That’s funny, I built almost the same thing about a year ago out of 1/2" CPVC. The guy is right, the CPVC end caps caps are bigger than the bottle opening. I got some 1/2" solid PVC stock from grainger, cut it into 1/2" long rods, and hammered it in the end of the CPVC. Then a hole was drilled through the solid stock.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get mine to work properly. All the flow was at the first few pipes next to the supply, the rest were barely a trickle. I also didn’t glue the long pipes down into the manifold, so they would pop off pretty quickly and kill the pressure. I didn’t want to glue them down so that they could be removed for getting out buildup (original purpose of this thing for me was a bottle washer). I just stopped messing with the thing seeing how much additional work was needed to get it working. And I haven’t washed a bottle since :-\
These are conceptually like little landscape irrigation systems. Similarly, all you need to do is design the laterals in a looped configuration as opposed to having several distal ends that will always have emitters with less pressure than those closer to the source. Simply connect the end pieces with tees and a couple 90 degree elbows to create a continuous loop around the emitters. The pressure will equalize and it will perform much more as you intended.
That said, man that’s a lot of work compared to a dishwasher or starsan/bottle tree. But hey, sometimes it’s about the process, right?
Now that you put it that way, it makes perfect sense. I never thought about closing the loops. Thanks, that helps a lot.
For sanitizing, yeah this seems like a waste of time, especially compared with just using a hand sprayer and hanging on a bottle tree. But for cleaning, it would be great to have something so I didn’t have to break out the bottle brush. During the last mass cleaning I had to use the brush on about 40% of the bottles to get them sparkling, even after an oxyclean soak. Anybody have suggestions on this front? Most of my bottles are pretty nasty and don’t get rinsed right after emptying.
You might be able to make loading it easier if you built the frame in a way that allowed you to insert the frame into bottles that are already in a box and then flip the whole thing over and remove the box. You’d have to mount handles that let you pick it up full and set into the water collection box. And quick disconnects of some type would probably be needed to make moving the rack in and out easier.
Not a bad design if you only bottle and brew a lot.