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3 tower, 2 beer product, 4 non-beer system design

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  • 3 tower, 2 beer product, 4 non-beer system design

    I apologize in advance (and accept any scolding) if this first post is too lengthy and/or asks too many questions.

    New house currently under construction. Ready to install product lines (have 150ft of 6 product/2 glycol 3/8" lines already delivered). Current system design has the following:

    3 bars on two different floors with a 6 tap glycol tower at each bar (for easy reference, bar names are Upstairs, Man Cave, and Pool). Walk in cooler/distribution room in the basement level. Man cave & pool bars on same basement level. Upstairs bar is a 18 ft lift from bottom of keg to tower. Run upstairs will be a direct line from distribution room straight up. Run to man cave will be horizontal for 30 ft, vertical for 12 ft, horizontal for 15ft, then down 8 ft to tower. Basically ending at approximately 4ft above bottom of keg. From there, my plan is to "T" the lines in the ceiling above the man cave tower and continue out to the pool area another 40ft. Tower at pool will be approximately same height as man cave tower, so the same 8 ft drop to pool tower.

    I have multiple questions here.

    First question: Splitting long lines to continue to another tower? Would it be better to "home run" each trunk line to the man cave and the pool bar from the distribution room? Or is the "T", or split, at the man cave acceptable? I understand that cleaning the system will be a little more challenging dealing with the split lines. Any other problems? Pressures? Different Restrictions? etc? I am having a hard time calculating the restriction when there are two towers on the line. I am assuming to calculate the restriction, you would treat them as being home-run lines and calculate the restriction independently. And then add restriction to the tower that needs extra restriction? Although in this case, I get very similar restriction totals for each tower.

    Second question: Pressure for different lifts? Are the lifts here acceptable to run a CO2 system only? Or should I go with a blender? Or a beer pump? Man cave/pool runs will have 12 ft of rise and 8 ft of fall, so a net of + 4ft lift. Upstairs will have 18ft of straight up lift. My restriction calculations appear to be OK on paper, but the real world may be different.

    Third question: Design for non-beer products? My intention here is to run 2 beer kegs (commercial kegs only, no homebrew at this time) on 2 of the product lines (to all 3 bars/towers), and 4 non-beer non-carbonated products like Water, Tea, Gatorade, Lemonade, etc. I would dispense from 5 gallon water jugs pre-mixed using a flojet marine/rv electric pump for each jug. Anybody have any recommendations, ideas, warnings here? My first concern is again the lifts involved. Not sure a flojet rv/marine pump can handle either of those lifts.

    Fourth question: Glycol run lengths? My intention is to have a 5 gallon glycol bath in a freezer at the man cave circulating starting through that tower, then out to pool tower (approx 40 ft), back in to man cave bar, then all the way back to distribution room, looped and run back to man cave to close the circuit (total circuit of a little over 200ft). An additional glycol bath will exist near the distribution room to circulate the trunk line just for the upstairs bar, and will not be tied into the man cave/pool trunk lines. The >200 ft run seems long. Should I break that run into 2 different systems? Basically one circuit that is the man cave tower, trunk to pool, pool tower, trunk back to man cave (80ft circuit). Then another circuit that is just the long trunk from man cave to distribution room, and back to man cave (130ft circuit).

    I have a very rudimentary sketch of the system here.
    Beer Trunk Line diagram.jpg

    Yes, I plan on installing it myself. I know it is a pretty complicated system, and the easy answer will be to tell me to get a professional to design and install it. But, seriously, where is the fun in that? I will probably screw the system up and end up hiring a professional to fix my mistakes, but for now, I am venturing down this path myself (with the help of a previous 2-keg, 2 tap, kegerator conversion project and a ton of reading on this site's forums and other forums).

    Thanks in advance for any tidbits of advice or experience...!!

    Alex
    Last edited by alexsimpson55; 09-14-2012, 09:03 AM. Reason: grammatical errors and updated calculations
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