Electric Brewing - Ventilation

That hood is about 2 ft by 4 ft. I don't ever get condensate dripping from the hood, but I have had condensate leaking out of the ducting and fan in the winter.

Might want to look on Craigslist, I'm finishing my basement and found this one. It had a blower with forward curved blades that were completely filled with grease. Soaked the blower in pbw and used a toothbrush on it. Had to duct it about 20 ft so I but a booster fan at the end. Gave it a test before drywalling everything and everything is bone dry. 80$ on craigslist View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1421944039.949896.jpg

kal said:

The need for make up air is a combination of how tight your house is and how strong the exhaust fan is. As an interesting data point, where I live a make up system is required by code if your range hood fan is more than 290CFM. So in the basement of our current house (built to 2010 code) there's a massive 12" duct that comes from outside, that opens/closes with an electronic baffle whenever we run our range hood. The air is heated with a 3000W heater if the air's too cold (it was -31F today so it definitely gets cold here).

I have a separate make-up vent in my brewery so that when I brew I can close the brewery door and no suck heated (or cooled) air out of the rest of the house.

Kal

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Have you thought about installing a HRU in your brew room to recover the heat from the exhaust in the Winter time?

Trillium said:

Have you thought about installing a HRU in your brew room to recover the heat from the exhaust in the Winter time?

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No. I don't think that would make much sense (at least for me) given how rarely the system is producing a large amount of heat.

Most of the time when I'm brewing, my brew room is closed and my make up air vent to the outside is completely open, and the fan running on low speed because the lids are on all the kettles. When it's cold out I barely need to have the fan running.

Most of the heat is generated when I boil: I turn the fan up all the way to get rid of the steam.

That's only about 1 hour/month for me. To install an expensive heat recovery unit (HRU) to recover that 1 hour/month of heat doesn't make any sense. It's not economically feasible.

Most home use HRUs (be it an HRV or an ERV) are not meant for 100% humidity steam-laden air anyway. You'd need some sort of special commercial unit I would imagine. I don't even think restaurants use something like this. Instead, they set up their systems to use pump in makeup air directly into the hood so that that air is exhausted instead of heated or cooled building air. (I apply to the same principles to my setup).

Kal

I found an excellent document describing makeup air design.

Design guide 2
"Improving Commercial Kitchen Ventilation System Performance: Optimizing makeup air"

http://www.fishnick.com/ventilation/designguides/CKV_Design_Guide_2_031504.pdf

So I am in the final stages of setting up my brewery and need to focus on ventilation. I have converted a former closet in my basement room into the brewery so I actually have somewhat of a built in "hood". See the pics below. I was thinking about simply cutting a 6" hole in the upper corner of the "closet" (see blue circle in pic below) and running a 6" fan from there out to the street. Do you think that will work or will I have to install a hood in there? I'll be brewing 5 to ten gallon batches.

Anyone have an opinion or should I just try it and see what happens?

You might want to put a water proof /washable material on the ceiling. At times more moisture will be generated than the fan will be able to remove.

The amount your fan will pull will vary w type of fan and duct length.

I would try it...worst case just let the fan run for an hour after flame out to vent the basement and return humidity levels to normal.

I basement brew with a fan in an open window, while it doesn't capture and expel 100% of the steam, it certainly provides adequate ventilation. After all, it's only steam not toxic gas.

I also use a small desk top fan to move the room air a bit to prevent steam and mix the room air.

This would help with any condensation on the ceiling if any....

Personally, I'd just test it and see what happens. If you get some condensation then you know you'll have to do some plastic sheeting.

Yep, that looks to be the best solution. I will install a little 300CFM fan and see if I can get away without a hood. I'll keep you updated.