Recirculating Problems

[buzzbromp]

I updated my brew system recently for recirculation. I have been having a few issues and was wondering if anyone has any advice. First, I use a tiered setup with all stainless steel pots. I added a pump to push the mash up into a copper coil located in the HWT, which feeds back into the mash.
My issues have been, i need to heat both the mash and keep he HWT about 4 degrees above my mash to increase the mash, and it is slow. I also still need to stir, otherwise the temperatures in the mash do not change.

 

[buzzbromp]

I do not use a sparge arm. The outflow just hoses into the mash at about 1 GPM.
My other problem is that when I start to best up to mash out, the intake tithe pump gets air in it and I had to play around with it to get it primed again. I think this happens because I am stirring the mash to redistribute the temperatures better.

Is there a method that would eliminate the need to stir the mash and mix up the settled grain?

On a final note, my efficiency went down. I coarsened my crush to 0.04 or 0.004, I forget the decimals. This is to get more flow through the grain from recirculation as I was told by my homebrew store.

Thanks!