Water flow control

[Admiral Toad]

Just in case anyone missed the posts I put on about this ....
At a suggestion fromYHB I bought a pressure reducing valve with gauge from EBay team supplies for around £20.
Got this plumbed into a branch off sink feed adjusted to about 1 bar pressure then ran water through needle valve as per normal
very pleased with result hardly any temperature fluctuations much more controllable and you can run washing machines flush loos etc with hardly any effect on outlet temperature
Def worth doing !

[YHB]

Thanks for the credit, no need, I am just glad it lived up to my sales pitch.

In case anyone wants to Google your description to find one, please note that the device is a Pressure Reducing “Valve” not cable.

Toodlepip

Brian

[Admiral Toad]

Bleeding I pad spell checker i'll sort that now cheers mate !

[Admiral Toad]

At the risk of blabbing on and getting boring ...... This pressure valve is bloody magic! an evening run ( always a bit more stable water pressure around here) and hardly a degree temp variation you can waddle off have tea, watch the telly even make love to the wife ( sorry forgot could do that before only 2 mins away from still)
Oh yes......! best investment so far >:D

[MrCat]

Tempted to buy two of those, hook them up with two taps off the water pipe and supplying the condenser and the reflux pipes with independent water supplys.

[Admiral Toad]

Mr Cat one would probably do if you then split the outlet 2 ways. it adjusts from 1 bar up to 6 or more as I recall so you still need needle type valve control to fine tune temps I would think cos even at lowest pressure the volume would be far more than you would need
I found turning it well down gives loads of 'pressure variation play' on the mains side with a lower steady flow on the needle valve/ still side
Hope that makes sense

[MrCat]

It makes sense but what I was thinking was that by splitting the water supply onto two separate regulated flows you would get no interaction at all between the condenser and the column.

I haven't split the water feed on the T500 but when I split the water supply on the ss reflux with a y connector and a tap in one of the feeds what happened was that when you increased the water supply to the column it obviously reduced the water supply to the condenser so you had to increase the water through the main tap and then reduce the water on the column etc etc

I ended up with a y connector to split the water, a tap in the column feed and a tap on the 'output' side of both the column and the condenser to ensure sufficient back pressure.

Mind you I ended up computer controlling the whole lot of it!

If I split the water supply on the T500 I'm going to use two independent water sources just to make it easier.

[Admiral Toad]

Ahh now I understand the 'cooling for cats'

[paul parker]

Pressure reducing valves helps in controlling the water pressure and in a way conserve water.

[Admiral Toad]

Hi Paul and welcome

Its really being used to keep a constant pressure and therefore flow to the condenser against fluctuations caused by other taps, loo flushing or even in the water supply

The T500 temp varies dramatically on the tiniest changes of water flow and this truly cures it 99%

[Duffer26]

Could you possibly send me a link to this valve?

Regards, Marc.

[H12rpo]

Slightly off topic, but does anyone have a ‘quick change’ system for changing coolant hoses between stills?
What I mean is a bit like the hozelock thingies only for smaller bore pipes

I have the T500 needle valve running off my outdoor brass tap into the T500 column feed and I’d like to be able to disconnect that tube after the needle valve and then connect a bigger bore tube onto that for my pot head

Not sure that has mad sense and I haven’t even had a drink yet !

[packapoo]

Try goog 'uxcell water fittings', see if those are any use.

They're similar to what you see on a host of plumbing jobs around stills. I forget the name for the real jobbies - it's a male person's christian and surname, may jog someone's memory...

Otherwise, I find the braided S/S water couplers most useful, particularly if you take the time to separate the end fittings. (Braid is then handy as bazooka on the mash tun.....)

[packapoo]

John Guest was the name (I finally recalled)

[Mash]

Yup John guest is a good call. Push fit.

I like these.

https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/ZINC-CHROME-HO ... mwBanner=1

They are are smaller than hoze lock, but would still need a 15mm hose tail.