Drainage in a non-sloped brewery floor

[BSBRick]

I am looking for guidance on my floor plan regarding vessel placement and the location of floor drains. In a perfect world all of my wet areas would slope to a centrally located trench drain in the middle of the brewery floor. In my case, the world is not perfect but the slab is perfectly flat. Do I surround my FVs and kettle area with trench drains, contain wet areas within curbing and a drain per area, or??

Ideas, photo examples welcomed

Please advise.

Cheers!

[NigeltheBold]

I was in a similar situation when we put our brewery together.

First of all, buy a floor squeegee. It will become your best friend after the first brew.

Second, I don't know what your budget is, but putting in floor drains is not cheap. We had a concrete floor, so we had to have someone saw-cut into the floor to put in the trench drain. It was expensive and labor-intensive.

With that said, our floor drain runs down the middle of our brewing/fermenting area. So our brewhouse is on one side, and our fermenters are on the other. All tanks are "facing" the floor drain in the middle. You'll get a bit of spillage from each piece of equipment at one point or another. Sometimes spillage is hard to avoid.

I also suggest getting a trench drain with removable grates. That way, if you're draining something using a hose, you can put the end of the hose into the trench. That way, you won't have to worry about liquid spilling out all over your level floor. But I can't emphasize enough: get a floor squeegee!

[lhall]

You will be better off repouring the floor with the right slope. If you are cutting in trenches and all the drain piping, repouring the entire wet area is not that much more expensive.

[d_striker]

You will be better off repouring the floor with the right slope. If you are cutting in trenches and all the drain piping, repouring the entire wet area is not that much more expensive.

I wish to god we would have done this. It would have been worth it.

[LuckyTownChip]

The most expensive part will be the trench drains, so keeping that length to a minimum while still allowing for adequate drainage is your benchmark. Surrounding the perimeter of your cellar area with drains would be quite expensive, which is why you see centralized drains in most breweries. Our existing slab is flat as well, so we cut locations for the trench drains and new piping, the poured a new slab on top of the old and sloped it at 3/8" per foot. We ended up with about a 1'-0" curb on the perimeter of the slab.

[Cascade_Floors]

We can slope it for a reasonable price. We are in Salem Oregon. Give me a call or email with any questions. Check out our website. We work for plenty of breweries.

Chris klein
541-510-1080
Chris @cascadefloors.com

https://www.cascadefloors.com

CHEERS!!!!!!!!!

[othevad]

Squeegee time

+1 on the squeegee.

I have a flat floor as well. When I put the floor drains in, I only put in a 10 foot section. It's basically *near* the brewhouse (5 feet away) and 5 feet or so from the fermenters.
If you don't have a slope put in and you go to put in floor drains, I would just say this: price out multiple lengths of drain.
A company next door to me had a 25 foot section of floor drain put in and it cost them like $700 more than me. It wasn't a significant upcharge to have more put in.
The drains aren't too expensive and if you are semi handy, you can lay them in yourself.
Also, make sure that you tell your concrete guy that you want it done really clean. I had a guy that halfass vaccummed up all the crap he kicked up from cutting the floors.
It took me like 6 hours just to get all the concrete dust mopped up from all over the floor.

[polynomial]

I read this, and went and bought a squeegee, and I can't thank you enough. Cleaning the floors takes 10 minutes now and the floor is dry an hour later. So awesome.

I was in a similar situation when we put our brewery together.

First of all, buy a floor squeegee. It will become your best friend after the first brew.

Second, I don't know what your budget is, but putting in floor drains is not cheap. We had a concrete floor, so we had to have someone saw-cut into the floor to put in the trench drain. It was expensive and labor-intensive.

With that said, our floor drain runs down the middle of our brewing/fermenting area. So our brewhouse is on one side, and our fermenters are on the other. All tanks are "facing" the floor drain in the middle. You'll get a bit of spillage from each piece of equipment at one point or another. Sometimes spillage is hard to avoid.

I also suggest getting a trench drain with removable grates. That way, if you're draining something using a hose, you can put the end of the hose into the trench. That way, you won't have to worry about liquid spilling out all over your level floor. But I can't emphasize enough: get a floor squeegee!

[Thirsty_Monk]

Whoever invented squeegee should get Nobel cleaning prize.