Discovered just last night the perils of not fully draining the water from your immersion chiller - a burst line! I must not have drained it entirely from last brew session and with it sitting in my shed over a 5+ day cold snap (highs barely getting above freezing) what water was in there collected, froze and popped one of the coils open with .5" tear.
Sucks as I’m brewing this weekend and thoughts of a huge ice bath are not exciting.
Anyone have any luck fixing such a failure? May be time to make a 50-footer from 1/2 inch piping like I’ve wanted.
Ok, I figured soldering could work, but would be worried about the union being prone to eventual failure. I know nothing of metalurgy though, so maybe it would be fine.
Would a cold-solder iron work for this? It currently is all I have and not sure how it differs from hot solder.
hmmm, very interesting. I don’t know enough to be worried about the zinc factor - should I be? Seems like these should exist in different metals though…
Yeast require zinc as a micronutrient. I add 1/2 of a zinc tablet to my 10 gallon batches for that reason. The zinc is rapidly taken up by the yeast. No problem using that as a fix.
I have an old chiller that I should take to the scrap yard. Many splits in that one. I had left it in a shed, and gone overseas for a 1.5 years. Many, many splits in that one. Built a new chiller, and do not leave it outside.
