Need Advice for Custom Cold Room

[dfalken]

Sounds like it would be wise to talk to somebody from Storeitcold. Where did you find the split-type air conditioners? What brand are you using and where are you buying from? I like the look of the split-type air conditioners, but it's hard to find them online.

Thanks for the help!

My brewery is in Central America and split ACs are the norm down here, much more common than wall units or central units.

Today I found a great free cold room calculator online. Go ahead and download it and have some fun playing with the numbers. Notice how important it is to insulate the floor.

http://www.keepriterefrigeration.com/keeprite-refrigeration-software-tools

I am always surprised at how mall the BTU requirements are for cold rooms. My 26x26x13 room only needs between 10 and 15k BTUs depending on door openings, people entering the room, etc. If you were to put warm product in the room then it is a completely different story but when putting in beer at the same temp as the room you don't add any thermal load.

[NigeltheBold]

My brewery is in Central America and split ACs are the norm down here, much more common than wall units or central units.

Today I found a great free cold room calculator online. Go ahead and download it and have some fun playing with the numbers. Notice how important it is to insulate the floor.

http://www.keepriterefrigeration.com/keeprite-refrigeration-software-tools

I am always surprised at how mall the BTU requirements are for cold rooms. My 26x26x13 room only needs between 10 and 15k BTUs depending on door openings, people entering the room, etc. If you were to put warm product in the room then it is a completely different story but when putting in beer at the same temp as the room you don't add any thermal load.

Very cool! Thanks for the link. It's a really cool program (no pun intended).

I wonder how much I should allow for cleaning the tanks. The water we use will be hot, so it'll obviously have an impact on the temperature of the room. I'm just not sure how much of a difference it'll make. We were thinking about putting all of the tanks on wheels so we could move them around easier for cleaning and transferring beer. Maybe we could move the tanks out of the cold room for cleaning...

[dfalken]

Very cool! Thanks for the link. It's a really cool program (no pun intended).

I wonder how much I should allow for cleaning the tanks. The water we use will be hot, so it'll obviously have an impact on the temperature of the room. I'm just not sure how much of a difference it'll make. We were thinking about putting all of the tanks on wheels so we could move them around easier for cleaning and transferring beer. Maybe we could move the tanks out of the cold room for cleaning...

Glad you liked it. I showed it to my cold room installer today and he was all over it as well and wanted to download it.

while the hot water will have an impact I seriously doubt it will be that significant. You can play around with the product load calculator tab of the tool to get an idea. I put in 600lbs of beer (a liquid) coming in at 150 and going down to 130 over an hour period (which is probably reasonably close to what your cleaning solution will do (your volumes might be different though) and the calculator said I needed 18k BTUs to accomplish that. You probably won't have that much excess cooling capacity in your room but I don't think you need it either since the cleaning solution will only be in there temporarily and even if it manages to raise the room temp by 1 degree (which is probably stretching it given the thermal mass of everything in the room compared to the smaller thermal mass of the cleaning solution) it will come back down in relatively short order.

[NigeltheBold]

Does anybody know if it's possible/feasible to put windows on a cold room? Our cold room will be directly behind the bar, and we were thinking that it would be cool to put windows on the front wall so people could see the serving tanks.

I'm sure we'd have to get a special type of glass or install double-paned windows, but do you think this would have a tremendous impact on the required cooling capacity?

[dfalken]

Does anybody know if it's possible/feasible to put windows on a cold room? Our cold room will be directly behind the bar, and we were thinking that it would be cool to put windows on the front wall so people could see the serving tanks.

I'm sure we'd have to get a special type of glass or install double-paned windows, but do you think this would have a tremendous impact on the required cooling capacity?

Play around with your new cold room calc, it has calculations for windows...and yes they do affect the efficiency of the room in a not so trivial fashion.

[aarongarcia]

Hoping for a year later update

Hey dfalken, could I bug you for an update on your 3xCoolbot system?

I'm in the Dallas area and am getting ready to work on my cold room which is about the same size as yours.

Thanks!

[dfalken]

Update on coolbot system

Have had it working for a year and it works great. Only issue I've had was with the the air temperature sensors, both went bad at about the same time which caused the evaporators to start icing, but the guys from coolbot had put some extras in the package so I just replaced them. I guess my concern is whether they will keep going bad after x amount of time. My room stays at 38-40 degrees with no problems and my outisde air temp is normally in the high 80s.

[BGruis]

Another point to consider, going back to your original question.

Remember that if the health department inspects your they will probably require the interior of the room to be a smooth non porous surface. So keep that in mind as you consider making your walk in try to look like a regular room.

Prost!

[Lonebrewer]

CoolBot

Just an FYI some jurisdictions won't allow coolbots because of UL issues with the coolbot and the AC unit used. Something about nullifying the UL rating of the AC by using the coolbot.

[dfalken]

One more update

Spoke to Ron Khosla at coolbot, always extremely responsive and we figured out that the problem with my fin sensors was due to the fact that I had to splice them to extend the length of the lead. I did this because I am using split ac units and on the 3 ton unit the evaporator is rather large and with the coolbot fixed against the wall the original lead couldn't reach the front of the evaporator. Splicing them I think is what caused the premature failure, my ac installer also agrees. Anyhow Ron sent me a few replacement sensors and all should be fine. I really have to praise his level of responsiveness. During installation of the room he personally was very responsive guiding me through part of the process.

[augiedoggy]

Just an FYI some jurisdictions won't allow coolbots because of UL issues with the coolbot and the AC unit used. Something about nullifying the UL rating of the AC by using the coolbot.

This is the issue I'm facing after getting verbal approval from the building inspector before we started building it in january He only concern was how we would drain the condensation at the time.

The electrical inspector saw it after it was built and after he talked with the building inspector that inspector now "doesnt recall" standing in our basement where the coolers are now and discussing it. It really put us behind since we are now at a standstill without it.
Moral of the story is you need to get everything in writing from your inspectors office before building anything. There are at least 4 different small breweries in surrounding cities using them without any issue..