Building a walk in.

So for the past year I have not brewed as much as I'd like. For the most part I've been doing other projects around the new house.

Ever since we bought the house, I've been eying the back corner of the garage.And now that I started brewing 12 gallon batches I need some more room. SO this weekend I started getting it ready for a walk in fermentation room. I'll still have Temp cabinets for specialty beers and lagers, but for general ales and storage I hope I can keep the room close to 65ºF year round using a window AC. The good thing is living in San Diego, 5 miles from the beach its ~72º year round.

I'm going to try to do it with minimal addition to the garage, and try to male it as free standing as possible.

I have some shelving I bought from Ikea, that is vary modular I'm going to use as the walls to hold the foam board,and I'll build a door frame to close it all off.



Hopefully I'll get to work on this weekend a little.

I am about to do this as well so that I can do a barrel aged beer. It will essentially be a very small room inside my garage that will hold two barrels of beer and cases of wine and beer and possibly something else. Let me know how it goes with yours as I am trying to not have mine be tall, but fairly wide. Thinking either 4x8 or 8x8. Need the blessing of the decision maker though.

I just measured the area that I have and it looks to me like I can go about 5x8x7 or so. Rough. Now enough thread jacking for one night.

Im jealous! Looking forward to seeing this build =)

deep six brewing made a pretty tight walk-in before his house got flodded, poor guy

i think its in the diy project directory

If I remember correctly he used fans blowing on the window AC unit to keep it from icing up, also a lot of information on vapour barriers, properly sealing, and dry ageing big old slabs of meat. Worth reading and then you feel like crying with that picture of him waving from a window up to his stomach in flood waters.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/my-latest-project-walk-cooler-11440/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f19/welp-im-out-business-112710/

Ugh! that sucks about Deep six, I remember when he build that. I was living in apartment then and was considering walling off my bath room for a walk in I was so jealous!

Today a put up the first insulation boards and taped them up. I plan on using the can foam to fill in the gaps. They have an R Value of 5 so I don't expect this to insulate too well, but for the most part my garage does not get too warm or too cool. I figure a window ac and a space heater should keep it close to 65 year round.
I'm going to build one wall and dry wall and Insulate the celling and the back wall, there I can put in some serious insulation! and not pack it down:cross:

/subscribed

Summer really sucks, I mean I love my friends and all, but shazam! I don't know when I'm going to get a weekend free to finish this thing, let alone brew some thing to fill it!

well I'll get from 6am-4pm this Saturday, before heading up to LA for a party, so I hope I can get at least all the joist work in the celling done and may be the two walls I have to build.

I think I will use 2x6's for the celling, as I want to make an attic crawl space that is insulated as well, but also to sandwich 6" of insulation between the celling dry wall and the floor of the crawl space. I'm thinking as well to make the walls facing the garage 6" thick and stuffing it with insulation as well, and doubling up on the walls I have built.

I'm looking to use a 10K BTU air conditioner, Total over kill, But I've seen a few on Craig's list for under 100, so I'm optimistic I can get one for cheep.

So i ditched the idea of using shelving uprights for walls and framed in two walls with 2X4's. I figure its easier to insulate and seal with real walls. I'm putting R13 wall insulation and then R5 foam boards on the inside and drywalling the out side of the walls.

For the celling I plan on putting in 8" of cellulose sandwiched between drywall and plywood, and then sealing up the cracks with foam.

I'm looking for a 10,000BTU AC to cool the space, with will be 12X6X8.

I am so jealous, I am thinking of building a garage just to build a walk in. This rocks!!!

Last night a got a 5500BTU AC for $25 on Craig's list, so I'm going to try it out and see if it is enough. If it is not I'll get a bigger one. I mounted it upside down, so I hope that does not cause a problem. But I also re routed the the thermo coupler so it will be out side the room, and plan on hooking it up to a Jonson controller I have lying around until I get another Ranco ETC.

I had an old solid core fire door left over from my re-model, so I used that for the entry door. I figure that it will be a good insulated door.

Next step is wire up the electrical, hang lights, Dry wall and insulate, and put up shelfing. If all goes well I'll be brewing Sunday!

