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blackheart

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 4, 2008
Messages
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Location
Binghamton, NY
This week I finally got the go ahead to start converting my garage into a brewery! Currently it is full of lots of crap, some garbage, some stuff we need to keep, and mostly stuff that needs to go elsewhere.

Step 1. Remove EVERYTHING from the garage
Step 2. Tear out paneling/shelving from garage walls
Step 3. insulate walls
Step 4. Run gas/water/electricity etc to the garage
Step 5. Put up walls/flooring/ceiling

Here is a picture of the current state of my garage. The finished garage will only contain brewing equipment with a small work bench+tools and some general storage away from everything else.

garage1.jpg


Here is the garage put into sketchup.

garage2.jpg


I have about 21x21' to work with. Two garage doors. One is electric the other is manual.

So I have a few questions I am hoping I can get some input on.

I want to relatively temp control the garage. I will store grain etc there and be brewing in there so I hope to maintain a decent temp. I live in upstate NY so it gets both hot and cold.

I know I need to insulate the walls. What is the R number I should be looking for?

The garage doors are the weak point in the garage. They are old/dirty/solid wood and hung slightly above where the ceiling would be. They are going to leak heat/cold to the outside. I dont like the idea of overhead doors dropping grease or dirt etc into the garage. Possibly replace the with barn stye doors.

I am also building a 10 gallon all-grain brewing system. I am thinking of making it natural gas heated and running a line from the house to the garage. I was thinking of going electric but I have fears that NYSEG will kill me on electric costs. I also want to run out a water hook up and more electric lines/sub box and network cable from the house.

I have read a few of the forum posts here with others building brew sheds. Any comments, suggestions or recommendations would be very helpful.
 
Right out of the gates this whole thing is suspect at best... Your picture shows the siding on the gable going verticaly while your sketch has it going horizontally... what the hell is THAT all about!?! :p

C'mon.. joking.

Cool set up.

I can only offer a few little things...

1) I plumbed my rig in with NG and love it.
2) Instead of trying to temp control the whole garage, I would suggest building a much smaller temp contolled cabinet for fermentation. Trying to keep that entire garage as a certain temp is going to be really tough and expensive. Get some kind of heat in there for yourself while brewing but then build something specifically for fermentation. There are a million great examples of what guys have done for that on this site.
3) if you're going to store your grains out there, make sure you store them in something that will lock out moisture.
4) a hot water line of some sort would be a huge help. It'll save you a ton of time bringing your pots up to temp when you're starting a batch and it makes clean-up much easier. Maybe a tankless system if you run NG out there??

hmmm... what else?? That's all I got
 
Sorry... another thing on heating the garage... rememnber when it is the dead of winter and you're going to want heat out there, if you're going to heat the garage with the garage doors closed, make sure you have a really solid plan for ventilation.

If not, you'll get pretty dizzy pretty quick and the parametics won't be able to revive you from the CO poisoning.
 
+1 on not attempting to control the temperature of the whole garage. Build a fermentation closet. This will allow you to lager as well.

What is your kW/hr rate up there? You will need to run power, might as well add 240 while you're at it. It's gotta be easier than piping in a gas line.
 
Sorry... another thing on heating the garage... rememnber when it is the dead of winter and you're going to want heat out there, if you're going to heat the garage with the garage doors closed, make sure you have a really solid plan for ventilation.

If not, you'll get pretty dizzy pretty quick and the parametics won't be able to revive you from the CO poisoning.

another reason to consider all electric
 
Don't let those 'lectric freaks talk ya outta NG!!! They're like a cult!!!

"C'mon blackheart... go electric... everyone's doing it. It's not addictive. What's a matter?? Chicken? You'll die from NG!"

:p :p :p

Awful lot of us go NG and haven't died yet. You just need to plan on some decent ventilation.
 
I am also not doing the electric thing. I like my gas. :D

Having a model will really help. Model each component and then you will know your layout before buying everything. That will save you some bucks.

