Basement storage... 2nd floor serving?

[Raenon]

So I've read a few threads like the Long Draw Salt Water Chilled Beer Tower that describe putting kegs in the basement/garage and running up a floor, or down the hall, or through a wall to serve elsewhere, but I can't seem to find anything that really pushes those limits.

I have a fairly large building in downtown York, PA, in the historic part of town.
If I lived in Manhattan, this would probably be referred to as simply a brownstone, but around here, it's just another building
I work out of the first/ground floor, and have living spaces in the back and 2nd/3rd floors. Thankfully, most of these buildings, like mine, went up in 1900, so we do have those little conveniences like indoor plumbing and electricity (and things like a sealed off coal chute), but we do still see some rather.... interesting choices made in both the original design and subsequent remodels.
As a result, I have a very large, hardwood floored great room up on the second floor, and it's the obvious space for entertaining, though not necessarily the optimum location, as it's only accessible either through a back outdoor staircase (past several more rooms) or a winding and claustrophobically narrow hallway.
As a result, getting a freezer or large refrigerator in that part of the house is a near non-starter. I'm going to have to be very careful about furniture selections, too.

The point of all of this is that I'd like to be able to serve several beers/ciders/sodas at once on the second floor, but the logical place to actually store all of that is in the basement.
I had just gotten used to the idea that I'd only have 2-3 taps upstairs to a small kegerator and lug up the kegs when I needed to change them out, but the long draw aspect, with a chilled line... makes sense. I know that commercial spaces do the same.

Given the high ceilings in this old building, I'm probably looking at 25-30 feet of distance straight up, and if I don't want to rip out plaster walls and brickwork older than my grandfather, I'm probably looking at running a trunk outside the building (not a big problem as it's crisscrossed with a few other cables- only a few feet between my building and my neighbor)

I suppose one major plus... I'd never have to worry about foaming from short lines...

Is this a reasonable DIY project?
Can I run beer that far without keeping a ridiculous pressure on it, let alone pump glycol or salt water that far with anything other than industrial equipment?

I really hope that I'm overthinking this, and that perhaps someone has already succeeded in a similar project...

 

[david_42]

30 feet is about 15 psi from the height alone. The cooling isn't a problem, since in a closed loop the fluid coming down helps pull the fluid up. Obviously, the beer is an open system, so you'd need at least 15 psi of carbonation, unless you want to use beer engines for everything. They can draw the beer 10-15 feet and that would reduce the amount of pressure/carbonation you'd need.

Or you could use beer gas on everything. 40 psi at a 75/25 mix would give you 10 psi of CO2 and plenty of pressure to make the climb.

 

[day_trippr]

I'd guess beer gas, 1/4" beer lines for nearly all of the run with chokers at the faucets, and a glycol loop inside an insulated riser, are all going to be necessary features...

Cheers!

 

[spook]

I wonder if it would be easier to build some sort of keezer/chamber up high in the basement, right up against the ceiling. Sounds crazy at first, but with ceilings as high as you are talking about, you could almost build a little "loft" in the basement, use it as an excuse to build shelves or a cabinet underneath with a small set of stairs to get up and swap out the kegs. Extra carpentry up front but you wouldn't have to fiddle with beer gas ratios, abnormally high serving pressures, long glycol chill loops, or trunking out through the exterior walls. The hole in the floor of your great room could be small enough to someday cover with a flush mount brass plate like you see in gyms/hotel conference rooms if you ever needed to patch it up.

 

[Raenon]

I wonder if it would be easier to build some sort of keezer/chamber up high in the basement, right up against the ceiling. Sounds crazy at first, but with ceilings as high as you are talking about, you could almost build a little "loft" in the basement, use it as an excuse to build shelves or a cabinet underneath with a small set of stairs to get up and swap out the kegs. Extra carpentry up front but you wouldn't have to fiddle with beer gas ratios, abnormally high serving pressures, long glycol chill loops, or trunking out through the exterior walls. The hole in the floor of your great room could be small enough to someday cover with a flush mount brass plate like you see in gyms/hotel conference rooms if you ever needed to patch it up.

I think you've misunderstood... the basement has only a 9-10 foot ceiling, but the beer lines would have to pass through/go past the 1st, ground floor as well, on the way to the 2nd floor service. I could perhaps pare down the line length to 25, maybe even 20 feet if I can get it _really_ straight, but it'll mean carving holes through two floors to pass through the ground level.
I'm obviously grateful for the suggestions nonetheless, and you make a good point about how I could minimize that travel, but I think the nitrogen or beer gas system is probably going to be the way to proceed if I'm to do this at all.
ETA: My point being, nitrogen and CO2 are both relatively cheap, beergas premixed carries a premium. I'm only seeing blenders up in the $500-700 range though, which seems... extreme.
Worse, half of my searches seem to wind up with beergas generators, which are $7-10k machines pulling CO2 and nitrogen from the air and feeding it. Impressive I'm sure, and probably wonderful for pub in the middle of nowhere, but that doesn't help me on my budget.

