When I'm ready to brew I fill up the water tank to just about the top with clean filtered water and light the burner under the tank. All the valves are checked closed at this time. I'll heat the water to about 15ºF or so above the desired "dough in" temperature then open valves V2 & V4 and pump some hot water onto the grain bed in the mash/lauter tun. When I have enough water in the tun, I'll close valves V4 & V2 and open valves V1 & V5 and start recirculating the mash. Depending on how the temperature of the mash stabilizes, I can raise the temp by continuing to heat the water tank and recirculating the mash water through the coil using valves V1 & V4 (closing valve V5 to direct all recirc flow through the coil). Step raises are accomplished quite easily this way and since I don't have a burner under the mash/lauter tun, I don't have to worry about scorching. I generally keep the pump recirculating during the entire mash.
After the conversion is complete, I'll stop the pump and close all the valves. I can then crack open valve V7 to trickle the liquid into the kettle and then open valves V2 & V5 and pump sparge water as necessary onto the top of the grain. Once the bottom of the kettle is covered by about 2 inches or so of liquid, I can then light the burner under the kettle. Another method of sparging (or lautering) the mash is a modified version of "batch" sparging. It's a little bit quicker but A LOT easier. After the conversion is complete I'll drain all the sweet liquor from the mashtun to the kettle and light it's burner. I'll then pump sparge water back into the mashtun until the manifold is at the liquid level again. I'll stop adding the hot water and recirculate the mash for about 10 minutes or so (maybe longer if I felt there was need to stir the mash). I repeat this process of draining, refilling and recirculating until I reach the required pre-boil volume then the pump is stopped and all the valves are closed. In the time that this is going on, the liquid in the kettle is heating. About the time that the kettle nears boiling, the next draining is put in and quenches the boil and continues to heat. When the last addition of liquor is added to the kettle it come to boiling fairly quickly since it has been heating all this time. Sound confusing? You bet! But in practice it works very well. Try it on your own system. I think the extraction rates compare very favorably to the traditional "trickle in/trickle out" method of sparging. And by the way, I do not change recirc manifold when using this batch sparge method. I keep the "H" manifold installed.
For a 5 gallon batch I'll try to start with about 6½ gallons if I'm going to boil for 1 hour. About 1 gallon will boil away during that time. I usually figure for about a total of ½ gallon stranded in the system after the boil and lost as trub in the primary fermentor. I'll end up with a full 5 gallons at bottling time.
While the wort is boiling I'll keep the heat on the remaining water in the HLT. When this water is at about 200ºF I'll route the outlet line from V6 (or the outlet of the counterflow chiller if it is used) back to the HLT, open V2 & V6 and recirculate this hot water for at least 30 minutes. This sanitizes the wort flowpath from the kettle to the fermentor. When I'm done with this sanitizing process the pump is stopped and all valves are closed.
When the boil is done I'll start the cooling water flow through the chiller and pump the wort out of the kettle using valves V3 & V6. I have had some trouble with the copper scrubbie in the kettle clogging up with crud when I use pelletized hops. The problem doesn't seem to be as prevalent when I use whole leaf hops. By having the outlet of the wort chiller about 2' above the primary fermentor, it will splash in quite nicely giving me good aeration. The wort is chilled down to a nice temp for pitching the yeast starter so once the kettle is empty I can snap on the fermentor lid, jam in the airlock and start cleaning up this contraption.
To clean everything up for storage, I'll disassemble everything, flush clean water through all the plumbing and rinse out all the kegs. I wheel the cart into the shed with the kegs and most of the plumbing removed as that makes it quite a bit lighter and easier to move around. Once it's in the shed I'll hang the plumbing parts on the wall and set the kegs loosely back onto the cart.