I think he is just talking about temp control to keep it comfortable, not for fermenting. I would suggest changing out the doors to barn style as you suggested and installing a heater/cooler unit sized for the area.

Use whatever bats will fit in the wall cavity. If you have 2x4 studs, that means R13, if you have 2x6 you can fit R18. Use the thickest bats or equivalent that will fit.

I would run NG, and a 240 line because once you are trenching, laying the lines is the easy part.

I suggest separate fermentation chambers. I really like my upright side-by-side chamber and would eventually like two of those and a fermento-lager-taporator for serving.

Make sure once you have it modeled you go through a mental brewday to make sure your work flow works right. Imagine yourself doing each task in order and where you have to move/get things from. This will help you organize the area.

There are a lot of brewing related parts in the Sketchup warehouse, but if you need somethign specific ask here. I have quite a few pieces and might be able to help out.

Here is my current layout:

Basement_II.png
 
I am also not doing the electric thing. I like my gas. :D

Having a model will really help. Model each component and then you will know your layout before buying everything. That will save you some bucks.

I think he is just talking about temp control to keep it comfortable, not for fermenting. I would suggest changing out the doors to barn style as you suggested and installing a heater/cooler unit sized for the area.

Use whatever bats will fit in the wall cavity. If you have 2x4 studs, that means R13, if you have 2x6 you can fit R18. Use the thickest bats or equivalent that will fit.

I would run NG, and a 240 line because once you are trenching, laying the lines is the easy part.

I suggest separate fermentation chambers. I really like my upright side-by-side chamber and would eventually like two of those and a fermento-lager-taporator for serving.

Make sure once you have it modeled you go through a mental brewday to make sure your work flow works right. Imagine yourself doing each task in order and where you have to move/get things from. This will help you organize the area.

There are a lot of brewing related parts in the Sketchup warehouse, but if you need somethign specific ask here. I have quite a few pieces and might be able to help out.

Thats a nice looking sketchup model. I might have to get some of those parts from you. I plan on modeling my brewing system shortly. It's almost done on paper. I have already done 5gal corny's and the kegerator and tap handles.

I plan on figuring out the whole brewing space to optimize the work area. Luckily one of us knows a bit about general kitchen layouts and designs for restaurants etc. which should help.
 
Binghamton = heated pathway to melt the snow so you can get to the garage in the dead of winter - Brrrrrrr

Basketball hoop has got to go. Imagine the vibrations knocking your fermenting brew - the horror!

Insulate the floor as well if you can. Vapor barrier & insulation over the concrete. Also the ceiling gets insulated.
 
+1 on not attempting to control the temperature of the whole garage. Build a fermentation closet. This will allow you to lager as well.

What is your kW/hr rate up there? You will need to run power, might as well add 240 while you're at it. It's gotta be easier than piping in a gas line.

we have a few chest freezers which we are converting into kegerators/temp control for storing/fermenting/conditioning beer.

The current plan is to ferment in corny's stored in a chest freezer set to the correct temp. until we can afford much larger and nicer equipment and then go back to using the corny's to just serving.

In that case I do not need a separate cold storage section in the garage. Though the thought has crossed my mind. It could be possible in the future.

Right now I am more concerned with build a space which is clean and closed off from anything but brewing.

Grains and other materials will be stored properly for sure. I cant wait to start buying grain by the sack full.
 
Where will the waste water go? Thats the one thing that keeps me from brewing in my garage.
Brwbier

Excellent question. I'm looking into that. Also it would be great to have hot water and a nice sink to wash everything. Either way the garage is getting insulated.
 
Just to save you some efficiency, I would pull out the second garage door and wall that in. This of course would give you some more wall space to work with, maybe put your temp controlled room there. Looks awesome!
 
