I'm beginning to slowly accumulate the necessary items for my very own keezer. In the interest of "standing on the shoulders of giants" I thought I'd ask for advice from those that've built before me. It looks like I'll be using a 7 cu ft. GE, as they appear to be a reasonable price, a reasonable size for my apartment, and well-made trusted brand that won't break immediately after I void the warranty keezer-fying it. I'm probably gonna go with 3 taps. So here are my questions/thoughts, all advice and wisdom in such matters is welcome.
1. Regulators, I'd like to be able to force carb and serve, should I get a 2 body regulator and a manifold so I can set one of them at carbing pressure and the other at serving? Or should I get one regulator with a splitter, set that at carbing pressure and then get a secondary regulator with a manifold for serving pressure. It seems like there's multiple ways to get it done, not sure if there is a clear "best practice" way to get it done.
2. Do I need to insulate the collar?
3. I've seen guys come up with all sorts of ways to circulate air inside wiring up computer fanse and stuff, is this even necessary in a keezer this small?
4. I really dont want a big ugly white box hanging around and I recently learned that the body of the chest freezer acts as a heat sink, so my idea of decorating it by applying the adhesive backed wood flooring just fell through. They need 3" of airspace around it, I'm thinking of building a wood frame of some variety with 4 inches of clearance and then getting some hardwood flooring or something to cover it to spruce it up. In my mind it would have a cutout and a drip tray so I could just push this "cabinet" right over the keezer. I need to look around at various wood shops and see if I can find some veneered plywood or something, I want High quality looking wood, wood flooring seems like it might be the cheapest option, but I really dont know until I scout out what any woodshops in the area have available. I formerly worked as a guitar builder, I have good woodworking skills, just no tools of my own but a drill. This is the final and least important step, so I'm not very concerned about it yet. Any other ideas?
5. CO2 in the keezer or outside? If i'm forc carbing should I get a 10 lb tank? is a new one worth it, or go used?
6. What's the easiest to install/best temp controller?
7. Beer line length? how long?
Those are all my questions thus far. I'm only as far along as buying kegs right now I wanted to seek advice before I commited to any other equipment so I can do it right the first time. My timeline is to have it fully operational by around june, picking up pieces here and there when I find a deal, I just want to have a plan and a shopping list for it. Thank you for your input in advance.
Joe,
1. I think the dual-body vs primary/secondary comes down more to logistics. If you're going to have the CO2 in the keezer, then it really doesn't matter, but if you're going to have the CO2 outside, you probably only want to run a single gas line into the keezer, which means primary/secondary. You can also get high-pressure hose and run unregulated CO2 into the keezer and then have a multi-body primary regulator mounted inside, but I don't think I would use that approach.
2. More insulation is generally better, but most important is to get a good, air-tight fit between the collar and the keezer.
3. I think air circulation is very important for a keezer, because you'll tend to get a pretty decent difference in temps between the top and bottom of the keezer as all of the cold air sinks to the bottom.
5. I like having the gas inside my kegerator to keep the kegerator totally self contained, but it does take up valuable cold space. Size is another trade off; bigger has a lot of advantages (at NFC it costs the same to fill a 5lb tank as a 10lb one), but they're bigger (duh), if space is an issue. If you get a used tank, just make sure it has a recent hydro date, or you'll be paying to have it tested soon, and that will eat up any savings over just buying a new one.
6. I have built several temperature controllers using the controller from this thread. It's cheap, easy to use, and pretty accurate. The only down side is that the dual-stage version (controls both heating and cooling) only comes in celsius. However, you can find a very similar single-stage version (only controls heating OR cooling) that runs farenheit. You can build it into an external box like in the original post in the hbt thread, or you can actually build the controller into your collar if you wanted a slightly cleaner approach.
7. You can find all sorts of threads about line length on hbt, and there are even some really complicated calculators you can use linked from hbt. I went with 10 feet of 3/16" ID beverage tubing and I haven't had any foaming problems that weren't related to over-carbed beer.
Good luck man!
-Adam
Joe,
I've got a lot of misc parts hangin around from mine, including a regulator. I am willing to let it go cheap. I would be happy to help if you need a hand.
Let me know.