"I remember reading some posts about the sears water purifier for distilling alcohol but cannot find them after forum re-design.
Somebody mentioned ""drilling out a yellow thing"" in order for it to work with alcohol.

I bought one of these from sears - a 3 quart unit. I filled with my first run of rum mash (brown sugar and molasses) I was careful to not overfill and was about 1 inch below the fill line. after about 30 minutes my heads starting coming out - about 35ml or so and then stopped collecting. after a while I noticed that a crystal clear liquid was pouring out the back of the unit through the fan vent openings (my hearts!) smelled and tasted good but was all over my counter top and kitchen floor. I stopped the run and waited 15 minutes before opening up the pot and about 3/4 full with left over mash - no evidence of foaming at all so tha's not the problem. I tossed this all out as I did not know if I could return this to my mash tub.

If there is a easy mod I should do to correct this please advise me.
I figure I could return to sears if I can't get this thing working - starting to wonder why I started into this hobby - this is a strike two for me on distilling method.

I did do 2 successful water only runs with unit before trying my mash so I don't think there is a defect - I guess I will run another water only run again to make sure.

THANKS"

"The yellow thing - is that under the pot lid (a plastic elbow)
drill out to widen opening?

how would you get to the chlorine vent ? is that where the liquid is esacping from?

I was hoping to use the unit for water also so did not want to make that impossible with the mods

The pot was not wet so I don't think it was leaking via the lid seal.

I'm not giving up on my conventional pot yet , but being able to do this indoors on counter top is just alot more convenient.

Spending alot of hours outdoors and keeping my 3 1/2 yr old son away from the still setup is diificult . If he knows that I am doing something he wants to be my helper and will drive wife nuts while I am out there..........."

"Brew - thanks for info
If you are ref: to homedistiller.org, I have read it and specifically the section on the sears unit. Before this forum was revamped I read a post from somebody who said that he had modified these and re-sold them but stopped due to lack of inventory, etc. That person (don;t remember name) also mentioned drilling out the yellow thing, etc. I was hoping to connect with that person. Unable to locate these older posts now using search - I guess some posts did not make it to new format. anyway I am going to try one more run with the sears without mods filling it up half way this time and hope that the extra head room in the pot allows for a leak free run - if this fails I will give it up and return it. Then will most likely buy the ez still.

I have done quite a bit of reading on home distilling and realize that some of my questions seem obvious to the pros - I appreciate all assistance and hope to be of some help to others as I get more knowledgeable - THANKS to all"

You did the right thing. In the mean time keep working on your bigger pot till its all figured out. Ask questions.

My bud is experimenting right now with his EasyStill. In the mean time go here and learn all there is so you are tuned up when it arrives.

http://easystill.com/

"

If you have the model that has a standard computer type power cord running from main body to fan power supply you can purchase a standard computer cord to power the fan and plug the main unit into a variable transformer. This way you have an easy way to lessen the heater wattage and still have the fan run at full throttle. The Variac Transformer model in link below should work fine for the little water distiller.
They also sell a 2KVA model that can be used to control the heat from high output hot plates used on bigger stills. To do this turn heat all the way up on the hotplate and adjust output with the Variac so the thermostat does not cycle and cause unstable conditions in the column.

http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=15162+TR"

Please do not encourage this person to alter a machine that will become toxic.

Never use that tubing or any plastic, it will melt over time and degrade, slowly poisioning you. Get a stub of copper tube and solder it on with lead free solder.