Oxynostu
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- Apr 17, 2021
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Hello world! I'm just one more of many lurkers-turned-posters in this amazing community. I've been researching how to make my plans a reality and am finally posting my thoughts and plans here for two reasons: 1) As a sounding board where I can put my thoughts down into one cohesive plan, whereby you all can offer your advice and constructive criticisms to help me improve the plan, and 2) To ask some questions that I don't yet have answers to.
I'd like to also say that while there are many posts similar to what I'm writing here, nothing I've found has been "quite right" for my objective, and many forums are over 5-10 years old. That being said, a side-quest goal of mine is to contribute to this community via this forum. My hope is that it will ultimately contain a lot of information so that someone else in the future might find it helpful. I will do my best to summarize the thoughts, findings, and details in as organized a fashion as I can to make it all the more useful. Ok, on to the project!
First off, known questions:
I thought I'd first write down some of the questions I already have so that people don't need to scour a long post to figure out what I will be asking. Plus this way you can see at a glance what I need help with so you'll know whether or not you can help. These are just the overviews of the questions, the specifics will be in the actual post as I go over the build.
Build overview:
At the end of this project I will have four taps on a cabinet in my kitchen. The lines will come up from the keezer in the basement through what used to be a laundry chute. The lines will be cooled by either liquid or fan (not sure which yet, though I'm leaning toward liquid).
This is the cabinet in my kitchen where the taps will be. I can do 4 taps at 2.8'' apart or 3 taps at 3.5'' apart. I'm planning on doing four (you can see the chalk marks where the centers of the taps will be).
Here's the view of the open cabinet. Please disregard the trash in there, I didn't notice until I attached the picture, and now it's far too late. It used to be a laundry chute, so it goes straight down into the basement. The wooden base board that is the floor of the cabinet is just screwed onto the bottom from the basement side. The plan is to drill a hole in the base board to allow the trunk line run up from the keezer directly underneath. The trunk line will come up the near-left corner of the cabinet, and then connect to some insulated housing on the back of the cabinet wall that will surround the shanks to keep them cool.
Here's the view of the keezer as you come down into the basement. The wooden base board that is the bottom of the kitchen cabinet is directly above the water heater, as you will see in the following pictures. The trunk line will either A) come straight through the lid of the freezer or B) come out of a collar on the freezer, then run upwards, above the water heater, into the kitchen cabinet above. I'd like to avoid the hassle of building a collar, but if I drill through the lid of the freezer I'd need to come up with a build that would allow the lid to open and close.
The base board as seen from the basement, directly above the water heater. If the bricks you see in the picture are North, the trunk line will run up the Southeast corner of the base board.
Breaking up the build: step by step
So I don't have much experience building things, but I like to be organized and think of things as a process, so I'm going to break up what I need to do into distinct steps. The order is unimportant, but they're all things that need doing:
Questions that need answering!
I know this post is super long, so thanks for reading through it. I really hope to turn this into a good source of information that will help many people for years to come. I will update it, organize it, and do my best to make it useful as time goes on. If you feel like you have something that can contribute to this thread, whether or not it's directly related to something I asked, feel free to drop it in a comment and I'll include it how I can!
All the best,
Oxynostu, Time Travelling Wizard of the Multiverse
I'd like to also say that while there are many posts similar to what I'm writing here, nothing I've found has been "quite right" for my objective, and many forums are over 5-10 years old. That being said, a side-quest goal of mine is to contribute to this community via this forum. My hope is that it will ultimately contain a lot of information so that someone else in the future might find it helpful. I will do my best to summarize the thoughts, findings, and details in as organized a fashion as I can to make it all the more useful. Ok, on to the project!
First off, known questions:
I thought I'd first write down some of the questions I already have so that people don't need to scour a long post to figure out what I will be asking. Plus this way you can see at a glance what I need help with so you'll know whether or not you can help. These are just the overviews of the questions, the specifics will be in the actual post as I go over the build.
- Keezer build
- To collar or not to collar? That is the question with my unordinary chest freezer. It is massive and can easily fit kegs and CO2 inside it without a collar's added height. Due to rounded corners and a weird plastic lip, I might need a collar that sits snugly "around" the body of the freezer rather than attaching onto the top of it. So far I have planned to not build a collar, and to instead drill a hole through the lid of the freezer out of which will run the trunk line. This seems faster and easier than building a collar, though then the question becomes how do I have the lid open if lines are coming out of it?
- Liquid cool or fan cool for lines and shanks? I've seen quite a few homemade liquid cooled lines. Currently my plan is to do a salt-water pump liquid cooled line that will run with the beverage lines through the trunk, up to the shanks, attach to copper tubes that surround the shanks, then back down. I plan to keep the reservoir of salt water in the keezer with the kegs and to have a submersible pump. However, I think I might be right on the upper threshold of being able to use a fan to blow cool air from the keezer up with the lines to an insulated body surrounding the shanks, then back down to the keezer to complete the air flow circuit. If you think one method is better than the other, please let me know why!
- Lines and tubing
- How to choose "ideal" lines & lengths. It's roughly 9'5'' vertical distance from center of kegs to center of taps. However, there will also need to be some extra slack in the lines to accommodate opening and closing of keezer lid and the kitchen drawer that the taps will attach to. I've seen a lot of back and forth between 3/16'' and 1/4'' ID tubing, but I'm not sure how to decide which will be best for me and which "type" of tubing to use for beverage line, coolant line, gas line, etc.
