Help with stuck valves

[blackheart]

We have been trying to brew with our new 10 gallon all grain system for a few weeks now and we have hit a few snags. All of these issues can be attributed to our valves not maintaining a good seal.

We are using 12v solonid valves from Duda Diesel. seen here
http://www.dudadiesel.com/choose_item.php?id=W160B15

The system tests worked great! as we were just using hot water.... when we went to brew with them, things got progressively worse as we cooled the wort.

The valves are not a typical ball valve but instead have an inner and outer chamber separated by a diaphragm. When current passes into the solonid coil, a metal shaft connected to the diaphragm pulls the diaphragm upward far enough to break the seal between the inner and outer chambers and liquid flows.

This design also means that the liquid is not a strait 1/2" flow and sediment and hops can easily become trapped in the valve sticking it open or closed. Either way, we end up with boiling hot liquid that we cannot remove.

So we need help figuring out what we should do next.

1. Add a filter on the kettle dip tube to prevent some sediment from entering the valves.

2. Find better electronic valves that are of a different design

3. scrap everything we have worked on to make this electric and get manual valves

4......?

Looking for suggestions and ideas for what we can do. We made it through 3 5 gallon batches, just barely, with quite a mess to clean up after. We are looking to stream line our brewing and it is essential these valves work correctly each time instead of failing to hold a closed seal, failing to open, or restricting flow. One valve failing can kill another unrelated process that depends on the valve closed to build pressure in another pathway.

 

[cvstrat]

Looks like you spent a good amount of money on the valves, so I understand you would want to try and keep them in the system. It sounds like you don't have a large enough diameter for the wort to flow through. One hop leaf will clog up a hose pretty fast on any system. I'm thinking about simply transferring chilled wort to a carboy via a ball valve and hose.. even in this basic setup there can be severe blockage if you suck up hop leaves.

There really is no difference that I can think of between a basic manual system and your system. Either way you have to eliminate sucking up as much particulate as you can. Make sure you whirlpool your kettle and wait 20 minutes or so to cone up the hops in the middle of the kettle and make sure your dip tube isn't reaching out into the middle. A simple fix would be to install a decent hop screen to your dip tube. The screen filters small enough that nothing that gets through could clog your valves that i know of. If you are recirculating the wort into the kettle while chilling you're gonna stir up more junk.

I use two immersion chillers, one that I submerge in a bucket of ice water, and the other downline submerged in the beer. If you have help and you can swirl the beer chiller and have someone shake the icewater chiller up and down really fast you can chill 5 gallons in 6 or 7 minutes. Once I hit temps I stop swirling and let the whirlpool settle for 15 minutes or so. By that time there is a nice trub cone and w/o a hop screen I'm sucking up minimal hops. If your pump is pumping the wort really fast you might want to slow it down to prevent disturbing the hop cone.

Hope this helps.

 

[kladue]

Here is a link to the Chinese made electric ball valves that others have used, http://www.electric-valve.com/20.html. Check with the BrewTroller folks as I believe they have replenished their stock of these valves recently, it would be easier than buying 10 and paying the shipping from China.

 

[JonW]

Ditto on kladue's suggestion. Your solenoid valves would work fine for some gas control, but they don't work that well for liquid. You've already taken them apart so you know the problems with the diaphram as well as the inability to get them clean without taking them apart. Get the ball valves and you won't have these issues.

 

[shushikiary]

Solenoids for water supply, everything else electric ball valves.

They are right that you want to buy from the brewtroller store, it's hard to beat their price.

We just did a group buy on 3way ball valves from there and for 19 valves plus shipping and fee's it was almost 1200 bucks. Then again the brewtroller store doesnt sell 3 way valves..... yet, JCD says he's on it.

 

[WPStrassburg]

http://www.filterbag.com/cart.html and look for the polyester bags
or even better would be
http://www.filterbag.com/SS-Pleated-Cartridge-26.html
for filtering. This weekend if my maiden flight with the 100 micron ss filter, but if that doesn't stop the valves from clogging up then you're looking at actuated ball valves. I assume you're getting bleed by with the valves and that's screwing you all along the way from mash tun to fermenter, right?
Can you recirc to set the mash bed before you flow through a diaphragm valve? This would obviously involve some manual valve and hose changes, but may give you clear enough wort to move through the rest of your process.

Just bring that shiny, sparky rig up to Rochester, and we'll get the beast flowing smoothly over a few brews

 

[blackheart]

Looking at replacing our current valves with these.

http://www.oscsys.com/12-Motorized-Stainless-Ball-Valve.html

Wondering how well this will work with our current wiring system which uses only 2 wires and is 12v.

 

[shushikiary]

Those valves have the BD3 wire setup if you look at the KLD web site.

The way they work is they have 3 wires, but you only need to switch one for them to work. Given that you're using 2 wires with solenoid you'll most likely need to run a 3rd wire... I'll explain:

There is a RED, GREEN, and BLACK wire off the valve. The RED you wire straight to 12v, the BLACK to the negative of your 12v supply. The GREEN, when left as no connect, makes the valve close, when the GREEN is connected to 12v the valve will open (takes 5-7 seconds to go from open to close and vise versa).

 

[blackheart]

So we have been looking at a few different possible solutions to our problem. The best solution seems to be to buy 10x new ball valves (~$500) which would require disassembling the entire system and rewiring all 10 valves with new connectors as they are 3 wire not 2 wire like the current valves.

We will most likely keep some of the valves for other stuff like auto pumping water in to the batches. But sell the rest to recover some of the cost of the new valves. We have already modified the valves with handy 1/8" audio jacks making it really easy to throw these into a system.

Also thinking of re-plumbing the entire system so that the majority of the valves are under the brewing system connected in line with hoses extending upward to go into the kettles. Not sure how well this will work, but it will keep more valves away from the burners heat and could help to simplify flow issues as well as allow us to better clean the entire system.

I drew up a quick picture showing this layout... I may have to post this elseware as well but the more feed back we can get the better. Here is the link as the photo does not look good in a small resolution.
Hermes v7

2x one way valves keep liquid coming from the coil from dropping down into the rest of the system.