of this relates back to wether i should build the conical at all

any help is greatly appreciated, regards, Chad

[Chad Keven]

thanks, thats a different take on it, but the same concept, how big is the tank? you think what i'm proposing would work; deep freeze?

[Fairlane]

The tank is about 20L.  You wouldn't need much more than that for what you're looking to do I think.

A small deep freeze is a good idea, the only issue that I can forsee is the plumbing.  You will more than likely be trying to install a bulkhead fitting through the side of the freezer to connect hoses to and I can tell you from experience, they are a pain the the butt to try to seal if you have insulation sandwiched in between them.

[Chad Keven]

sweet, are you using the food grade stuff as mentioned by Ralph?

If I go ahead I intend to plum using the proper buteline type plumbing (to lessen the chance of leaks)  to go from pump to coil/jacket and back to resevoir, insulated of course , maybe even position the pump inside the freezer so any leaks should they occur stay in the bottom of the freezer. I have a pump but its not submersible

[Fairlane]

If you have a decent pump that can keep suction then that is the simplest way to go. 

As for the piping, I think you'll find polybutylene (and especially the fittings) a bit more expensive than what I use...  1/2" garden hose and Hansen fittings, which I've had absolutely no problems with. 

Bear in mind there are different types of PB for different temps also...