For those with the CFC and high ground water issues (I also use a heart’s) - you can try doing what I do. I pump hot wort into CFC with ground water for cooling. The wort passes into a 15’ IC sitting in an ice bath and out through a thrumometer into the fermenter.
With that setup and the usual 80+ ground water I can drag an 11 gallon batch to 60-65F in 15 minutes. I just have to remember to shake the IC every minute or so to break up thermal jacketing.
During the spring I’ll run about 9lbs of ice, the height of summer about 20.
Same deal here. Tap through an IC in ice the through a plate chiller. The tap was 82 on brew day this past weekend and I cooled my wort to 68 in 15 to 20 min.
I can chill my beer down to ground water temp using a Therminator in about 15 minutes.
I like to chill immediately upon flameout. My groundwater temp varies from 56-64 degrees depending on the time of year. My CFC chills fast and is easy to use and I find that it’s also easy to clean.
I do recommend boiling the chiller prior to each use, as some very small hop particles and trub can get trapped in the chiller no matter how well you attempt to clean it out. Boiling the CFC for 20 min will kill any residual bacteria that is in the chiller.
John Palmer has a good chapter in his book How To Brew with various sanitizing methods. There is a chart which has oven heat X time to sterilize equipment http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter2-2-3.html . I usually cover the openings with aluminum foil and time-bake over night at 285F for 3 hours. By morning it’s sterile and cooled.
When the tap water is hotter than I want my wort to be, I put a 2nd plate chiller in series. The first gets tap water and the 2nd gets ice water pumped through it with a sump pump. I need to do that for lagers in the Summer. It takes about 10# of ice per 5 gallons.
How strong of a pond pump is needed? My kettle is only a couple feet off the ground on the burner. The first pump I bought doesn’t turn the water over fast enough.