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**Thirsty_Monk** · 05-22-2014, 08:47 PM

If you build it use spray on foam. It is about $4 sf.

**TGTimm** · 05-23-2014, 11:10 AM

You'll need plenty of wall thickness--our beer storage cooler has doubled, offset 2X6" walls for a total insulation thickness of ~11". It manages to stay cool in hot (100+F) weather. We used blown-in cellulose insulation, but sprayed foam would be vastly superior. Few contractors understand the unique problems a cooler presents due to moisture migration and condensation in the walls, and sprayed foam is a 100% vapor barrier.

Don't use a coil-type door--I've never seen one that was insulated, and they're a pain to fix after a forklift hit (this will happen). We have an over-head, garage-style multi-panel door that's made for coolers. It doesn't get any condensation on the outside, so it seems to be pretty well insulated, and individual panels are fairly easy to replace, as are the rails.

I'd be careful about using chiller glycol for cooling. We do this, and it results in lots of icing problems. It also puts more load on your mission-critical brewery chiller system. A separate chiller for the cooler is much better.

**sw341034** · 05-23-2014, 04:26 PM

We built our walk in cooler. As others have stated spay in insulation is the way to go. We run our cooler off our central glycol unit that also supplies our fermentors. Some things to keep in mind....

1) if you run off of your glycol chiller make sure you have plenty of chilling capacity. Calculate your loads for peak demand (i.e. crashing multiple tanks, holding fermentation temps, and keeping the cooler cold all at once in the middle of the summer)
2) there are plenty of oversized standard swinging size doors available our there that can accomodate pallets. I would suggest this over a roll-up/coil style door...http://www.barrinc.com/cms/new_doors...ezer_doors.pdf
3)regarding a mezzanine I would guess that your local building code would likely dictate how this should be engineered. Once mezzanines come into play building inspectors tend to want to see things a certain way including a set of stamped drawings from an engineer and architect.
4) think carefully about your layout. Any particular reason you decided to put your Serving Vessels on where you did? If it was me I would place your serving vessels near where you have your taps so that your length of draft line is shorter and more direct.

Just a few things to think about.

-Seth

**Sean W.** · 05-23-2014, 04:55 PM

Thanks, this is a lot of great advice so far. Some comments/questions:

-We'll make sure to either oversize the brewery chiller, or get a separate one. Are there any types of chiller units that work better for areas that will have hot tank CIP's going on (as in, more resistant to freezing up)?

-If we do spray foam insulation, what should our interior materials be? FRP mounted onto moisture-resistant wood? Or possibly metal (painted steel or aluminum)? Is it OK to just use pressure treated wood for the wall studs?

-We do have an architect on the job, so he is giving us advice on regulations and how to build the mezzanine to comply with code.

-As to why the servers are where they are, they will really be used more as bright beer tanks. We'll only have 2 so we'll need to keep the beers moving through them. If we grow to where we need an additional walk-in, we'll place that outside the building and do keg storage there, and then we can fill the taproom walk-in with servers and actually use them as servers.

-They do make insulated coil doors but I'll check out the large hinged doors too. We were thinking coil-type because we will have lower ceilings and don't want to have even lower-hanging garage door tracks inside.

Thanks again for the help.

**Thirsty_Monk** · 05-24-2014, 08:52 AM

Taproom Walk-in: To build, or to buy?

You can use pressure treated wood on floor cells and regular wood on studs. If your wall is let say 6" you can use 2x4 studs in zig zag pattern to have continuing insulation. Your ceiling insulation needs to be thicker then your wall insulation.

FRP sheets are right choose. You can attached them right to the studs. Do not do any metal sheets due to moisture.

I would also recommend separate compressor and evaporator.

**Starcat** · 05-27-2014, 07:37 AM

Originally posted by TGTimm View Post

You'll need plenty of wall thickness--our beer storage cooler has doubled, offset 2X6" walls for a total insulation thickness of ~11". It manages to stay cool in hot (100+F) weather. We used blown-in cellulose insulation, but sprayed foam would be vastly superior. Few contractors understand the unique problems a cooler presents due to moisture migration and condensation in the walls, and sprayed foam is a 100% vapor barrier.

Don't use a coil-type door--I've never seen one that was insulated, and they're a pain to fix after a forklift hit (this will happen). We have an over-head, garage-style multi-panel door that's made for coolers. It doesn't get any condensation on the outside, so it seems to be pretty well insulated, and individual panels are fairly easy to replace, as are the rails.

I'd be careful about using chiller glycol for cooling. We do this, and it results in lots of icing problems. It also puts more load on your mission-critical brewery chiller system. A separate chiller for the cooler is much better.

Timm, if you are getting coil icing on that type of a system something is wrong. A glycol fan bank should actually not have that issue if all is correct.

**Starcat** · 05-27-2014, 07:45 AM

Additional Comments

You can have walk in boxes custom made to just about any spec. you want and the best thing is they go together very quick. To build out that kind of a box with all desired qualities will be much more time consuming and painstaking.
If you have the space you may use a sliding door for your load zone which also may be motorized if needed.
I would advise a partition and separate fancoil unit for your keg room so your temperature in that zone is not influenced by the service load on the main box.
The job can easily be done with glycol or DX, but as noted I would not have it on the Brewhouse system, but a separate dedicated system.
THe most notable thing about glycol systems is the lack of redundancy thats out there. With careful planning you can have your glycol systems redundant in a way that valves can be switched and you will be able to run everything without having any one area totally down. This is the beauty of ganging glycol systems and interconnecting them.

**TGTimm** · 05-27-2014, 11:55 AM

Originally posted by Starcat View Post

Timm, if you are getting coil icing on that type of a system something is wrong. A glycol fan bank should actually not have that issue if all is correct.

Could the problem be that we built our own cooler? And re-purposed refrigeration evaporators as glycol coolers?

**Hatchet Jack** · 05-28-2014, 06:28 AM

Originally posted by TGTimm View Post

Could the problem be that we built our own cooler? And re-purposed refrigeration evaporators as glycol coolers?

Nice work TGTimm! We used an air conditioner's condenser side to cool our glycol. A/c units have a lot of capacity and they're reasonably quiet.

Also, to the OP; you will want to check whether you need your mezzanine to be handicap accessible.

The code people will probably want you to build your cooler roof so that stuff could be stored up there (if there is enough room to do so) in case somebody in the distant future decided to buy your building and put stuff up there.

Aaron
Junkyard Brewing Co.
Moorhead M.N.

**TGTimm** · 05-29-2014, 02:05 PM

Uhh, no, Aaron, what I meant is that we used evaporators meant for R22 refrig. systems as glycol-to-air heat exchangers. Probably not the right thing to do, and not my idea.

**lhall** · 05-29-2014, 03:33 PM

Also, watch out for the trench drain inside the cooler. Our health inspector said it had to have a back-flow preventer.