Well, when it comes to pumps I can tell you from experience what works and what doesn't. On the very first HERMS that I built I used a Sure-Flow model 8000-533-236, triple diaphragm pump for the heat exchanger and to fill the brew kettle while I used gravity flow for the sparge. I used that setup for over a year to decide what I liked and didn't. While the Sure-Flow is a good little pump, the top end of it's operating range is 170 degrees f and needless to say, I was right at the limit. I was always worried that one of the diaphragms would fail and contaminate my beer or simply cause me to stop, half way through sparging a batch. While operating at the high end of the temperature range it seemed to be working it's little heart out just to do it's job.

This is the Sure-Flow, even if the picture is pretty poor.

When I tore the old system apart, which forced me to build the framework you see today, I had decided that magnetic drive pumps were the only way to go for a main system pump. Since I no longer relied on gravity for sparging, a second pump would need to be added for that sole purpose. Since I already had the Sure-Flow, I decided to use it for sparging only, which would reduce the total amount of time it would have to run during a normal brewing session. For the main system pump, I elected to go with a Little Giant model 3-MD-MT-HC since it was available locally through Grainger. It seemed like a fairly decent little pump, the pump housing used a Ryton housing. Like a bonehead, I hard plumbed the inlet and discharge manifolds directly to the pump and when I did my first run with hot water, a combination of expansion and probably not having everything perfectly aligned, the front housing on the pump broke. No big deal, right! Wrong! Even though I had the exploded parts list for the pump and ordered the parts by part number, the replacement part looked completely different. The guy at the local Little Giant dealership assured me that it must be an improvement and that it would work just fine. Every time the pump would heat up from the liquid going through it, the pump would try to bind and the housing would have to be loosened slightly to allow it to work properly. Eventually it wore the back of the impeller housing through and started pouring water out. Thankfully this happened while I was sanitizing the system and not with a tun full of grist. Well, I tried to get the correct part a few times with no luck and finally the guy told me the only of getting it just right was to replace all the parts in the pump end. Wrong again, that would have cost as much as the pump did new. By the way, I put flexible hose at both sides of the pump after the first failure and had no more problems in that area.

Here is the Sure-Flow and the Little Giant. The plumbing conglomeration between them is an electric heat exchanger that I used in my second generation of Oscar. Temperature ramps were too slow due to the coils size so I went to the HLT exchanger that I use today.

I finally had good enough sense to contact Moving Brews (who now seems to be out of business) and purchased a high temperature March Pump, model 6144MM that was rated at 250 degrees f. All my problems were solved and things work great now. As a matter of fact, my nerves finally got to me and I replaced the Sure-Flow with a second March Pump and couldn't be happier.

     March Pump 6114MM.

As I said earlier my system uses 2 pumps to make it all work. The pump above is the main system pump and below is the pump that is used for sparging. With this configuration I can "fly sparge" and maintain constant flow to the brew kettle during the sparge. Systems using only a single pump have to first pump sparge water to the mash tun, then use the same pump to move the sweet wort to the brew kettle which in my opinion is a pain in the ass.

The sparge pump is mounted under the platform where the mash tun sets, and is directly beside the counter flow chiller.

    This picture is taken from below the platform and show the March Sparge pump.