I'm re-doing my workshop this summer. Last summer I put in natural gas heat with one of those ventless units. Dont get one of those! It put so much moisture into the air that a lot of my stuff rusted. This year I'm re-doing the ceiling (currently is just insulation backing) and fixing the roof venting (currently just one pot vent, no "soffet" vents). So I'll be adding in some holes to act as soffet vents, drywalling the ceiling W/ room for venting to flow up the underside of the roof and out the pot vent on top. I've bought a vented 40K BTU ceiling mounted heater as well. $70 on craigslist.

If you have the time I would put heat out there if you are going to brew. Why brew indoors if it is -20 outside and -20 inside...
 
Ripped out all of the inside paneling, nails, etc from the walls. Took out the old door and frame, took down the garage door opener. Going to replace Both garage doors with insulated ones. Here is what the guy at Lowes told me to do with the ceiling.

4x 7" tall beams span the garage 4' apart. Use these to create a ceiling. Insulate the ceiling, leave the "attic" space above vented and do nothing with it. Get some cheap lat board and screw it in place above to create a grid of supports to roll out some R-30 like a blanket on top of the 7" beams

garage3.jpg


Then use the 7" of space below the insulation in-between the beams to mount lighting etc. And install a drop ceiling on the underside of the beams. The only problem is the current garage doors would hit the drop ceiling. I need to figure out a configuration where the garage door operation does not interfere with the ceiling. Has anyone done this before? I will have to get a professional out to install the new garage doors as the existing ones look like someone left their level at home.

My current plan this week is to get an electriction to look at the garage and tell me where an electric sub box would go. Then I can start wiring up the outlets and boxes to a central point where the sub box would be. Then I can start insulating the walls and drywalling them as well.

Suggestions on drywall vs green board? Suggestions for insulation R value for side walls? Suggestions for R value in garage door?

I plan on putting the brewing equipment in the back left corner of the garage to the left of the back window and work bench visible in the picture. Above it I want to put a ventilation fan like the ones over a stove range in a kitchen. In the center of the roof just above the back window is a 6" pipe that vents to the outside. I could easily duct the vent fan to this.

I was thinking of running 2 outlet boxes on each side and 3 on the back wall. Maybe 2x double or quad halogen light boxes in each side of the garage? I will have more pictures of the inside of the garage as soon as I get them off of my camera.
 
I talked to an electrician today. I am now set to run all the wires for the new outlets to one central location on the back wall. Two new 20amp lines will be run from my house to the back wall. The existing 15amp line will be used for the lights, of which more will be added in the ceiling. Once the wiring is in the walls I can start insulating and dry walling.

One major hurdle to overcome is the garage doors playing nice with any ceiling that would be installed. In the last post I explained where the ceiling would go etc. here is a picture of how the current garage doors fit into the ceiling. I would need to have someone install new ones that sit slightly lower than the current ones...

What do you all think about this? Any ideas?

garage4.jpg

garage5.jpg

garage6.jpg
 
For ideas: the plan for my shop is to do a cathedral ceiling. That way I still have room to store wood in the rafters. Currently the only ventilation is one pot vent on the peak. I'll be putting in soffet vents along the outside and spacers on the underside of the roof, then insulation (which actually is already there...), then drywall. I'll have to cut around the beams that go across and the parts holding the garage door rails, and that will be fussy. It will be a project but it allows me to have proper roof venting, with insulation/vapor barrier. I should be able to heat the garage a lot better this winter without condensation issues.
 
Where will the waste water go?

Thats the one thing that keeps me from brewing in my garage.
Brwbier
Not me:D

Here is my solution.
Only one connection to each line shown.
Supply_Pipes.jpg


Only three quick connections are required during brewing, gas, air and waste line.

100_5298.jpg


Cheers,
ClaudiusB
 
those roller doors will be difficult to insulate well, they will be the weak point if your going to the effort of insulating the rest of the garage, i think it won't really be staightforward lowering them either. what are you going to fix the lining too? i can't tell from the pictures but the centres between the trusses look to be too big to direct fix. is the truss which the garage door fixed too the only 1 in the way? if so you could frame between the trusses to give you something to fix too and i'm pretty sure the garage runners will flex by the lining thickness. a cathedral ceiling is also an option but it doesn't look like you'd get as much insulation up there.
 
