JustinH and Tour,
I have worked in several kitchens, several HUGE kitchens. One of them our coolers were in the basement and you could park trucks in them… They had lots of compressors and were pretty quiet. The panels being metal has nothing to do with the temperature inside. that is for aesthetic and durability. It is the insulation sandwiched between that makes the difference. Having a metal box outside vs inside makes no difference so long as my insulation is done properly. If it is outside, then all of the months that are above 34 deg. would cost me more by your reasoning.
The AC will be rewired with my own temp controller and I know for a 100% fact that it is more than capable of taking this room down to my target temp of 33-35 degrees. This has been done before, just not exactly how I am doing it.
The AC will probably run on a 120 line, but if I can get a 240 I will be quite happy as it will cut my costs a little bit. The average operating cost on most of the units that I have researched has been between $2-$12 / month. I will be over insulating and aiming for the low range of that number.
As for permits and electricians… Nope. I will be doing all of the wiring myself, and the provisions will be in place for this the day I move in as the first thing we are doing is upgrading the service to 200A as my brewery runs off of 2 30A 240V breakers and one 20A 120V breaker. It actually costs me about the same to make two batches of beer as it will to store it in this cooler for a month.
Like travisn said, permits are for getting caught… It is not like I am going to have a construction site. I will bring in some wood one night, insulation the next day, and random materials as I go… Most all of the materials will probably be brought in the day we are moving the rest of our stuff. I doubt a permit officer is going to see a moving truck and ask why I am moving stuff in the house.
Check out the link that I posted in the first post if you are really skeptical on the AC, I guess that when it was first attempted a lot of HVAC pros really doubted it, but now that they see it working they love the idea.
Here is a pretty big update to the prints… I based them off of the suggestions and the image that travisn posted. I am still concerned that the ac unit should be aimed to the outside, but that can always be changed for a few dollars even after the build is done. I also have plenty of time to ponder this before I can even begin work so maybe I will figure out my balance between the positives and negatives.
On to the images:
Overview of the room:
View looking left from the door:
View looking from the front left corner:
Birds-eye view of the whole thing. You can see how thick the walls are in this one (ignore the right corners… it is a program thing I can not figure out.):
I am actually considering expanding that side room considerably to house all of my brew gear, and turn it into a secluded brew room. That will allow me to put larger fans in and I will be able to have a pocket door that I can leave open except for during times we are entertaining or brewing. I am basically thinking that I can place this in the back of the basement and cover the whole width of the basement at about 9’ deep with the insulation. Then I can build the bar directly in front of this. That will make it easy for the taps to be fed without long lines.
Here is What I came up with after taking a measurement of my current basement and assuming that my new house will be pretty close to the same width.
EDIT: Damn… The dimensional overview image is corrupt and on my home computer… oh well, 3d overviews gives enough of an idea for now.
This is the layout of the rooms up against the concrete of the foundation:
Here is a shot of the unfinished bar, and it will not look like this at all, this is for illustration purposes. I am going to build it using nice woods and either pounded brass or copper. Notice the sliding window that reaches into the cooler so that we can store bottles of beer on that shelf and have easy access to them!
The brewing room. There is still more to go in there as well, but the program didn’t really have all of the images I need so I will have to create them.
And the cooler which is virtually unchanged except for the window and the door moving from the front to the brew room.
I will probably update this sometime over the weekend with my final revisions and a full Bill of Materials with cost.
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR HELP!!! I would have never gotten this project to this point without all of the great input here.
The next thread is going to be the build thread… anyone who wants to help build in 4 months will be entitled to 5 Gal. of their favorite style of beer (not bud light!!)
The bar is just a quick mockup. It is either going to be hinged top on the right side, or we will cut a door from the brewery to the back of the bar. Still undecided on that, and I finished this rendering at 2AM as my beer was finishing cooling. I will make the last round of decisions this weekend as I have more time to mull them over. This look is not final for the bar or the shelf behind it… they were just fillers to hold the space and let me see the sizes of furniture in the space.
Thank you specifically for all of your help and input. You will have to come have a beer once it is all built… NYSpeed house party! It has been years since I have done that!
I am still going to insulate the floor with foam just for energy savings. I do not want to be cooling the concrete and all of the dirt under it.
That’s my fridge. The backroom is unheated currently and we do not get any air passing through the wall, even in winter. I added that molding around it recently. It’s just door stop molding I cut to fit here. It has the weather stripping on it, and I just pressed that up against the fridge and nailed it down. The other side is not trimmed out, just the wall paper right up to it and fiberglass batts between the fridge and wall.
Hope that helps.
Another thing. Make sure the back of the freezer can breath. We just had a fire at a house in my Fire District that was caused by someone who did this with a fridge, but then covered the back up with plastic to stop air from getting around it into the house. Ended up suffocating the fridge and it caught on fire.
:tup: thanks! I am going to be placing the freezer in a cabinet made for it, and it will have a duct going to a vent fan that kicks on everytime the A/C or the freezer start up. I like wiring controls so going that extra step is fun for me.
Soon enough. unfortunately we lost the house we wanted and I am not having much luck finding one that I like in my price range. Also most of my fun money is getting stashed away since my wife is pregnant. I have however purchased the freezer and the chiller (air conditioner) for the unit, and I am scanning craigslist and some of the auction sites I frequent for a complete cooler that I can just drop in place. I also built more of the brewery so that I will be able to quickly drop all of this stuff into place when we do move in. The wife has finally gotten behind the idea of having it ever since we got the freezer and she sees how convenient it is to have that extra space to store food.
