You can bag your hops, or make a hop stopper:
http://www.homebrewchatter.com/board/f18/diy-hop-stopper-kettle-screen-pickup-t2550/
Narvin thanks for the tip.
I have reviewed the hop stopper and it looks like it will help with keeping the hops and trub under control. I have ordered the 12 x 24 screen mesh and plan on building a hop stopper before I brew again.
So far this afternoon I have forward and reverse flushed the Therminator several times with extreamely hot water and used PBW in both directions also. It looks like when I use the PBW, that it tends to dislodge the blockage. It is amazing that the hop flakes keep on comming out. So I decided to leave a solution of PBW inside the Therminator over night and will flush several more times tomorrow. Hopefully this will clean out the plates. Once that is completed I plan on flushing with Star San and then flushing with fresh water. I will place the Therminator in my fermintation cabinet to help dry it out internally. This has been a pain in the brew pot.
Again, Thanks for the Tip.
Hmm... looks like my link is dead. You may have seen it before it disappeared, but for anyone else interested, the 12x24 screen I ordered was this:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#9230t625/=8czd0oI folded it in half, dog eared two of the corners outward where they came together to leave an opening for a dip tube, and then folded the remaining edges over twice and tapped them with a hammer to seal them. Other people have used stainless thread to seal it, but that seems like a major pain in the ass and completely unnecessary. A ss worm gear clamp keeps the mesh on the dip tube.
The reason I like the hop stopper is that it has a large surface area, so you can use a finer mesh than a bazooka tube. I personally have had little luck with pellet hops and the bazooka... a whirlpool helps, but once the liquid level gets low the trub becomes unsettled and ends up going right through the mesh. I have heard that cold break can clog the hop stopper, but with a therminator you shouldn't need to recirc anyway. Just send the output straight to your fermenter... the point of the plate chiller is to get to within 2-4 degrees of your ground water in one pass.
Another tip: If you still have debris in your therminator and don't feel comfortable with its level of cleanliness, you can bake it in the oven for an hour or so to kill any bacteria in there.