Some of the equipment costs are beginning to add up, and if I do this at all, I might as well make sure I'm not going to have any complaints later.

Does anyone know of relatively inexpensive gas blenders, so that I could have separate CO2 and Nitrogen tanks, and still not lose carbonation in the keg?
From things I've read, highly carbonated, and perhaps even medium carbonation levels suffer from long term pressurization with only nitrogen, whereas a 75/25 or 80/20 mix seems to better stabilize the carbonation level (40psi * 20% or 25% = 8-10psi of CO2 equivalent)

 

[spook]

I think you've misunderstood... the basement has only a 9-10 foot ceiling, but the beer lines would have to pass through/go past the 1st, ground floor as well, on the way to the 2nd floor service...

Ah, I did miss that and the distances make much more sense now =) Sounds like an impressive project, I'll be staying tuned to see how it turns out.

 

[cheezydemon3]

.........There is a way to get a small freezer up there, or 2.

Sorry, this sounds awesome, but fraught with possible disasters.

 

[Raenon]

.........There is a way to get a small freezer up there, or 2.

Indeed, very small chest freezers or dorm-size refrigerators would be easily moved, but that means duplication of some efforts, plus still hiking up kegs to swap them out. I'm lazy, I like to think I'm rather bright, and my budget outlasts my tolerance for manual labor, so it seems obvious to look for doing it right the first time....

Sorry, this sounds awesome, but fraught with possible disasters.

... but this is the fear I have. Plus, I think if no one knows of a less expensive way of providing the beergas, or I'm probably going to have to nix this project anyway. I just can't justify $1-2k worth of equipment that still might fail. Too much of a gamble when I can do it cheap and dirty for a quarter as much.

 

[Cape Brewing]

Would it be possible to, instead of lugging a freezer up to the second floor... cannaballize a decent sized closet or even part of an adjacent room and build a DIY walk-in?

That is what I did in my basement (see my gallery). The walk-in isn't pretty because it doesn't have to be... it's in a "storage" area of the basement. I then run my lines through insulated PVC pipe for a run of about 30 feet, behind a wall, under the bar and up to a coffin box on the bar. i don't need high pressure because it is only a 3 foot (I push my beer at about 12 PSI).

You could use a very small window unti air conditioner and if you had to vent into the house... honestly... I wouldn't worry about it. Mine vents into the house and once the walk-in is at temp, it doesn't kick on very often and when it does, it blows slightly warm air... that's it. It wouldn't be enough to make a room "hot" by any stretch.

In addition to storing my kegs, my SWMBO and I use it as an extra fridge, a bottle "walk-in" and I can even ferment lagers in it (I lager in another fridge at colder temps). The walk-in is kept at about 40 degrees.

I am simply trying to think of a cheaper and easier solution.

 

[starman]

I wonder if it would be easier to build some sort of keezer/chamber up high in the basement, right up against the ceiling. Sounds crazy at first, but with ceilings as high as you are talking about, you could almost build a little "loft" in the basement, use it as an excuse to build shelves or a cabinet underneath with a small set of stairs to get up and swap out the kegs. Extra carpentry up front but you wouldn't have to fiddle with beer gas ratios, abnormally high serving pressures, long glycol chill loops, or trunking out through the exterior walls. The hole in the floor of your great room could be small enough to someday cover with a flush mount brass plate like you see in gyms/hotel conference rooms if you ever needed to patch it up.

This is still a good idea... just go up one more floor to your office floor.

Do you have a closet on the first floor business area that you could build a mezzanine - right under the service area? That would cut your head down by a lot.

You could even rig up an electric winch /diy dumbwaiter to do the keg lifting to the mezzanine level.

 

[audger]

if you use 5/16" beer line, the pressure wont be terrible. i have a long draw system that goes about 40 feet legnthwise, and from the kegs in the basement floor to the faucets in the kitchen (first floor, 12-14 vertical feet)... i only run about 15psi of strait CO2, not beergas, to get a good pour. if you had to use 20-22psi, you would just have to keep your kegs slightly warmer (low 50s) which isnt a terrible thing. i prefer my beer on the warmer side, vs. closer to freezing, though.

 

[BruceJ]

nice discussion, i am very pleased to be a prat of this thread.