Therminator Help Needed

[BrewsterBaker]

I recently copied a pump/chiller stand design from another thread. It's a stand made out of 3/4" PVC pipe and includes a Blichmann Therminator and Chugger stainless steel center inlet pump. I am extremely pleased with this design, with one exception... It works too good.
I have run two separate test on it. Both times it took 7 gallons of boiling water to 7 gallons of 53.5 degree water in the fermentation bucket.
I started with the ball valve on the pump discharge at half open, the ball valve from the kettle wide open. I opened the pump discharge valve to wide open with little change. Am I wrong to think that opening the pump discharge will limit the contact time of the wort with the heat exchanger and raise the temp of the wort post chiller?
I also placed a garden hose valve on the water inlet and tried reducing the flow there, also with little change. Would it work better if I slowed the water discharge by placing this valve on the discharge side?
Here are some photos of my setup.
Any help is greatly appreciated.


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[atoughram]

I turned the incoming cold water down a bit to bring the outlet temp back up and it worked.

 

[butterpants]

I use a ball valve placed just past the wort out side of the Therimnator... (my thermometer is located there as well). All pumps and valves are wide open (including garden hose chill water). Regulate your chilled wort into the fermenter only by the one wort out valve.

With this setup i can go from pretty much wort=ground water temp to wort 80F (and corresponding fill time changes) with the flip of a lever.

 

[BrewsterBaker]

So I added a gate valve to the water discharge. This allowed me to dial in the wort discharge temp very accurately by slowing the water flow through the therminator. I also added an outdoor remote outlet that allows me to turn the pump on and off while I monitor the level in my boil kettle. Worked great on this last test run. Time to brew!


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[butterpants]

you're welcome

 

[BrewsterBaker]

Thanks for the help!


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