I've been lurking around here for quite a while now and can't believe the awesome community here!
It's refreshing to find a forum where the members are friendly and willing to help the other members achieve what they want out of this awesome hobby.
I've been making neutral now for some time on my 4" bubble plate still with great success thanks to all the info I read on this forum. The time has come however to take my hobby to the next level. I want to get into Whiskey and for that I'm planning to build an onion head for my setup. I still want to be able to make neutral too but I'm very limited for space and height in my distilling area. Given this I have decided to offset both my column and product condenser.
I have done a lot of research and know what I want to do is very possible but I have a sticking point preventing me from getting going. It's all to do with the drain for the column going back to the boiler. I'm trying to figure out if the drain needs to be above or below the wash level in the boiler. I figured if the return was above the wash level in the boiler then the vapour is going to want to travel up the return pipe and result in flooding of the column. I see on some images, like the one attached, that there is a connection in the return pipe. I'm thinking this may be a one way valve to stop this from happening.
I wondering if anybody in our community has tried offsetting their column and what challenges they faced. I would also love to get peoples thoughts on this.