I talked to an electrician today. I am now set to run all the wires for the new outlets to one central location on the back wall. Two new 20amp lines will be run from my house to the back wall. The existing 15amp line will be used for the lights, of which more will be added in the ceiling. Once the wiring is in the walls I can start insulating and dry walling.

One major hurdle to overcome is the garage doors playing nice with any ceiling that would be installed. In the last post I explained where the ceiling would go etc. here is a picture of how the current garage doors fit into the ceiling. I would need to have someone install new ones that sit slightly lower than the current ones...

What do you all think about this? Any ideas?

garage4.jpg

garage5.jpg

garage6.jpg


If you go with the barn style doors, you won't have to worry about this problem at all cause you won't need an opener any more. then you can do what you want in the rafters. just a thought
 
Why not just run the drywall on TOP of the rafters for that section? Sure, they're not the most decorative beams, if you wanted to get really fancy you could box them in with something nice.
 
We also have a big decision to make regarding gas and water. I would LOVE to run water and gas from the house to the garage. This means a large expense in digging a trench and running the pipes. There will definitely be a trench for running additional electrical lines. The gas/water would need to be quite a bit deeper. So this leaves us back at square 1 deciding between the cost of running a natural gas line but lower cost gas, cheaper propane but limited to refilling multiple 20lb tanks, or going electric and paying more for energy and waiting longer to boil.

None of them is a clear winner. Though, I would love to use natural gas just because it would always be on and never run out etc. I cant have over 20lb tanks inside city limits. Any idea how much propane I would use in a brew session? I can just imagine running out in the middle of it!

If I go electric I would need more than just 2x 20amp lines I assume?

luckily, none of these decisions need to be made right away. I can still go ahead with the wiring, insulation, and drywall this weekend!
 
If you want to go electric you should run a 220 line out there.

What kind of soil do you have? Trenching isn't too bad if you don't have horrid rocks everywhere. Rent a ditch witch and you could do it in a day.
 
I would do it right once... it will be worth it in the long run. I'm sure after a while of lugging those propane cylinders around you will wish that you had run the gas line.
 
Why not just run the drywall on TOP of the rafters for that section? Sure, they're not the most decorative beams, if you wanted to get really fancy you could box them in with something nice.

Thats a good idea. And one I might end up going with. I will sketch it up first....
 
When I ran natural gas to my shop I just rented a trencher and as long as you don't have any Huge trees you need to get within a couple feet of... you'll do just fine. If you do it, run the electric in conduit so you could pull more electric later if you want.
 
Updates. I have installed a new door and all of the insulation. Here are some of the pictures. On my way to pick up new windows. Dry wall is ready and waiting to go in this weekend as well.

garage7.jpg

garage8.jpg

garage9.jpg
 
It would cost just about as much to dig trench for gas if you are digging for electrical. This also gives you a chance to plumb H2O and waste lines. All my life being around construction, it never made sense to me that projects dig trenches more than ones. DIg all at once and bury it all at once. If you aren't sure about he NG yet, leave it unhooked. And fianlly, drop more conduit than you think you will need, because 6 months down the road you may think, "Damn I could use a cable/sattelite line in here," or "damn I wish I would of ran 220V in here" or "damn I bet it would be dope if we had an intercomm system out here so I could get SWMBO to bring me some chips"


Just my $.02

John
 
It would cost just about as much to dig trench for gas if you are digging for electrical. This also gives you a chance to plumb H2O and waste lines. All my life being around construction, it never made sense to me that projects dig trenches more than ones. DIg all at once and bury it all at once. If you aren't sure about he NG yet, leave it unhooked. And fianlly, drop more conduit than you think you will need, because 6 months down the road you may think, "Damn I could use a cable/sattelite line in here," or "damn I wish I would of ran 220V in here" or "damn I bet it would be dope if we had an intercomm system out here so I could get SWMBO to bring me some chips"


Just my $.02

John

You don't have to tell me being a 27 year electrician, seen more than my share of stupid jobs over the years.
 
