Installing a tap line from basement to kitchen

In just under two weeks I am closing on my house. This house comes with a second full size fridge located in the basement. The basement is unfinished and not ready for a bar, so I want to run a tap line to the kitchen (one floor above).

I am looking for feedback and ideas to help make this work.

My idea so far is this...

The kegs will of course be in the fridge downstairs. I am going to run a 4" PVC pipe from the side of the fridge, to the kitchen wall. Inside of the PVC, I will run two plastic tap lines from the kegs in the fridge to the wall in the kitchen. This of course does mean making a hole in the side of the fridge. To keep the beer cool, I was thinking of tapping a hole from the freezer and running a pipe that will go from the the freezer, into the PVC and to the top of the PVC where it will open up short of the end so the air can circulate back down to the fridge. To get the air moving, I was going to use a 4" inline duct fan from the home depot for $14.

At the top where the taps will be, I want to mount an access panel so that I can to maintenance on the lines when needed. I am just going to use to standard taps since there won't be room under the cabinet for a large tap handle.

If anyone has suggestions, or experience with this, please let me know.

Cheers

Have not done this myself, but your question made me remember a show I saw on DIY Network a few weeks ago. May be worth a look (I think towards the middle to end of the episode):

Video: The Wilson Project

Sounds like a great plan. Be sure you read about balancing your pressure. I heard of people putting a pond pump/glycol in the freezer and recitculating it in an insulated bundle to keep the beer in the lines cold.

It seems like you can keep it cold in the lines by doing what you're thinking. The thing that I'd be concerned with is keeping the beer from foaming too much from the long lines.

I found this thing on eBay today that might help...
Deluxe Draft Beer Foam Detection System Kegerator Keg - eBay (item 270450244964 end time Sep-10-09 12:17:45 PDT)

That's not what that system does. It shuts down the line when the keg is empty.

If you can get a decent cooling loop going, it should work. Glycol pumped from a sump in the freezer would be ideal and you wouldn't need that large of a conduit in that case. I'd use 1/4" ID stainless tubing for the beer and glycol runs, tightly bound together, insulated with extra thick pipe insulation. With a 10' rise between keg and faucet, and 5 feet of 1/4" flex line inside the fridge, you can run about 16psi for a nice pour. Adjust temperature of the beer for different carb levels.

Munsoned said:

Have not done this myself, but your question made me remember a show I saw on DIY Network a few weeks ago. May be worth a look (I think towards the middle to end of the episode):

Video: The Wilson Project

Click to expand...

You beat me to it, I totally thought of this episode when I saw this thread.

Munsoned said:

Have not done this myself, but your question made me remember a show I saw on DIY Network a few weeks ago. May be worth a look (I think towards the middle to end of the episode):

Video: The Wilson Project

Click to expand...

I saw this episode as well. The thing that stinks is that they never went into detail about what he used for the project.

I want to do this sooo bad.