Great Job!
PacificNWBrewer said:Just an idea. Taking the actual chamber as a guide, I made this.
Doors would hinge on the right side to access. It could fit 8 corny kegs or 5 carboys. I made the lower section tall enough to get a conical to fit inside (most likely have to make a new base for the conical as it is only 39" tall inside). The top will hold the same amount of cornys/carboys plus blowoff bucket/jar.
On the front, the chalk board idea is great! I intend to have it swing open (hinge on the right like the doors) and hide all the temp controllers behind it. The left side is about 8 inches think so there is more space for insulation of the duct work, the controllers and hide all the outlets.
The 5 taps installed on the front should clear the chalk board. I'll have a drip tray below them. The CO2 tank will need to be mounted next the to AC unit on the outside.
The AC unit would be on the left side as well as the heaters. For heaters, I would use the lightbulb-in-a-can method rather than wall heaters. The cold air would be drawn from the bottom to the top by a bathroom fan (80 cfm) that plugs into a regular outlet behind the chalk board.
The entire unit stands 7 feet tall by 3 feet deep by 5 feet wide with casters installed. Now, I'm a littler taller than the image of the girl (no jokes ) so it seems like I could still reach everything inside and out. I thought about removing it from my garage if needed and it can easily lay on it's back side should I need to move it somewhere else so I won't make it taller.
Seems like it should work... just a theory though. I still need to BUILD it.
Noidios said:I'm looking at doing a 2 tiered chamber myself. For the purposes of my design, I'd like the tops chamber to be the cooler of the two though. Does this pose any problems?
In an effort to keep the cost down, my "cold" chamber will just be for cooling kegs (no heat needed for this tier) and the "warm" chamber will be for fermentation. My thoughts are to use a single dual stage fermentation controller with a probe in each tier and then use a home thermostat to control the transfer of cooler air to the fermentation chamber. Does this make any sense, or is it too early in the morning for me to be thinking about such things?
Thanks for all your hard work in sharing this project with us!
I've heard of issues with dampness and mold. Any problems here? It's been a few years. Curious how this is holding up.
OK, time to post up. I got the idea for this build from Zacc's build:
2 Zone Fermentation Chamber Build
I've used a chest freezer and fan heater controlled with a Ranco temp controller for awhile. It works OK but I brew a lot of lagers and it was kind of a pain to have to coordinate all of my brews Having a fermenter with 2 zones was the obvious answer. I used Zacc's idea for the basic design and then came up with some innovations. I decided that I wanted everything to be as internalized as possible, including the heating and cooling elements. I also wanted it to be large enough that I wouldn't feel the need to upgrade in the forseeable future. I spent a lot of time designing it in a spiral notebook, who needs sketch-up? I configured it so that I can fit 6 carboys into each chamber and still be able to panel it with 4 x 8 sheets of plywood.
OK, so here's the build...
View attachment 91045
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