Building a kegerator from basement to kitchen

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

atown4428

New Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2012
Messages
2
Reaction score
1
I'm brand new and having a little trouble navigating the site. We have a wet bar in our kitchen and an old freezer in the basement directly below it. My wife is going to let me put a tap in over the wet bar sink and keep the kegs in the old freezer. Can some of you site gurus point me to some threads that might get me going in the right direction. I'm more than willing to read through the old threads and not bore you with my question...I'm just not sure where to start looking on the forum.

Many thanks...

Austin

p.s. If this goes well I'll keep this thread going and use it as a build write up.
 
there is a search bar at the top of the page, type something along the line of "keezer build" or "kegerator", and hundreds of results should turn up. You should have no problem getting 90%+ of your questions answered there.

You should do research on how to get the beer up a story without complications. You see, you could increase the CO2 pressure, but that will result in higher carbonation levels, or you could keep the same pressure, and have a slower pour rate. For example, about ever foot in vertical height, the beer will lose 1/2 psi of pressure. So with a normal keg pressure of 12psi, this means you could raise the beer about 24 feet before the pressure is insufficient to cause the beer to flow. I'd think you'd be looking at something more like 15 feet, so that would be a loss of 7.5psi, and the resistance of the line (assuming 5/16" ID) will be equal to 6 psi (roughly 0.4psi/ft of tube). This brings you to 13.5 psi, which means you will get no flow (unless you over carbonate). If you went with 3/16" ID, you would lose 3psi, bringing you to to a loss of 10.5psi. This means you would get beer to flow, but the question is how fast?

I'm not trying to confuse you, but your situation is a little more complicated than most projects you'll see. You will want your lines to be insulated as well, because 15 feet of non refrigerated tube can cause the beer to draw rather warm, as the heat transfer rate will be pretty high. Basically, you have a lot of research to do, but it'll be a VERY interesting project. I'm sure a lot of people on here would love to see how you approach the problem, and you may even spark some peoples interest to try it!

Cheers, and good luck!

P.S. I just searched the name of your thread, and I saw a few posts - check them out, you may get some answers!
 
Thanks for the help! I'll do my research then continue this as a build thread, with pictures of course. Can't wait!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top