Dual-Tap Kegerator Build Under Way

I've had the Danby DAR044A6BSLDB for a couple of weeks now. The bits and pieces for my two-tap kegerator arrived from KegConnection this afternoon. Unfortunately, my "work from home, put it all together on my lunch break" plan fell through - daycare is closed Friday, and so SWMBO needs to get work done at home.

I didn't want to sit on it for another week (weekend's booked), so I took it outside after we put the kid to bed:



The citronella candle was a lifesaver tonight. I got tagged two or three times, and I can't imagine what the count would've been without it. Plus, I had a little mood lighting.


I was suddenly glad I took it out back to do the drilling. Because I'm an idiot, it hadn't really occurred to me that metal bits would go flying all over the dining room. I used a 2.5" hole saw on my Black & Decker Cordless drill (that drill is the best zero dollars I've spent at a home improvement store).

Holy hell did that make a racket. Fortunately, ours is the only little kid within earshot, and her bedroom is on the opposite side of the house.


Holes for the machine screws went through easily enough. Unfortunately, the bit I used was too small, so I had to re-drill them.

So far, so good. Then there was the not small matter of getting the fridge back upstairs without creating a racket and waking the kid. SWMBO gave me a little stinkeye, but I got the fridge in place without waking the kid. Threw the bolts and gasket in place for storage



And called it a night.

Next steps:

1. Dremel out the can holders on the door so I can fit the second keg. The sides are tight as well, but it should fit. May need to take the plastic lid back off to get the door off, so I don't want to install the tower yet.
   
2. Tape up the hole and plastic top on the fridge - right now, I've only got the hole taped under the plastic top. The plastic cover isn't completely flush against the metal top of the fridge, so I've gotta take care of that space.
   
3. Install the tower.
   
4. Miscellaneous to-do things: Brew the beer for Keg #2, get the CO2 tank filled.

Good progress under the tough circumstances! Does this fridge not have cooling lines running through the top or did you find a spot where there weren't any? Also, where did you purchase the fridge?

Yea how'd you know there weren't any cooling lines there before drilling?

I checked for coolant lines the day I bought the fridge - if it was going to be a hot mess, I'd have returned it before throwing away all the packaging.

There are a handful of threads about DAR044*coughmumblemumble* kegerator builds, so I suspected we were good to go. To double check, I popped the lid off, cranked the fridge up, and felt along the top and sides with my hands. The top remained cool to the touch, the sides less so. To triple check, I emailed Danby and asked about it - Diana confirmed that there are no coolant or electrical lines in the top of the unit (excellent customer service experience, by the way - none of the runaround or vague answers people talked about in the other DAR044 threads).

To make sure I missed the light and thermostat, I initially drilled the pilot hole up from inside the fridge. Didn't punch through the metal, but made enough of a mark that I could drill back down through it. I unscrewed the light/thermostat from the ceiling as well to help get the wire (visible in that third shot) out of the way. Sadly, I did lose one screw when trying to put it back in, but one out of six ain't bad.

I bought the fridge at Costco. It's regularly $150, on sale for $125 I think for the rest of the month. It's a nice fridge - I'm thinking about picking up a second unit to use as a fridge, though the wife insists our current beer fridge is plenty good.

Wow...for $125 I may pick one up for myself tbh. Thanks for the tip

Apologies for the delay, it's been quite the weekend. Rain on Thursday, so no progress.

Friday:

Used the Dremel saw to take out the can holders and other extrusions from the door frame. It was slow going until I wrapped my brain around it. Which, it being Friday, took a while. Once I stopped being polite and started being real, it came apart quickly:


It's not pretty, but they don't ask you how pretty.

Sprayed a little foam insulation in the space between the plastic lid and metal roof


I have been lead to believe this stuff is pretty good.

Then taped over the whole thing with foil tape. That gave me two layers between the actual fridge insulation and the inside of the shaft, so I'm good with that.



