Critique my single tier

I think I am down to needing to place my steel order and wanted anybody's $0.02 on my design. Should I make it a few inches wider to get more room between the vessels? Here are the specs:

2" thin wall tube, 3 keggles, 3 BG14 burners on LP propane, Brewers Hardware SS wind screens/mounts, 2 809 pumps, furnace valves at a later date. Also will be adding 4" casters.

EDITED my design - The orange dashed lines are for future 20 gallon kettles if I ever feel the need to upgrade.

View attachment Brutus 10 2.0.pdf

 

How are you going to do full-welds around those cross members? Stick? Looks really tight...

Cheers!

 

Edit, double post

 

It is really tight and I am not too worried about full welds honestly. I can get all 4 sides on one Xmember and 3 on the other. On the backside I can hit one side and the end, it's not going to go anywhere. But that is the main reason I am considering making it a few inches wider

 

For the openings for the bottom of the keggle/ burner I see you have it set at 14"x14". My concern would be the stability of a full keggle. You're only going to have four points of contact. I have a 12"x12" opening on mine and don't feel like, with using keggles, I would go any bigger for that opening for the stability reason unless you're planning on having corner pieces mitered in to help support the keggle. While I don't have these corner pieces on mine my opening is smaller so there is more contact area for the keggle to sit on. If you have a 12x12 opening you could always add that 2 inches to the space eliminated from the opening into the space between the keggles (or larger kettles in the future). Hope that makes sense.

 

Oh, and other than that it looks like a really nice design.
Cheers

 

I spaced them at 14" to make mounting the screens a bit easier. I can recess a nut into the Xmembers and narrow them up to 12" making the spacing on the Xmembers a bit more as well and not make the overall stand any wider.

Oh and the keggles are only supported on 3 sides since the rear portion is open to vent out the propane. I stole that concept from Brewers Hardware.

 

Yeah, that was my only concern with it, that bottom skirt of the keggle is like 15" diameter, if I remember correctly so with a 14" opening it would only give you like a half inch of overlap for it to sit on. I would hate for you to bump into it during operation and have a bunch of hot liquid go flying. This is all assuming of course that the keggle is sitting on top of the main rails and cross members and not on the mounting brackets (which appear to be welded) for the screens. I just looked at how mine sit (on top of the rails) and I've got 1" overlap of the bottom skirt onto the beams so it's pretty stable, that's with a 12"x12" opening.

 

Revised it to make the opening 12x12 again. I had it this way, but keep making changes

View attachment Brutus 10 2.0.pdf

 

It's alot of work, but you'll love it when you're done. Good luck.

 

The design is the part I am making hard. Buying, cutting and melting the steel together is the easy part.

 

Bump for the night crew.

 

It's coming along nicely.

That said, I've seen a lot of frames, built a couple myself, and I don't recall seeing anyone double the outside cross members (upper or lower). I'd lose the doublers, shorten the frame by four inches, and save the weight and fab time.

Cheers!

 

It's to allow for larger kettles if I ever choose to is all.

 

Should be test firing it and making my lines to length.

Thanks everyone for all the help with this. :fro:

 

nestar:

 

Nice work. Make sure you use large enough flex lines so that you do not restrict burner output too much. Is that 2" square tube?

 

Thanks, yes it's 2". I'm concerned about my gas line ID, but will know more once I fire it up.

 

Looks sharp, the brewing looks as if it will begin soon.

 

Can't find my lines from the rail to the burners!!! :cross:

 

Here is the initial test fire. 1/2" main line and 1/4"ID high pressure flex lines running low pressure and a massive low pressure fisher r232 regulator. Seems to put out a great controllable flame. Will see what a 7 gallon boil time is maybe tonight.

[ame]http://youtu.be/zyKTe51GVBg[/ame]

 

Propane plumbing is as follows (unsure if it's right or not)
Fisher R232 Low Pressure Regulator, 5' high pressure flex line to my 1/2" black pipe manifold, then high pressure 12" flex line from the black pipe to the burners which have Williams Brewing Orifice's where I control the flame.

I was told that I want 1/2' ID throughout, but could not find flex lines that big. I looked at stove flex lines and I know people use them, I was just losing my mind on fittings. High pressure lines are much smaller, so the ID is choked down to 1/4" I bet. It seems to work, just unsure how well they will work though.

 

Brewed a Hop Slam IPA Saturday and an Amber Ale Sunday. Everything worked really well, I am very pleased. I need to tweak my beer smith equipment, my FG were a about 5-7 points low and I didn't want to boil more off and end up with less than 5 gallons.

I ended up recirculating my mash the entire 60 minutes since I was loosing temp and had to have minimal flame on and was worried about scorching and not heating up the entire contents evenly.

Changes to the system:

• Lower the rear fuel rail as it's to close to the burners for my comfort and future furnace valves for automation.

• Insulate the mash tun to limit the flame time

• Lastly, running a natural gas line to the garage. I suspect I used a little over a half a tank of propane which isn't bad, but I would like an unlimited supply. As much as I would like to brew on my patio or other places, I doubt I do. Wind really does a number on the flame I noticed and where I live (flat no trees suburbia on an old corn field) it always seems to be windy.