Alright, so a friend got a new pump assembly from MoreBeer. Went to look at his system and I told him that he configured the pump wrong, that he should have the bleeder valve on the out port and not on the in port. He told me this was the way it arrived…huh? I went onto MoreBeer's website and sure enough the pump assembly was configured like that, with the bleeder valve on the inlet side. I understand you can get most of the air out of the system with this configuration…at least get you around any bends, but you're still not going to flood the pump head: https://www.morebeer.com/products/march-pump-assembly.html Can anybody explain why they would configure it this way?
hmm, not sure why it even needs a bleeder valve. the valve on top can be used as the bleeder. that's how I bleed mine. But I have camlock fittings so it's easy to connect/disconnect the tubing from the valve. I guess if you have it hard plumbed a bleeder would come in handy. I think for this case it would work it either position, but I agree with you, I'd probably mount it on the out port if I were setting it up. Fire off a question to Morebeer.
As usual…probably just over thinking it and this configuration works just as well...folks I know from MoreBeer are in Philly this week…so asking you guys... So back to my argument…bleeder valve is definitely more a luxury. but sometimes a nice one when I get a little cavitation. The only way this configuration makes sense to me is if the pump is mounted so that the in-port is facing up, so it can flood the pump chamber (like a fire engine's pump). But that is the way we've been taught not to mount a pump since that will leave an air pocket on upper side of the impeller chamber…if you mount it 'properly' with out-port facing up or to the right, then why use an in-port bleeder valve at all, since you'll have to open the out port valve to fill the pump's chamber…again, there's no logic to this configuration to me. https://byo.com/stories/issue/item/3167-build-a-better-homebrew-pump
I have mine mounted Inlet down, Outlet up, bleeder on the outlet side. Not only does it make for easy cavitation fixing, but makes a great sample port (I can run any water in the line out through there before transferring it to the main tubing, and I can pull my gravity sample from there with out disrupting the flow to the fermentor).