Time to install the tower:

Ten is a lot of feet.




Quoth the wife: "That looks excellent. Also, what the hell is SWIMBO?"

Incidentally, I plugged it in to make sure the fridge still works

(it does)

Saturday
Got the CO2 tank filled and hooked up to the regulator. Took the opportunity to stuff everything into the fridge as haphazardly as possible, to make sure it all fits:



Next Steps
Test the system, make sure it all works
Check the progress of the beer for Keg 1.
Cut and put together the copper pipe for tower cooling
Sort out the hot mess of tubes in the fridge. Ten is a lot of feet.

Today:

Filled the kegs with Oxyclean and then, a handful of hours later, Star-san solution.

I'm entirely too hammered to play around with gas and beer lines tonight. Tomorrow, test those out.

Tuesday or Wednesday, beer#1 goes in to Keg #1.

Looks good!

Info you: if you fully encapsulated that "Great Stuff" whilst uncured, it'll stay liquid.............Don't ask.............Dow Chemical refunded my bucks on about 6 cans, 'cause it does not state on the label that" it needs contact with the ambient atmosphere, as it needs humidity to cure...."

Thanks. Kegged my first ever keg this morning. Holy hell, I should've started this years ago.

I don't think the goo is fully sealed in - the plastic cover isn't air tight against the top of the fridge. I'm not gonna sweat it too much - otherwise, I'd have to pull the whole thing apart. Ain't nobody got time for that.

/the beer tasted okay going in. Should be really good once it's overcarbed and infected because I forgot a step somewhere

So here's a probably dumb question. Are the valves in this picture in the closed position, or the open position?



My beer was flat when I tested it yesterday, I'm wondering if I actually put the gas on it. Though, it does burp when I lift the pin, so maybe I'm fine.

The valves are in the closed position. The Kegerator looks good

robertus said:

So here's a probably dumb question. Are the valves in this picture in the closed position, or the open position?

My beer was flat when I tested it yesterday, I'm wondering if I actually put the gas on it. Though, it does burp when I lift the pin, so maybe I'm fine.

Click to expand...

Unless beer valves are special, those are all closed. Parallel handle is open, perpendicular is closed.

D'oh!
I, uh, opened the gas lines today.

After, uh, cold crashing! Yes, cold crashing for a week, I turned the gas on 30 psi and let it sit for a couple of days. Today, I burped all that nonsense out of there, set it to about 10 psi for serving, and voila



We have functioning draft beer.

This one is the extract version of @BierMuncher Centennial Blonde. It is, in a word, fangoddamntastic. And if that's not a word, it oughtta be.

The actual pour is pretty foamy, which I attribute to "I don't know how to kegerator" and also the "beer in the tower is slightly warm cause I haven't had a chance to cut down the 5-foot copper pipe to do that passive cooling thing yet" thing. But oh man, I shoulda done this years ago.

Beer #2, a session IPA I stole from elsewhere on the internet and then subsequently didn't buy enough hops for, because I also can't math good, has been kegged. The sample tasted flat and warm, so I'm sure it's totally ruined. If it's still flat and warm once it's been chilled and carbed up, I'll know I've really blown it.

I did notice some ice built up around the base of the CO2 tank. I've ordered some Damp Rid from Amazon and will monitor it going forward.

Need to find a solution for the "I cut the bit of the door off that turns the light switch off" thing and also the "I just have all the tubes and hoses wedged in there like some kind of amateur" thing. Also the copper pipe and repressurize the keg things, because Centennial Blonde Foam is good, but the beer itself is better.

Now, witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational two-tap kegerator

robertus said:

Quoth the wife: "That looks excellent. Also, what the hell is SWIMBO?"

Click to expand...

What did she say when you told her?

BungBrewing said:

What did she say when you told her?

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She got a laugh out of it. She frequents a lot of message boards that use their own shorthand for various people, and thought She Who Must Be Obeyed was a funny spin on it.

