So in my infinite wisdom i decided it would be a fun idea to free up the under bar beer fridge for bottles/cans and relocate my 2 kegs to a fridge behind the wall in the garage. I wanted to keep the existing arrangement of the tower on the bar that used lines running to the fridge as well. It basically extended the lines another 7 feet or so to a total of about 10-12 feet, including the extra for slack in the fridge. I originally used water cooled lines but removed it because it wasnt effective and the run was short enough where foam and loss wasnt enough to warrant cooling.
To start I built myself some trunk line, 2 serving lines and a glycol loop line. Wrapped in plastic wrap, then foil, then foam insulation, then wrap taped with black fabric tape. Besides having to redo the lines from an unknown kink it went together well and is solid and works great now. I have a 2 gallon reservoir in the fridge freezer of glycol/water solution using a 550gph pond pump pumping through 3/8 ID nylon hose.
Issue #1 - for a 550gph pump this thing blows and builds no pressure at all. My gut says it's due to the line size restricting the flow somehow. Being in the freezer the flow starts down about a foot+- then up about a foot+- to the tap loop then back the same up and into the reservoir. It does flow once it runs for a bit and fills the line, but with barely enough pressure to come out the other end. This may or may not be impacting issue #2.
Issue #2 - My temps in the freezer in the reservoir are around 40F, ambient temps right now in july are high 70s. The temp as measure by the air in the tower(probe sites between the 2 tap shanks and hangs below away from the glycol lines), which is also well insulated on sides and top is 60F. I let it run over night and thats as cold as it got. Most likely the actual beer lines are colder, but after 12-15 hours i would have expected the air temp to be closer to 50F.
So does anyone have any insight or advice on tweaking this setup so it works better? Or am i already in the correct ballpark?
Thanks
To start I built myself some trunk line, 2 serving lines and a glycol loop line. Wrapped in plastic wrap, then foil, then foam insulation, then wrap taped with black fabric tape. Besides having to redo the lines from an unknown kink it went together well and is solid and works great now. I have a 2 gallon reservoir in the fridge freezer of glycol/water solution using a 550gph pond pump pumping through 3/8 ID nylon hose.
Issue #1 - for a 550gph pump this thing blows and builds no pressure at all. My gut says it's due to the line size restricting the flow somehow. Being in the freezer the flow starts down about a foot+- then up about a foot+- to the tap loop then back the same up and into the reservoir. It does flow once it runs for a bit and fills the line, but with barely enough pressure to come out the other end. This may or may not be impacting issue #2.
Issue #2 - My temps in the freezer in the reservoir are around 40F, ambient temps right now in july are high 70s. The temp as measure by the air in the tower(probe sites between the 2 tap shanks and hangs below away from the glycol lines), which is also well insulated on sides and top is 60F. I let it run over night and thats as cold as it got. Most likely the actual beer lines are colder, but after 12-15 hours i would have expected the air temp to be closer to 50F.
So does anyone have any insight or advice on tweaking this setup so it works better? Or am i already in the correct ballpark?
Thanks
