Mine just came in tonight and I got it put together, and thought I would share some thoughts and photos as I go.
The unit comes in 3 boxes via fed ex and is packaged extremely well. I purchased the leg extension, the casters, and several other options such as co2 for racking and an o2 stone. got the yeast collector as well.
Welds on the stainless look perfect and all tri clover fittings, that part is very nice. The insulation in my opinion needs a lot of work. Its about an 1 in thick black foam that if you dig your finger in hard you can tear. It is not fit well to the conical on the cone part, and worse on the barrel part.
It was so bad on the barrel part, I took it all off, measured it against the barrel and cut almost 3 inches off to make it fit better. It was so high that you could not get the lid clamp on, and was so low it went over 1 inch lower than were the legs start.
It wasnt too hard to cut, but this foam needs a fabric glued to the outside to protect it, something I plan to do on monday when I can get to work.
The conical just sits in the stand on shims, and it seems very difficult to get the barrel of the conical plumb. There is nothing really to use to align it. One of the shims welded to the legs is twice the size of the others and it pushes it out of center in the stand. I would think some sort of ring around the barrel that sits on the stand would have been a much better solution.
There is one chiller and it looks like the heater is some sort of lizard heat wire taped to the cone part.
The holder for the power supply for the cooler is designed for the 14 gallon and two coolers and this of course makes the 6.5 just flop in there. it is so loose I could easily pull the power supply out with 1/4" on both the front and back and many inches on the top.
I wont go into more detail, but all the items that "hang" the temp control, the power supplies, and the blow off bucket, are just kinda screwed on and loose.
For this kind of money I would expect much better connections. the wiring is long and you need to find a way to tie it up.
In short for tonight, I am not totally disappointed, but it feels thrown together at best so far. If I am going to throw something together, i want to save the money, if I pay this amount, i want to have a well thought out system, put together well, where things fit, and don't move.
I am going to clean it, leak test it and try the temp control tomorrow so I will update it as I go.
I dont want to sound too negative, as I dont want to send it back, but being in manufacturing myself, this could have been done much better for not any real cost difference.
The unit comes in 3 boxes via fed ex and is packaged extremely well. I purchased the leg extension, the casters, and several other options such as co2 for racking and an o2 stone. got the yeast collector as well.
Welds on the stainless look perfect and all tri clover fittings, that part is very nice. The insulation in my opinion needs a lot of work. Its about an 1 in thick black foam that if you dig your finger in hard you can tear. It is not fit well to the conical on the cone part, and worse on the barrel part.
It was so bad on the barrel part, I took it all off, measured it against the barrel and cut almost 3 inches off to make it fit better. It was so high that you could not get the lid clamp on, and was so low it went over 1 inch lower than were the legs start.
It wasnt too hard to cut, but this foam needs a fabric glued to the outside to protect it, something I plan to do on monday when I can get to work.
The conical just sits in the stand on shims, and it seems very difficult to get the barrel of the conical plumb. There is nothing really to use to align it. One of the shims welded to the legs is twice the size of the others and it pushes it out of center in the stand. I would think some sort of ring around the barrel that sits on the stand would have been a much better solution.
There is one chiller and it looks like the heater is some sort of lizard heat wire taped to the cone part.
The holder for the power supply for the cooler is designed for the 14 gallon and two coolers and this of course makes the 6.5 just flop in there. it is so loose I could easily pull the power supply out with 1/4" on both the front and back and many inches on the top.
I wont go into more detail, but all the items that "hang" the temp control, the power supplies, and the blow off bucket, are just kinda screwed on and loose.
For this kind of money I would expect much better connections. the wiring is long and you need to find a way to tie it up.
In short for tonight, I am not totally disappointed, but it feels thrown together at best so far. If I am going to throw something together, i want to save the money, if I pay this amount, i want to have a well thought out system, put together well, where things fit, and don't move.
I am going to clean it, leak test it and try the temp control tomorrow so I will update it as I go.
I dont want to sound too negative, as I dont want to send it back, but being in manufacturing myself, this could have been done much better for not any real cost difference.