I heard from someone that water line needs to go 4 feet down. NG at least 18". I also heard that I cant run NG and electrical in the same ditch. Is this true? I may be running an entire sub box out to the garage. I havent decided. Digging the ditch and running everything is kinda the last step to some degree.

I just tore down the cross beam the garage doors were tied to. And took down the garage doors and hardware so that the new ones can be installed. I think I will need to replace the cross beam with another one. Now I have to figure out where I can get a 20 foot 8" beam and how I can get it home! I was thinking of attaching two 12' together.

Going to be hanging most of the dry wall today I hope. Some friends are stopping over in a few hours to help. Making a run to lowes now to grab some more things.
 
You could always fabricate your own, either by doubling or trippling up on 2x6s or 2x8s, or even better, take a sandwhich an 7 1/2" (to match your 2x8s) strip of 5/8 or 3/4 plywood in between your 2x8's and nail them together. Will be strong as hell.
 
Did a bit more dry wall in the garage. Most of the time was spent framing the windows. I am happy to report that we have both windows in an sealed up nicely. I also ran some new electrical lines for the lighting. I need an electrician to show up and actually make the connections, but the lighting wiring is ready to go.

garage12.jpg

garage14.jpg


Here is the 8" beam thats missing now. Building a replacement + an additional one. Each are 4' on center apart.

garage13.jpg


Here is a sketchup mock up of what I want to do to the ceiling. Basically create a ceiling thats at two different heights. This will allow the garage doors to go below the ceiling.

garage10.jpg

garage11.jpg


This will be done with furring stripts to hold the insulation up and a drop ceiling attached to the 8" beams.


So what do you guys think?
 
We replaced the beam in the ceiling with a new one.

garage15.jpg


We used 3" screws instead of nails like the rest of the garage is built with. Is this a bad idea? should we replace the screws with nails?

Anyway, a second beam is going up next the the new one that will allow us to finish the ceiling etc. The garage doors are being installed right now and should be done shortly!
 
I would put the 'second' beam up against the first one and use lag bolts to lag (screw) them into each other. Without seeing what the beam actually functions as, its hard to say just how to engineer it. But thats what I would do anyway, cheap and strong. If the beam is bearing any significant load you could also put a steel plate on either side of the beam, drill out and bolt through with some large bolts...but thats pretty heavy duty and not sure if you require it.
 
I agree with illin8
Screws tend to be a little more brittle (MHO) nails would function better in a more stress environment. Far as load on such. Cool project! keep us updated
Also I see a fan going outside by the door. if you plan to use the brew pots where you have them it might be better to move that fan closer and be able to open the door for a cross breeze if needed. just a thought!

Cheers!
 
The garage doors were installed successfully! The guy did a great job on them too. Very clean. Here are some pictures of the new doors.
garage16.jpg


Here is the reinforced supports for the beam they added
garage17.jpg


and here is a updated 3d picture of the drop ceiling with where the lights will go!
garage18.jpg


Now I think its about time to start digging a ditch in my back yard. I found out that I can run NG + electrical in the same ditch. I cant do water because its a bit to difficult right now and hard to justify going from 18" -> 48" for one thing. I need to run the electrical line before I can finish up the wiring and finish up the drywall etc. Going to see what I can do with the ceiling tonight.
 
I think it's really difficult to justify this as a brewhouse without running a water line. I understand not wanting to get the ditch to 4 feet, but you're already digging. Do it! Also, on the electrical, I'd run a 4" conduit for that and leave both end accessible for other pulls. If you're not planning to run a point of use water heater in there, I'd run an insulated hot water line out there too!
 
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