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I recently moved into a house with two bar taps built into the kitchen butler's nook. I was ecstatic at first, but then realized the system as some serious issues, which I think I'm 90% of the way to resolving, I just need some help on the final bits.
The system is basically this - dual tower in the butler's nook, running down roughly 35 feet of glycol cooled trunk line into a fridge in the basement. The fridge was originally a Haier standalone kegerator, and the builder of the system used the hole on top to run the trunk line in, then drilled another similarly sized hole for the loop. It's all rather clever, is well insulated, and seems to do an excellent job of keeping two 1/6 BBL cool and on tap for the faucets.
The problem is pushing the beer up to the kitchen. 35 feet of run is an issue they just didn't account for. I'm a newbie at all this, so the first thing I did was (after cleaning the entire system thoroughly) got a CO2 tank filled, installed a dual regulator on it, hooked that up to new couplers and lines (the lines from the coupler to the trunk line), adjusted those to the recommended specs for my beer (8-10 PSI) and went upstairs to pour a glass.
What happened next is totally predictable - massive CO2 breakout. No chance 8-10 PSI is going to push beer up a 35 foot run. I got full glasses of foam, every time. I asked the previous occupant how in the world he got it to work, to which he replied that he turned his CO2 regulators up to 18-22 PSI to account for the extra push, but that his beer was still consistently foamy. It seems he never really solved the issue before moving out of the house and my moving in. If I constantly keep the kegs at 18-22, I'll over-carbonate them in short order, and I'll still have foaming. This will not do.
Here's what I propose to do to fix this - and this is where I need the help in finding out whether I'm crazy or not. I want to mount beer pumps (flojet G56) inside the Haier fridge where the CO2 canister currently lives. I want to move the CO2 canister out of the fridge and onto the counter above, drilling a new hole in the fridge to run 2 CO2 lines in to apply the manufacturer recommended pressures directly to each keg. I then want to hook up an air compressor and use compressed air to drive the two beer pumps, each on a separate regulator, with a vent coming out the top of the fridge.
Essentially, I'd need to run 4 lines into the fridge (2 CO2, 2 compressed air) and one line out of the fridge (vent). I'd need to mount the pumps inside the fridge (I think there's room). THEN, and only then, do I think I can get the beer pumped up to the kitchen butler's nook, without foaming, and without over-carbonating my precious Modus Hoperandi.
Thoughts? Criticisms? Ideas?
The system is basically this - dual tower in the butler's nook, running down roughly 35 feet of glycol cooled trunk line into a fridge in the basement. The fridge was originally a Haier standalone kegerator, and the builder of the system used the hole on top to run the trunk line in, then drilled another similarly sized hole for the loop. It's all rather clever, is well insulated, and seems to do an excellent job of keeping two 1/6 BBL cool and on tap for the faucets.
The problem is pushing the beer up to the kitchen. 35 feet of run is an issue they just didn't account for. I'm a newbie at all this, so the first thing I did was (after cleaning the entire system thoroughly) got a CO2 tank filled, installed a dual regulator on it, hooked that up to new couplers and lines (the lines from the coupler to the trunk line), adjusted those to the recommended specs for my beer (8-10 PSI) and went upstairs to pour a glass.
What happened next is totally predictable - massive CO2 breakout. No chance 8-10 PSI is going to push beer up a 35 foot run. I got full glasses of foam, every time. I asked the previous occupant how in the world he got it to work, to which he replied that he turned his CO2 regulators up to 18-22 PSI to account for the extra push, but that his beer was still consistently foamy. It seems he never really solved the issue before moving out of the house and my moving in. If I constantly keep the kegs at 18-22, I'll over-carbonate them in short order, and I'll still have foaming. This will not do.
Here's what I propose to do to fix this - and this is where I need the help in finding out whether I'm crazy or not. I want to mount beer pumps (flojet G56) inside the Haier fridge where the CO2 canister currently lives. I want to move the CO2 canister out of the fridge and onto the counter above, drilling a new hole in the fridge to run 2 CO2 lines in to apply the manufacturer recommended pressures directly to each keg. I then want to hook up an air compressor and use compressed air to drive the two beer pumps, each on a separate regulator, with a vent coming out the top of the fridge.
Essentially, I'd need to run 4 lines into the fridge (2 CO2, 2 compressed air) and one line out of the fridge (vent). I'd need to mount the pumps inside the fridge (I think there's room). THEN, and only then, do I think I can get the beer pumped up to the kitchen butler's nook, without foaming, and without over-carbonating my precious Modus Hoperandi.
Thoughts? Criticisms? Ideas?
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