First off, the PVC rings fall sideways and off kilter, but in the end they are still helping to maintain some semblance of a tube form. With that said, I thought it was a weird idea at first, but it’s actually worked out a lot better than I ever anticipated.

Regarding the tube versus the false bottom, there was not any conversation about that at my meeting, but here are my thoughts on it:

From what I have seen, the liquid does favor the front exit point where the greatest suction exists, but as the grains thicken up in that area, a more solid tube is created and the suction point moves back. I would say that when you sparge with a tube screen, you would have to do a lot of mixing and you would find that you favor the spout side because that’s where the action is. But when things get thick suction moves more to the middle.

Again that’s just my observation, but it looks like that’s what is going on.

Thanks for the quesion, cheers!

It seems as though it wouldn’t hold up to the weight of the grain. Have you experienced those PVC rings falling down sideways? Is it difficult to clean?

I have one bigger question in regards to these “tube” types of screens. I was also wondering if your club brought this up at the meeting about sparging. Does the liquid only/mostly exit right at the point where the the tube is fastened onto the port-hole? If so, would that cause inefficiency in the sparge flow?

It seems that a false bottom allows the liquid to evenly fall through the entire bottom before it exits through the outflow tube.

Its always been a big curiosity for me.