Nostalgia Kegerator help

[boykin]

So I have a nostalgia Kegerator but the only thing left from the original packaging is the fridge, I have the temp controlled through a diy stc 1000 and just installed a tower fan. I went of the recommendations of cold tower.biz on the fan placement and installation. My Kegerator has major problems getting temperature down when the fan is on. If the fan is off I can get as low as 2.5c I liked to set my beer to 2.7c with a +/-.5 variance. When the fan is on it can barely hold the temp at 3.5c much less get it back to 3.2c. I have tried ajisting the cheap insulation, ranking out the insulation completely and it honestly does better with air circulation maybe because of the air flow? Anyways any help would be greatly appreciated to what I may be doing wrong.

Thanks, Boykin

 

[dmcman73]

Have you tried using a speed control to lower the speed of the fan? If the fan is on full blast, it will suck all the cold air up. Also, is the tower insulated? Most have a foam lining in them.

I would either get a power supply that is lower in voltage (if your using 12 volts, try a 6v or 9 volt supply) and see if that helps or replace the fan with one that has a speed control on it.

 

[boykin]

It did have some insulation, but I heard taking it out can help the flow of cool air back down, but then it seems like my Kegerator is running a bit more. It doesn't have a speed control. So I am not sure how I can get it to not blow so hard? Will the power supply getting less volts make it blow less? Any other options?

 

[boykin]

Do you feel I need to re insulated the tower? If so any recommendations on what that insulation needs to be?

 

[BigTerp]

I'm in the process of finishing up a Nostalgia KRS-2150. Is yours the same model? I was going to do a fan w/hose up into the tower for cooling but decided against it. The "twist-lock" base on the Nostalgia kegerators was my reason for not doing it. Even though the tower is 2.5" the base only leaves a 1-1/4" - 1-1/2" hole. I was afraid of not getting proper air circulation in the tower with such a small access hole. I went with the copper tubing method and used 3/4" ID copper tube which will fit 2, 7/16" od beer lines through it. My guess is your pulling all the cold air from the fridge into the uninsulated and warm tower which warms the air but it cannot recirculate back into the fridge, which is being counterproductive. Does your compressor run more with the fan on?

I haven't gotten mine completely done yet, but with 2 kegs full of sanitizer and a 5# CO2 bottle in the fridge it will get down to 42 degrees F with the thermostat set to max. I did the gross screw adjustment (two full turns clockwise) with the thermostat and it will get well below freezing with little effort. I had to back the gross adjustment screw a turn and a half counter clockwise to keep things from freezing. I'm waiting on an 80mm computer fan to come in that I'm wiring to a cell phone charger before I fine tune the thermostat. This will just circulate the air in the fridge itself. The copper will,hopefully, take care of cooling the tower. Fan should be in any day, I'll let you know how it works out.

Here is how I'm cooling my tower.

I ran the cell phone charger cord for the fan power up through the drain hole.

 

[boykin]

That looks awesome, I wonder if upgrading my tower to a 3" tower would help? I definitely think your right. Ya the compressor runs more and the temperature rise more.just a degree or two still stays cold just not where I have it set. I cranked my thermostat but my Kegerator is controlled with the stc when I run out of this beer I want to perfect my set up I just don't know how. I will post pictures.

 

[boykin]

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[boykin]

Any recommendations on making mine more effective? About to run out of beer and before I get a new keg I want to have this problem fixed. Thanks

 

[BigTerp]

I'd recommend getting rid of the tower cooler, or like dmcman said try to lower the speed of the fan. I really think there isn't enough room with a 2.5" tower to run a hose up for cold air. And with the twist lock base of the tower there is only like a 1-1.5" hole from the fridge to the tower. I'm guessing your fan hose takes up most of that space? I would think the cold air would get into the tower, but then have no way to drop back down, or at least not very easily. Just too tight of a fit. Also, like dmcman said, if the fan is blowing like crazy its sucking all the cool air into an un-insulated tower where it just warms up and probably drops back down, or if there isn't enough room for it to drop back town your basically just pulling all the cold air out of your fridge. You could put more insulation in the tower but then I think your just going to trap the air from the fan even more. I just tapped my first keg in mine last night. With my copper pipe tower cooler and foam insulation, it seems to work very well. No foamy pours. I only pulled 2 pints or so though, so I can't say for certain that all is good. But the weekend is here, so I'm sure I'll put it through it paces the next few days.

Here is how mine is setup.

A tight fit with 2 taps, but it works. I bored out a 4" foam roller to fit snugly into the 2.5" tower for insulation. I then bored that out with a 3/4" piece of copper pipe for my lines to run through. The foam and copper go all the way up to the shank ends (not like in the picture where they are lower). I stuffed the top with some more closed cell foam from the foam roller. Hoping that keeps my lines/shanks cold.

Here is how the inside is organized. A pretty tight fit with two ball locks and 5# tank, but it works. The dual body regulator made things even tighter, but I was able to orient it to make things work. There is also an 80mm computer fan sitting on the hump to keep air moving and the rest of the copper pipe.

At first I thought the 80mm computer fan wasn't putting out enough air to keep things circulated, but it works great. It's wired to a cell phone charger with a max output of 9.5V. So the 12V computer fan is running at about 75%. I keep it on 24/7.