Question on this, I just purchased the DAR044A5BSLD -- Looks very similar to what you have, and some reason the kegs don't appear to both fit side by side inside, they are very close but just missing.

Did you have to cut anything out from the inside, it almost looks like the 2 shelve slot on the bottom that are like 1/2 inch each are the issue, but afraid to start cutting without being sure its going to fit both kegs.

Thanks

abndrew82 said:

Question on this, I just purchased the DAR044A5BSLD -- Looks very similar to what you have, and some reason the kegs don't appear to both fit side by side inside, they are very close but just missing.

Did you have to cut anything out from the inside, it almost looks like the 2 shelve slot on the bottom that are like 1/2 inch each are the issue, but afraid to start cutting without being sure its going to fit both kegs.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Hi Abndrew82. Sorry I missed your reply.

I haven't needed to cut anything from the inside of the fridge, but the two ball-lock kegs are a very tight squeeze. They're not exactly side to side, but slightly off a little - one's slightly further back than the other. Some folks have cut the bits of plastic that held the shelves, but I figure the less I cut, the less I'm likely to ruin everything.

So on the most recent batches of beer, my flow has been reduced to almost nothing (very, very weak pour). Almost a trickle. There appears to be a leak in the system - everything was good for about five days (system appeared to be holding steady), and then the gauge for in-tank pressure was several notches lower today.

Only one keg is hooked up. Not sure if it's a temperature thing (the fridge being on for several days) or a leak in the keg.

Check the relief valve on the top of the keg lid. I lost 1/2 a tank to that. Spray starsan or something on all your fittings, the problem areas will bubble.

spank13 said:

Check the relief valve on the top of the keg lid. I lost 1/2 a tank to that. Spray starsan or something on all your fittings, the problem areas will bubble.

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Thanks, Spank. Had a bear of a time finding the leaks (discussed in this thread over here). Wound up finding a bad relief valve and a bad poppet on one keg, and a pretty big leak at the connection between the regulator and the high-pressure gauge. That'd do it.

Your kegerator looks good.
Thanks for sharing. Did you resolve the foaming issue? I recently started kegging and suffered some foamy pours until I realized that I needed longer lines coming from the keg to drop pressure.
Do you think that maybe the moisture in the refridgerator might have been due to the CO2 leak? I am thinking of building one of these, but I live in Florida, and a moisture problem would be an real issue.
Cheers

Troublesome_Gator said:

Your kegerator looks good.
Thanks for sharing. Did you resolve the foaming issue? I recently started kegging and suffered some foamy pours until I realized that I needed longer lines coming from the keg to drop pressure.

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I figured out that I'd set the pressure too high on the first batch. I dialed down the pressure, and things went smoothly from there.

I also (just recently) set up a copper tube tower cooling system. Haven't really gotten to see how that works, since I ran smack into the CO2 leak.

Do you think that maybe the moisture in the refridgerator might have been due to the CO2 leak? I am thinking of building one of these, but I live in Florida, and a moisture problem would be an real issue.
Cheers

Click to expand...

That's definitely a possibility. I fixed the various leaks late this afternoon (successful spray tests, very solid water pours through both kegs). I'll report back in a couple weeks once the kegerator is up and running.

Tomorrow's a double-brew day, since we're looking at 30 inches of snow and there ain't no going nowhere in that mess.

Hey, I realize this thread is old but, first of all, thanks for the walkthrough of your build (I was convinced enough to buy the same fridge and basically copy what you did), and second, is there anything you would do differently in retrospect? I'm wondering about the separation between the plastic and metal in the roof (I haven't drilled into mine yet so maybe it will make more sense when I do) and whether that ever became an issue, and about whether you've needed to do anything about ice buildup, such as install a temp controller. I'm pretty cheap and lazy, so I'm inclined to just ignore both issues, but I'll certainly get off my ass if beer is involved.