I would not mount that AC like that. The compressor will not function correctly, then short and/or burn up.

Everything else looks like it's coming along nicely though!!!

great project. definitely don't mount the AC unit like that, Hunlock is right.

keep us posted

sjlammer said:

great project. definitely don't mount the AC unit like that, Hunlock is right.

keep us posted

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THANKS
I Thought that might be a bad Idea good thing I posted it before I switched it on. I wanted the air to blown down, So I guess I'll rig a vent to do that.

to bad you did not use 2x6s and R25 or R30 the cost would have been just a bit more
but you would save so much more a cooling cost and can use a smaller compressor
and it would stay cooler long in the event of a power outages.

r13 is really weak thats about the smallest cheapest fibergall bats you can buy.

Clayton said:

to bad you did not use 2x6s and R25 or R30 the cost would have been just a bit more
but you would save so much more a cooling cost and can use a smaller compressor
and it would stay cooler long in the event of a power outages.

r13 is really weak thats about the smallest cheapest fibergall bats you can buy.

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I was thinking about that, But I don't have too far to cool the room down to where I want it to be. I'm looking to keep the room at 60-65 and it's mostly 72 here year round,and I have Temp control cabinets to get to lower temps.

but your right R13 is really week.

So I flipped the AC around last night and let it sit over night before running it. and added this ghetto duct work, I'm going to try to get a diffuser to put on it too, but It blows really cold air down, so I am happy with that.

This weekend SWMBO will be attending a bachelorette party here in SD, so I wont see her too much, and plan on working day and night to get this finished and cleaned up. So no brewing this weekend. I guess I'll have to be sick Wednesday...

Since cold air naturally falls you may get better use of the air conditioner without the ghetto plenum, it would allow the air to mix naturally with less stratification.

I am extremely jealous, kudos

I wish I had some pictures today, but the wife took her camera to the races, so I'll just give a quick description of today's progress.

I instated four outlets, on the out side wall, and hooked up the lights. wired the AC thermostat. Put up the interior foam walls,and dry walled the celling. I was hoping to get some help dry walling the celling, but no one was available so I did it my self...NO Fun but i got it done.

Also this morning I hit up a garage sale and scored an Sanyo mini fridge for $25, it is the same model I converted to to two tap kegerator. :rockin:

Lots more work tomorow, looks like i might be sick on Monday...

So Saturday and Sunday were a marathon, but the majority of the work is done. I still need to put the insulation in the celling and mud the dry wall.Also I picked up a utility sink today, and will hook it up this weekend.

The walls are R13 fiberglass +R5 foam board, and all the joints are filled in with foam. With out the A/C it has been holding at 76ºF, so I hope when I get the insulation done on the celling, It should hold 65ºF easily, with the A/C turned on.

Saturday I had my wife "brew" while I painted and got the room ready. I put in 8" of cellulose on the celling so that =r32 up there plus I added r14 wall foam on the garage roof joists.








Here's the wifes Beer getting ready for yeast



Today I'm going to work on installing a sink, and getting the shelving up.

Now I've had this up and running set at 68ºF for the past month or two, and it has been working great. The one thing I am kicking my self about is the flooring. I decided to just leave the concrete, but now realize that it's hard too clean. Sunday my plan it to pull every thing out in preparation for my barrel project. I want to get it all squared away because once the barrel is in a full its not moving.

I have enough ceramic tile left over from my bath remodel to tile the floor, but am wondering if I should go for a vinyl tile that might provide some cushion, but might get scratched easily?

Any one have some Input?

I found some 12X12 tile a Home depot for 59¢ a sq, and put down 55sq of it. I now have a lot more respect for tile guys. I'm beat!

It's not my best tile job but it will do.

So you keep the room in the 60's, how much did it add to your electric bill?

jcdillin said:

So you keep the room in the 60's, how much did it add to your electric bill?

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Not much so far, at the peak of use in August and September there was only a 5$ increase a month. and for the past two months the AC has barely run. In San Diego coastal, the ambient temp out side is 68-74 year round.