Making Ends Meet

Spent a little time thinking about exactly how I am going to hook all the various pipes, flanges, taps, fans etc to make it so the beer travels from the keg to the glass without:

1. getting warm
2. getting flat
3. leaking all over the floor

This is obviously the most important part of the whole kitchen and I have neglected it. But now, brought to you by the power of Google Sketchup, here is the (tremendously over-engineered) solution. Here are some pictures of the pieces involved.

First here's the bottom of the beer tap. Beer goes in the thin silver pipe, cold air in the next pipe (the white one) and warm air return down the outside in the black pipe. This all gets screwed to the top of the counter with 4 bolts and a rubber washer.

Now let's go to the other end. This is the fan; it is a low voltage PC fan. This will sit inside the kegerator and blow cold air from the fridge up the grey pipe, into a pipe that runs all the way to the bottom of the tower.

These are the pipes I'm using. I'll cut a hole in the side of the kegerator (once I'm sure there is nothing but insulation in that panel, and run these thru the hole. beer runs in the clear, then it's cold air out, warm air in, and finally some pipe insulation to stop it all getting too hot.

The final part was how to join all this together so that it doesn't leak everywhere. I decided to design some custom brackets. One to stick on the side of the fridge and the other to epoxy to the bottom of the counter. These will accept the largest plastic pipe inside and allow me to tighten it all up and then use some spray foam to seal any final gap. The one on the counter will also give me a solid surface to bolt the beer tap to. There's a steel place near work that should be able to knock these up for me pretty easily. Shouldn't cost too much to get a couple made from galvanized steel.

Here's a cutaway diagram to show how it will look from the bottom (without the insulation drawn)