5 years and 2 houses later... BEER

NYSpeed Automotive NYSpeed Off Topic
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So I had a great idea a few years ago. I was going to build a walk in cooler in a great house that I was buying. Well, I lost that house and ended up in a house with a much smaller basement; My family has grown to FIVE; and now I finally have a large home with a lot of useless SqFt that I want to make awesome. (for the record I still put a small cooler in that house with 3 kegs, just not something this cool)

We have been working non stop on this house and I really wanted to document our flip on here as it is really awesome what you can transform when you put your mind to it. I failed. I have been so busy trying to balance work, family, projects, relaxation etc… that I just didn’t do it. That said I have this really cool walk in project that I have been DYING to build for years. Here is the original thread where I was so on top of it and just ran into a wall. http://www.nyspeed.com/showthread.php?81264-DIY-Walk-in-Cooler-(not-really-auto-related-)/page3&highlight=cooler

Well that ends today.

I have allocated the space and created the drawings. The foam board, subfloor materials, and 2x4’s are on site and this week I will have the AC, coolbot, insulation etc… to get this going.

On with the details.

So my basement in this house has 82" ceilings. Not the best but good enough that I can finish it and add on a 675 sqft rec room with a bar, cooler, and bathroom. There is already a large office and a nice workshop completed. There are only three windows to the outside so the placement and size of the cooler are limited by those.

Here is the current ROUGH design:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53342606/Basement2.jpg

The cooler is much more scaled down from my original design and over five years and several project houses I have learned a TON about construction and proper building. I will be constructing the cooler “First” and following as I ahve time on the rest of the bar, living space and bathroom. The bathroom has to be framed and the cooler facing wall drywalled but that is the extent of the bathroom for a couple months.

The process for this build will be:

  1. Sub Floor. I will be using 1.5" XPS foam on the floor pushed to within 1/2" of the same foam on the outside walls. I will fill that seam with some expanding foam that will still maintain some flexibility so that there is no chance of my floor buckling with temperature change. All seams on the foam will be taped with Tyvek tape. On top of this foam will go plywood or ZIP OSB. I already own a decent amount of the plywood but at something like $36 per board I may go the coated ZIP osb route as it is (a) coated and (b) around $20 per board. I am also considering returning all of this and ordering http://www.homedepot.com/p/Amdry-2-09-in-x-2-ft-x-4-ft-OSB-Insulated-R7-Subfloor-Panel-AMD0150G/204395337 Not sure I want to use this system or wait for delivery… I will be debating this for the next day or so.

  2. Walls. The walls will be built using 2x4’s. I really should be using 2x6’s, but this cooler is very small and I can insulate it properly using 2x4’s so why the hell not. The 2x4 walls will be built on top of the insulated sub floor and will be sealed with foam. The walls themselves will be filled with Roxul (mold and water resistant) and an R-value of 12. They will then be covered with 2" of XPS foam, R-value of 10, which will again be sealed to the subfloor with Tyvek tape. this gives me an overall R-value of 22. the industry standard is 25 but this is a tiny ass cooler and it will be 100% air tight as I will foam and tape everything.

  3. Ceiling. This will have the same roxul foam combination as the walls.

  4. Finish work on walls and ceiling. This will be done quite simply using stainless screws and FRP which is the same plastic sheathing that is used on commercial coolers. I will silicone all seams and corners for another air tight layer.

  5. Finish work on floor. I will be using a cheap ass laminate. The reasoning behind this is that the Home depot traffic master flooring is super easy to use, looks awesome, .99/sqft, and best of all it is all rubber and plastic making it incredibly moisture resistant.

That is all for tonight. I am going to start building tomorrow night and I should have a couple pictures up by Thursday hopefully. I know that I have a couple of electrical lines to get over there and prepped for the cooler, and a couple copper pipes to reroute so assuming that only takes a few hours this should be framed in no time.

Oh, and instead of building my own awesome controller for the cooler someone took the initiative to make a consumer product that accomplishes the same task with way less work and thought.

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:tup:

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You have someone helping with the refrigeration?

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geeze, I can’t believe that was 5 years ago.

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Right, time flies! The refrigeration is simply a 10k BTU window AC unit that is fooled into operating at lower temperatures by this gadget: http://www.storeitcold.com

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Hmm, well im interested to see how it works out. I would think the window unit wont like keeping the space that cold, and could end up ruining the compressor. I think a 10k btu would struggle and run forever to get the temps down.

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from what I have read on this unit it should actually cool the space down in about 15-20 minutes and then only run a few times per day. The insulation is the key to maintaining the temperature. Also we will not be going in and out much maybe a couple times per week. I have never physically seen one of these in action but I am pretty interested to see how well it will perform also.

The biggest challenge that I am going to place on the cooling side is two 4" pipes traveling out to a set of taps on my back patio. That is a whole stage II project however.

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Dry aged beefs possible?

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Dude, $300? Serouisly? You could do that with an arduino and a few thermocouples in an hour or two. Don’t you work in automation?

