Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hi Folks,

I’d like to be able to quickly and easily connect and disconnect my condenser hoses to make storage and set up easier.

I don’t want to muck around with hose clamps and thought garden hose fittings might work, but cant find anything suitable in Bunnings.

I can find plenty of female hose fittings, but the only male fittings they have are the ones with a 1” thread you screw on to your garden tap rather than a 12mm barb.

Those of you who have quick disconnect hoses, what do you use and where did you get it?

Cheers,

Tenorbrew

My local Home hardware store had some 1/2"bsp to 1/2" solder in fittings so I used them on my RC and PC then I use the Nylex Orange ones as I found the bunnings crap leaked too often.

I use 1/2' bsb air quick connect fittings which screw straight into stainless braided hose from bunnings.
I have only had one stick open once and that was after 12months of use.
Bit of silicone lubricating spray does the trick. Mine are just nickel plated but for more cash you can get stainless ones..

I've got 16 mm clear pvc tubing from the gardening section of bunnings and connect it with the pope brand garden irrigation connectors. I use 1/2" bsp brass male capillaries into my condensers. The pope brand snap sure adapters work great. The tubing needs to be heated (left to sit in hot water for a minute or two) to stretch over the barb fittings but it goes on with a bit of encouragement and is water tight. It's cheap and you can trim the tubing to the length you want so storage is easy. Also I went for the 16 mm option with 19 mm adapters because the smaller tubing (12 mm) was affecting my pump head pressure. I also tried other set-ups with the braided line but found they suffered from the same problem.

I have my RC and PC connected together in one unit so all the plumbing stays connected to it but I disconnect it from my water reservoir and radiator for storage. These connectors could easily be used for plumbing the cooling for completely modular condensers and detach for easy storage. I've found the adapters require very little effort to connect and disconnect.


Anyway, here's a photo showing my plumbing (column looks to be on a bit of a lean but I think it's just a camera effect)

Another benefit with the clear tubing is that you can see if your cooling lines are filling up with air, which happens as the condensers start knocking down vapour (dissolved air in the cooling water bubbles out at higher temp and gets trapped in cooling lines, as well as condensers - always run condensers in at bottom, out at top for this reason).

I use 1/2 inch camlocks. They come in stainless or plastic. Works a treat.

I use the 1/2 inch click on garden hose connectors with a male to male adapter in the middle where I want to make a disconnection like this https://www.bunnings.com.au/gardena-13m ... g_p3110390 but they are not that good and leak unless they hang straight. Camlocks are better but I have a friend who uses hoselink fittings on his caravan and now his garden and he says they are great. You get them here https://www.hoselink.com.au/hose-connectors The hose joiner set for $9.90 looks alright. I think I have seen these on some of the forum pics.
Regards,
Peter C.

G-day mate ,you could get one of these and push the garden hose over one end and secure with a couple of zip ties,as PeterC mentioned ifn you can set up connectors running verticaly they will not leak compared to being horizontal,and when ever I build now I will make sure coolant pipes exit the part and then head down verticaly then solder one of the same joiners trimed down ta suit the pipe to the end ,I use brass garden connectors and replace the o rings each year .cheers hillzabilly ;-)

orcy wrote:I use 1/2 inch camlocks. They come in stainless or plastic. Works a treat.

I use stainless camlocks too. The downside to them is their weight.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Thanks for the responses, guys.
Great to see what other folks are using. I really like the look of those Hoselink fittings.

Cheers,

Tenorbrew

G'day Tenorbrew, not sure if this would suit your needs or not. I used one of these from Bunnings
https://www.bunnings.com.au/holman-12mm ... r_p3110585
You undo 2 of the fittings & they are a very neat fit into 1/2" copper pipe (which I used for my Liebig)

Cheers,

Hooky