I recently got a standard wort chiller but unfortunately am without a utility sink in my house. Has anyone been able to connect a wort chiller to a standard bathroom faucet? If so, what type of fitting/connector did you use?
You need to take off the aerator and get a faucet to hose fitting adapter from the hardware store.
Bring your aerator with you so you know what size fitting you’ll need to screw onto your faucet.
A bathroom faucet? The tub faucet is probably out. Many vanity/lav faucets have the same screw-on aerator as kitchen faucets. So the same adaptor should work there. A little mix-n-match in in the Home Depot plumbing aisle should set you up. I believe roll-around dishwashers have the same fittings as the chillers and will be more familiar to hardware store employees.
My kitchen faucet won’t take an adapter, so I hook my chiller to a standard “flooded crawl space” pump in a 5-gallon bucket to which I add ice, and enough water to get the pump going. 212-60 in about 20 min. It’s another option. Since the chill water never contacts the wort, you don’t need to be concerned about “food grade” for the bucket or pump. As a bonus it uses much less water.
Above is a great point. I use a small$10 aquarium pump to pump ice water through after the faucet does its job.
But in your case you can have a steady stream from your faucet into a bucket and have the pump in the bucket.
Found a fountain pump at habour freight. Pumps 3 gal/min. How does that compare to your pump?
I also use a pump and bucket of ice water. The first pump I bought was a cheap aquarium pump and it barely pumped enough water to do anything but cool the top few inches of wort. It was 250gal/hr.
Part of the issue I think was that it had to travel 4 feet upward before traveling through the chiller. I upgraded to a 1,000gal/hr pump and it works great. Just enough power and it cools my wort from boiling to pitchable temps in about 15 minutes.
As always though YMMV
My entire pump is about the size of a large coffee can, it sucks in the water from the bottom and has the hose attachment at the top. I worry that the chiller is too constricting for my pump’s design, but then again, since it’s pumping icy water I’m less concerned about overheating. Plus, those pumps are designed to run continuously for hours, I haven’t gone beyond 20 minutes yet.
Edit: mattnaik’s 1000/hr pump made me think to I check the specs on mine; mine is actually 1800 gal/hr. So I think mattnaik actually has the perfect size. But hey, mine was the perfect price; I got it for free when my mom moved out of the old house into a retirement community.
Thanks for the replies. I found a 1050 GPH submersible pump and ordered it. I like the idea of only using 5 gal of water.