 

[bonsai]

BigTerp - did you buy two new shanks to get them to fit, or is one of those the one it came with? Trying to figure out how to best get a second tap on my Nostalgia kegerator, and your setup looks great.

 

[markvale5]

I'm in the process of finishing up a Nostalgia KRS-2150. Is yours the same model? I was going to do a fan w/hose up into the tower for cooling but decided against it. The "twist-lock" base on the Nostalgia kegerators was my reason for not doing it. Even though the tower is 2.5" the base only leaves a 1-1/4" - 1-1/2" hole. I was afraid of not getting proper air circulation in the tower with such a small access hole. I went with the copper tubing method and used 3/4" ID copper tube which will fit 2, 7/16" od beer lines through it. My guess is your pulling all the cold air from the fridge into the uninsulated and warm tower which warms the air but it cannot recirculate back into the fridge, which is being counterproductive. Does your compressor run more with the fan on?

I haven't gotten mine completely done yet, but with 2 kegs full of sanitizer and a 5# CO2 bottle in the fridge it will get down to 42 degrees F with the thermostat set to max. I did the gross screw adjustment (two full turns clockwise) with the thermostat and it will get well below freezing with little effort. I had to back the gross adjustment screw a turn and a half counter clockwise to keep things from freezing. I'm waiting on an 80mm computer fan to come in that I'm wiring to a cell phone charger before I fine tune the thermostat. This will just circulate the air in the fridge itself. The copper will,hopefully, take care of cooling the tower. Fan should be in any day, I'll let you know how it works out.

Here is how I'm cooling my tower.

I ran the cell phone charger cord for the fan power up through the drain hole.

I did the copper route with extra insulation and the tower still seems a bit warm. But the copper only hangs about 2 inches into the fridge area. How does that copper extension work? It looks like it can the tower off way better than my route.

 

[BigTerp]

BigTerp - did you buy two new shanks to get them to fit, or is one of those the one it came with? Trying to figure out how to best get a second tap on my Nostalgia kegerator, and your setup looks great.

Thanks. It worked well over the weekend. No issues so far in the few days it's been up and running.

I went with stainless elbow tower shanks from Keg Connection. I put the second tap 45 degrees from the original and about 1/4" lower. It's a pretty tight fit, but it works. I'd definitely error on the side of a bit lower with your second hole. I don't think a second shank would fit well if it were at the same level as the original.

 

[BigTerp]

I did the copper route with extra insulation and the tower still seems a bit warm. But the copper only hangs about 2 inches into the fridge area. How does that copper extension work? It looks like it can the tower off way better than my route.

It seems to work fine. I also have some foam insulation really packed into my tower, which probably helps. It's a very snug fit with the copper pipe and foam insulation. I don't notice any extra foam or anything with an initial pour. My beer is coming out at about 42-43 degrees with about 11' of line and carbed at 2.6 volumes. My regulator is set at a little over 13 psi. I'm trying to get the beer down to 40 degrees. But as is, it pours great!!

 

[boykin]

Nice any chance you have a parts list for the copper piping? And I wonder if I can use the fan in the cooler I bought? I don't quite see how the air is transferred through the cooper piping? It obviously does somehow.

 

[BigTerp]

Copper piping is just a 5' piece of 3/4" pipe. Picked it up at Lowes. I used a 90 degree elbow to connect the vertical piece to the horizontal piece and a T fitting to fit the horizontal piece to the piece going up into the tower. All friction fitted, not soldered. The T fitting then allows the beer line to run up the pipe into the tower. The fan is just for air circulation within the fridge, not to force air into the tower. The copper pipe acts as a sort of heat sink in the tower helping to keep the beer lines cool.

 

[boykin]

Awesome as soon as this keg is empty I will get that done, I should at that point probably re insulate my tower and run my thermostat line/power line a little better. Would the fan I have now be good for circulation? Or do you think it would be too much movement of air causing I don't know warm/cold spots?

 

[BigTerp]

Depends on how powerful that fan is. You don't need a hurricane of wind in the fridge, just enough to get the air moving around. I thought my fan wasn't powerful enough, but was told by guys on here it would be fine. It seems to be working great. Even temp throughout the fridge itself measured by beer temp on 2nd pour out of tap and a cup of water placed in different locations with a thermometer in it. Not sure if having too powerful of a fan would cause issues? I have no experience with that.

 

[boykin]

Thank you for all the help guys I guess I need to drink some beer to get set up. It's a tough job but someone's gotta do it!

 

[boykin]

Will a good foam insulation work? Any recommendations on re insulating the tower?

 

[BigTerp]

Foam insulation should work fine. A lot of guys use spray foam in their towers as well. Not sure exactly what they use though.

I used a foam roller just like this.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00427JALW/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I work in an Orthopaedic and Physical Therapy office, so a foam roller was easy for me to come by. What I did was cut it to length and then bored the middle of the roller out with the tower itself. Made the foam fit nice and tight within the tower. Then I took my 3/4" piece of copper pipe and bored a hole in the middle of the foam. This made the pipe fit very snugly in the middle of the foam and also a place to run my beer lines. I then trimmed the foam at the top so it would slide all the way up against the shank ends. I also cut and trimmed a small piece or two that I crammed in the top of the tower above the shanks and underneath the cap. Hope you can visual that. Don't really have any good pictures of how I did it, but that should make sense. Seems to work pretty well so far.

 

[boykin]

Awesome once again, thanks for your help!