draft tower too short

Good morning all;
So I've been working on my version of a knotty pine keezer. I opted for a 3 tap tower just because I like the look, and didn't want to push my carpentry skills to the point of building a coffin. Anyhow, I got it all mocked up and operational for a party this weekend. Everything is fine and works well, but the tower is just too short. The way it sits now, I just have the tower bolted to the lid of the freezer, and some 5/8" plywood as the base of my counter top. I still need to add the cement board and tiles, so the issue will only get worse.

I've got 1 perlick each on the side shanks, and I want the stout faucet in the middle for symmetry sake. Even if I put the stout on the side, I still feel like it will be dispensing too low.

So what are my options to move this up some? I thought in the past I had seen gooseneck like extensions that go between the shank and faucet, but have had no luck locating one now that it is an issue for me.

Any reason you couldn't just bolt the tower to the top of the plywood?

I had a similar issue where my daughter gave me tall beer glasses for Christmas last year and they would not fit under the faucet. I made a riser out of piece of 2x6 that I had laying around. Used a router to cut a 5.25 inch circular piece, then a hole saw to cut out the middle. After lot of sanding, staining and polyurethane coating, I had a 1.5" height extension. The tower mounts to the top of the kegerator using the original holes, I just used longer bolts and drilled the same hole pattern thru the riser

I guess I could have bolted the tower to the plywood, but I was thinking air circulation would have been better if it was mounted to the freezer lid. Even so, I'd like to get several inches more height if I can.

I am considering a spacer, and may make a trip to the hardware store to see if I can find possible candidates for that.

When I took mine apart, I put pipe insulation around the beer lines and also inserted a piece of 1/4" copper tubing (again something I had laying around) along side each of the beer lines inside of the pipe insulation. Each piece of copper tubing extends about 1 foot inside of the kegerator to help with heat transfer. The copper tubing is folded up out of the way of my kegs. This has worked well, I get a good pour every time, even after a week of no pours. I have also seen a thread on this site where someone routed their beer lines thru a larger copper tubing, probably 1/2".

Since you are building this your self, you could build a wooden box of the desired height and bolt the tower on top, could probably even tile the sides of the box since you are planning to tile the box. I would stuff the box with insulation and have your lines insulated with copper tubing or something else to transfer the heat. With three sets of beer lines in there you probably won't have much space for air transfer anyway.

that's probably what I will do. The tiles I plan to use for the counter are 12"x12", but I think I saw some on the same design that were 4"x4". A ~4" riser should be plenty. I'll go take a look and figure something out.

sounds like a good plan, post a picture when you have it done. I am sure that others will face the same challenge.

I've seen a few builds where people build a small box to mount taps or towers.
That should give you the extra height, and maybe even a way to install a fan and cool your lines too.

Just a thought.

Here's what I ended up doing, and I think I like it. 4" sch 40 steel pipe has an OD almost identical to the OD of the mounting flange of the tower. I cut a 4" piece of pipe, then went over it with a flap disk to smooth it out. Painted with some hammer tone that will match some of the other steel parts on the keezer, and RTV'd it flush with the bottom of the plywood. I cut some all thread long enough to go all the way thru the freezer lid, and installed the tower gasket between the pipe and the tower. Now my tallest glass fits under my lowest faucet. I plan to go back with some pipe insulation over the hoses, and the copper tubing trick mentioned above. I'll also figure out some insulation for the pipe spacer itself and dress up the tops of the all thread as well.

Thanks for the help.

Looks pretty sturdy -- nice idea!

Are you planning to trim the threaded stock that is sticking up? You could also replace the threaded stock with long stainless pan head bolts to make it look like the original.

Thanks. Yeah, I'm going to do something with the all thread. I've been looking locally for some pan head bolts long enough, but have had no luck. I'll probably just have to order some.

Now I need to get the top finished... I thought I would have all sorts of free time over the holidays to work on this. So far, no such luck.

Use these, acorn nuts...should find em at any Loews.