Water Tap Size?

[StonesRyan]

Can anyone provide any insight on an appropriate (and approximate) water tap size for an operation with a 150 gallon still? I'm a one-man operation so I'll be contracting the wash through a local brewer and transporting to my facility to ferment until I can afford/ justify hiring someone and investing in the mashing equipment, so I'll really only be using water for proofing and cleaning until then. After a year and a half of pressuring the city to revise ordinances to allow distilleries they finally gave in and will allow me not only in industrially zoned areas but also retail commercial. This is great except that almost all of the commercial spaces only have a 3/4" water tap and the filing cost for a new one is nearly $20,000 - that's before ground is even broken. So my question is whether or not a 3/4" tap will suffice for my smaller operation? Is there anyone out there who's been down this road already?

[Marc]

We have the 3/4" size taps for our operation (2 each 500ltr alembics) and it works just fine. We use it for cooling, cleaning, and running through our RO filter for bottle proofing.

[Salishseaorganicliqueurs]

We've got a 1" one for ours.

[Natrat]

You should be ok with a 3/4" service. Have you tested the pressure and got estimates on winter/summer groundwater temps?

[kckadi]

I have a 3/4" main line coming in and everything that requires high flow is a direct 3/4" line (to the boiler, to the cook kettle filler, etc). I get almost 12 gallons/minute out of it. This was after I fixed a ton of 'bad plumbing". I had 1/2 reducers, a ton of elbows. rusted black iron piping, etc. Once I got full pressure the water ran almost black for the first several minutes. I also installed a water softener and high flow filter. The one thing a 3/4 won't work for, at least for me, was a fire sprinkler system so if you need one of those you will probably have an issue. My town issued a variance for me so I didn't need one (I still had to put in a full monitored alarm system)..