- How to make my own trunk line. I can afford to drop some skrill for this build, but it seems that making your own trunk line can save you a lot of money. I'm planning on buying all the lines I need to make my own trunk line.
Build overview:
At the end of this project I will have four taps on a cabinet in my kitchen. The lines will come up from the keezer in the basement through what used to be a laundry chute. The lines will be cooled by either liquid or fan (not sure which yet, though I'm leaning toward liquid).
This is the cabinet in my kitchen where the taps will be. I can do 4 taps at 2.8'' apart or 3 taps at 3.5'' apart. I'm planning on doing four (you can see the chalk marks where the centers of the taps will be).
Here's the view of the open cabinet. Please disregard the trash in there, I didn't notice until I attached the picture, and now it's far too late. It used to be a laundry chute, so it goes straight down into the basement. The wooden base board that is the floor of the cabinet is just screwed onto the bottom from the basement side. The plan is to drill a hole in the base board to allow the trunk line run up from the keezer directly underneath. The trunk line will come up the near-left corner of the cabinet, and then connect to some insulated housing on the back of the cabinet wall that will surround the shanks to keep them cool.
Here's the view of the keezer as you come down into the basement. The wooden base board that is the bottom of the kitchen cabinet is directly above the water heater, as you will see in the following pictures. The trunk line will either A) come straight through the lid of the freezer or B) come out of a collar on the freezer, then run upwards, above the water heater, into the kitchen cabinet above. I'd like to avoid the hassle of building a collar, but if I drill through the lid of the freezer I'd need to come up with a build that would allow the lid to open and close.
The base board as seen from the basement, directly above the water heater. If the bricks you see in the picture are North, the trunk line will run up the Southeast corner of the base board.
Breaking up the build: step by step
So I don't have much experience building things, but I like to be organized and think of things as a process, so I'm going to break up what I need to do into distinct steps. The order is unimportant, but they're all things that need doing:
- Prepare shanks
- Install shanks into cabinet wall
- Loop copper tubing around the shanks for coolant to flow through
- Build housing to contain and insulate the shanks. Housing will connect to trunk line.
- Make trunk line
- Trunk line will consist of 4 beverage lines, a coolant out line, and a coolant in line.
- Lines will be wrapped in saran wrap to contain condensation, then foil, then some sort of foam? then PVC pipe? Not sure the "best" build for the trunk. If trunk line is contained in rigid structure such as PVC, be sure to accommodate movement from freezer lid and cabinet wall opening and closing.
- Trunk line will run up from keezer, through the base board above the water heater, into the kitchen cabinet, then connect to the insulated shank housing.
- Prepare keezer
- Keezer will need to connect to the trunk line. Trunk line will exit either A) Through a hole drilled in the lid or B) Through a collar.
Questions that need answering!
- Should I just build a damn collar?
I wanted to avoid building a collar because there are rounded corners to this freezer and there is a blue plastic ridge that the seal sits snugly around that would prevent a collar from being placed flush on the freezer body. If I were to build a collar, I think I would need to build a sort of collar-frame that sits snugly around the freezer body rather than attaching to it, because I'm not skilled in wood working and don't want to deal with mitering/rounding corners/anything else outside of basic wood working stuff. The alternative to a collar is drilling a hole through the lid of the freezer because I know I won't run into any cooling lines or anything important in the lid. However, if I do that then I need to figure out how I can have the lines leaving through the lid and still be able to open the lid.
- What lines to buy and how long?
I don't know what lines I want to buy (beverage, coolant, and gas) or how to figure out if I want 3/16'' or 1/4'' ID. I've read a lot about balancing the lines, but it kinda boggles my brain. It's about 9'5'' vertical distance from center of keg to center of tap. Pulling a guess out of thin air I was thinking of about 12' lines to have ample slack for opening and closing of lid and cabinet, variable line length needed depending on where in the freezer the keg is sitting, whether the line is connected to the nearest tap or the furthest tap, etc. etc. etc. Any advice regarding lines is highly appreciated!
- Is liquid cooling the way I want to go?
Liquid cooling seemed preferable to me. For one, to get the trunk line from the keezer to above the water heater to the insulated shank housing will require a couple angles and turns. I feel like incorporating angles and turns with air cooling from a fan isn't ideal. If I use liquid cooling it doesn't matter if I have to make even a 90 degree turn. If anyone has strong opinions about fan cooling vs liquid cooling, especially considering my build and the distance it's traveling, let me know.
- Good trunk line ideas?
I feel like I get the gist of building a trunk line, but I thought I might as well put it out there to see if anyone has some good ideas about this. Rigid trunk line (PVC)? Soft trunk line (some sort of foam)? Let me know what you've seen work well!
- Places to purchase.
Last I guess is just good resources for purchasing the materials I'll be using here. I know there are lots of resources to be found, so this is more of a "hey, if you have a link to a good site for buying hundreds of feet of beverage line you might as well drop it here".
I know this post is super long, so thanks for reading through it. I really hope to turn this into a good source of information that will help many people for years to come. I will update it, organize it, and do my best to make it useful as time goes on. If you feel like you have something that can contribute to this thread, whether or not it's directly related to something I asked, feel free to drop it in a comment and I'll include it how I can!
All the best,
Oxynostu, Time Travelling Wizard of the Multiverse
