going from keezer wall taps...

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Dgonza9

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I'm almost done with a new bar ledge. So now I need to go from taps in the collar of my keezer to running them thru a wall. It's not far away, just keeping my keezer in a closet I built for it and running taps into a wall with a bar ledge and built in shelving to keep SWMBO happy.

Question is, what's the best way to do this? I have four taps. Should I use one big pvc tube thru the collar, run it to an insulated box on the wall, and put a fan in the keezer to blow air? Or should I use two smaller pvc tubes? Unfortunately, I had so much to do with building the walls, running electrical for my heat stick setup, etc, that I just made a quickie collar out of 2x4's. Not a lot of space there to drill a big hole for a larger pipe.

I will wrap pvc in insulation and I understand that I may have some first pour issues. Looking for ideas from the community, though! I was thinking of building something out of ducting materials from HD.

Thanks for the ideas. Cheers!:rockin:
 
Kal has a setup very similar to what you're describing. I'm pretty sure he made a thread on it. If I recall, he wrapped the beer lines with flexible copper and circulated water from a keg in his chest freezer through the copper to cool the beer lines.
 
If your setup doesn't need to move, just install some 3" (or so) PVC pipe with all of your lines in it. Then take some of that bloe low-voltage flexi/plastic conduit crap from Lowes or HD or Menards, and shove it all the way through to your tap box.
Then use a fan in the keezer to push cold air through the conduit into the cold box, pushing the warmer air back into the keezer.

Just make sure it's insulated well, and sealed well, or it won't work well and you'll have condensation issues...

Mine, unfortunately, does have to move so it was a little more complex ;)
KISS if you can!

I'm almost done with a new bar ledge. So now I need to go from taps in the collar of my keezer to running them thru a wall. It's not far away, just keeping my keezer in a closet I built for it and running taps into a wall with a bar ledge and built in shelving to keep SWMBO happy.

Question is, what's the best way to do this? I have four taps. Should I use one big pvc tube thru the collar, run it to an insulated box on the wall, and put a fan in the keezer to blow air? Or should I use two smaller pvc tubes? Unfortunately, I had so much to do with building the walls, running electrical for my heat stick setup, etc, that I just made a quickie collar out of 2x4's. Not a lot of space there to drill a big hole for a larger pipe.

I will wrap pvc in insulation and I understand that I may have some first pour issues. Looking for ideas from the community, though! I was thinking of building something out of ducting materials from HD.

Thanks for the ideas. Cheers!:rockin:
 
Why use two pipes, sweet sounds? Does the plastic conduit return the warm air to the keezer? What sort of fan in the keezer?

Thanks.
 
Why use two pipes, sweet sounds? Does the plastic conduit return the warm air to the keezer? What sort of fan in the keezer?

Thanks.

Sorry - I described poorly.
Everything goes in the PVC pipe...
Beer lines to the cold box
1" conduit to the cold box.

The fan in the keezer mounts in a small project box or something, and the 1" conduit comes out of there, through the PVC pipe, to the cold box. So the fan blows cold air through the conduit into the tap box, which pushes warm air back into the keezer through the PVC pipe...

Do a search for tower cooling - There are a bunch of these things I can't describe well built for cooling kegerator towers ;)
 
Thanks SweetSounds.

I'm thinking of doing THIS right now as I have a lot of copper pipe left over from previous plumbing work around the house.

Anyone Else tried it? I can just run four copper runs, one for each tap and extend the copper lines into the keezer through the coller, then insulate the copper runs. If it doesn't work I'll try the fan solution.

I'll let you know how it goes.
 
Thanks SweetSounds.

I'm thinking of doing THIS right now as I have a lot of copper pipe left over from previous plumbing work around the house.

Anyone Else tried it? I can just run four copper runs, one for each tap and extend the copper lines into the keezer through the coller, then insulate the copper runs. If it doesn't work I'll try the fan solution.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I guess it depends on how far your taps are from your keezer.

I wouldn't expect that to work much farther than a foot or so...

A pic or a drawing would help a lot...
 
Well, I'm finally trying to run beer lines from my keezer to the taps about three feet away. Taps go thru the wall.

31853683.jpg


I'm planning on running a some 2" pvc pipe thru my collar and into a cold box around the taps. I have a 36cfm, 12v squirrel fan to blow air to the box.

230a1c57.jpg



I'm trying to decide if I can run a 1" line thru this pipe as a return if I use a 2"wye fitting in the keezer. I'll feed the 1" pipe and the beer lines in one side of the wye and attach the squirrel fan to the other. The beer line will be inside of the 2" pipe, not the 1" pipe, as I need to run 4 beer lines. They wouldn't fit in inside the 1" pipe.

Here's a pic of the idea. Any suggestions?

1a295f6e.jpg


My other option is to create a separate return line, probably also 2" as I have the right fittings for that one.

Comments? Suggestions?
 
I ran my lines about 2.5-3 feet to the wall with just insulation in PVC. The amount of beer in 3 feet of 3/16 line is not that great. It foams up a bit with the first couple onces but settles down quickly. I've had it that way for about a year and have no plans to try to cool the lines. Works fine for my application.
 
Here's what I did.

f5061ead.jpg


My first pour. Not a lick of extra foam. Tap is ice cold.

149c3279.jpg


Seems like Keezer is cycling on more. I will continue to work on insulating. I realized I don't have long enough beer lines except to reach the keg right near the inlet in the keezer.

For anyone working on this kind of project, I used a 35cfm squirrel fan and it's more than enough for my 2-3 foot run.

Cheers guys and thanks for all the help:mug: Now I'm going to enjoy my IIPA!
 
The 35 CFM squirrel fan was too loud and seemed like more than enough air. I'm running it at 6 volts instead of 12. Much quieter and still good air flow.
 
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