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It would be possible but the concern would be the humidity control. The easiest way to do beef would probably be a couple fans and a small box inside the cooler. It would be a humidiy controlled environment using wet papertowels or something. This is all off the top of my head, I didn’t consider it going into this but I sure as shit will now!

      • Updated - - -

It is more than a couple temp controllers like I would have done. It also has a small heater to fool the AC unit, anti frost controls and great technical support. At this stage in the game I have to pick my battles and $300 for a proven and supported solution is a pretty easy pill to swallow.

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yea, I guess ballers gon ball

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I would think the compressor would see liquid flooding back from that cold of temperatures, and you know how liquids dont like to be compressed. But maybe it will work, if people say theyve had success, pretty cool.

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We run a Coolbot on our homemade cooler at ABW. 3 years in now and she’s still purring right along. I’m also in process of building another cooler in our basement, much like what you’ve got going on here.

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So you want to come build mine too? Surely if you can build two you can build three. :slight_smile:

      • Updated - - -

Do you think that the 10K BTU AC will be good enough for a space this small? I cant imagine needing to go to a 12k but for only $50 more I am considering it. I went to several stores today and since it is like 95* out other people bought all the AC units.

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the bigger the unit the less it should have to work to maintain and it might end up being more efficient.

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:tup: to this build

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So I have not updated… I have 2 projects outside my house that I am working on. One is 50% done as a full kitchen gut and rebuild, the other is about to start, wiring out a commercial space. All of my tools are scattered.

I have thus far built the floor for the bathroom using 1" XPS with 23/32 OSB screwed through on top. The cooler has 2" XPS foam with the same OSB on top.
I Have insulated all the perimeter walls for the bathroom and cooler using 1" XPS with 2x4 framing in front of that.
The framing sits on top of the floor so that there is a complete thermal break.
All seams are taped with tyvek.

This is where it is at.

I purchased Rockwool insulation for the stud walls and will be gluing the 2" XPS for the internal cooler walls in front of that. This will give me an rvalue of 25 which is standard for restaurant coolers that are a much harsher environment than this will be. I own all the material and the AC (bought a 10K btu) now I just need to find the time and tools to get it wrapped up.

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Missed this…oops! ABW we run a 15K unit. The new cooler is a little over 12’x12’, 2x6 walls and ceiling with blown in insulation, covered with OSB and FRP sheeting. Peel n stick tile floor which is OSB over 2" foam sheets. Fired it up for the first time last night, works great. Biggest downside is expelling the hot air, as in our case we can only run through a 4" duct to reach the outside. I didn’t check the air temp in there tonight but the beer temp seemed right on.

Maybe I missed the exact dimensions, but what size is this cooler of yours?

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I decided to be baller in a better way… I want to go custom so I have more flexibility. I half blame you.
http://www.nyspeed.com/showthread.php?283977-Programer-EE-Help-Raspberry-Pi&p=4657816#post4657816

Some Updates.
I have been as busy as usual and this always takes the backseat as it ia not a necessity project, rather a pet project. Either way I spent a few hours banging shit out.

This is the first stop point that I took a picture. The walls are lined with 1.5" foam and the framing is up. The floor under the bathroom is 1" foam and under the cooler is 2" foam. The 3/4" subfloor in the bath makes them about even. Not quite but close. I had to toss some of the floor for the bar in as well so that I could put the footer for the cooler wall in place. This all took a couple hours and lots of 18V batteries (3-1/4" tapcons to hold everything with plywood to the slab.)

Stop 2:

The AC is simply just set in for a test fit. I had to go get a grinding cup and take 3/4" out of the window frame to fit it. That sucked. I also spent time carefully drilling and chiseling out the glass blocks. That sucked as well since they still exploded and are now garbage. The foam piece on the back wall is just there to space the hardie board properly. I decided to use 1/4" hardie backer and not plywood in the cooler. There were two reasons, 1 it is mold and moisture resistant whereas wood was not, and 2 it is only 1/4" vs 3/4". If I was going to put down tile I may have been concerned with cracking but I am still leaning toward the rubber backed waterproof laminate so it should be just fine. Using this makes this entire cooler 100% moisture and mold resistant which is a big positive to me. If you notice on the back wall there is the 3.5" of Roxul in the wall and I just need to run a 1.25" conduit through there for a drain and it can be closed up.

I wanted to work on it more tonight but I got tied up and decided to post about it instead. Tomorrow I should have all of the wiring in place as well as the plumbing between the bar and bathroom. That will allow me to close up all of the foam and get all joints sealed.

I also decided to build my own door. I didn’t like the idea of cutting up a steel door and frankly mine should be better insulated. I am going to use a 2" sheet of foam inside of a 2x4 frame with 3/4" plywood on each face. It will end up at about 4" thick and have the FRP on the inside and pallet wood on the outside to blend into the surrounding wall. I am going to have it latch via large magnets on the top and bottom so that it will always be guaranteed to be sealed.

More updates coming I hope!

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I’ll take the half blame but you should be able to handle (and enjoy) the programming yourself. Maybe you should have got the off the shelf version if you don’t want to figure it out, once it breaks or doesn’t behave correctly you need to know how it works since you don’t have a 1-800 number to call.

Keep diggin.