Category: around the house

Broken Carboy Neck

Published March 20, 2011

This evening I noticed that my latest batch of beer, a vanilla stout, was just barely starting to blow krausen out in to the airlock. To fit a blowoff hose (picture from a previous batch) I began pulling on the stopper in the carboy, and when I did so the whole neck of the carboy tore off. This left me holding what you see above; an airlock stuck into a stopper, along with the neck of a carboy.

I’ve fit the stopper back in along with some foil so it should remain air tight and thus this batch should be fine, but it’s disappointing that I’ll now have to buy another one at ~$40. I’ll also have to be extra-careful when moving the carboy; so much so that I’ll probably just transfer it to secondary right in the bathtub where it’s sitting fermenting.

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Gas Distribution Manifold and Dessicant

Published March 6, 2011

This afternoon I added a bit of a luxury to the Kegged Beer Cooler, a three-way gas manifold. While not necessary, this will allow me to easily shut off gas to different connectors if I’m needing to play with different pressures for force carbonating beer, soda, fruit, etc.

Since I was drilling from the inside of the cabinet outward without using a guide the external screw heads aren’t quite lined up (picture). This is disappointing because it doesn’t look as nice as it could, but I guess I’ll just have to leave it. To be sure that I didn’t hit any gas lines I first cut small holes in the aluminum liner with a pointed razor blade, tore back the metal with needle nose pliers, then poked carefully through the foam with a plastic tool until I reached the steel outer wall. The foam was then cleared out using a drill bit in my fingers, and then I completed drilling through the outside.

A few days ago I received some desiccant bags purchased from eBay (picture) and those are now in place as well, so the kegged beer cooler project is pretty much finished. I may eventually add external taps, but for now using picnic-style taps inside of the unit should suffice.

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Inconvenienced by Safety

Published March 5, 2011

A few weeks back I ordered this turkey fryer setup from Cabela’s to replace the burner/regulator that I had problems with a few weeks back. Today when setting it up for use I found that there is an electronic interlock on the gas line which will cut off the gas flow after the last time it was manually reset.

I attempted to remove this, but as can be seen here there is a laquer-like thread locker on the fitting between the regulator and the interlock. While this likely won’t be a huge issue, I’d really prefer to simply concentrate on brewing beer and not pressing a button to keep things running.

UPDATE: In practice this wasn’t that much of a hinderance. The large red button which starts the gas flowing and resets the electronic timer serves as a quick turn-on, and the black button is a good emergency-off in case of a boil-over. A green light illuminates when the gas is flowing and it starts blinking before the gas shuts off, giving one ample time to press the red button and keep gas flowing. While it would be nice to not have this safety in place, it’s not as difficult to deal with as I’d expected.

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Kegged Beer Cooler: Complete

Published March 3, 2011

The kegged beer cooler is complete, sitting in the basement, and is actively cooling what remains of two kegs of beer. Tonight I ran the gas lines, fitted everything into place, and set it up against one wall of the basement. It’s currently set to start cooling at 40°F and shut off at 35°F ambient temperature in the unit, which I expect to keep the beer at somewhere in that range. It may be necessary to narrow the band to something a bit narrower, but I’ll be able to determine that after putting a full keg of beer in the freezer and monitoring it.

I’ve been considering fitting the fridge with taps, but for the time being I think I’ll just stay with using picnic-style taps inside the unit. Actual beer faucets are around $100/each after considering all mounting hardware, and I don’t think they’ll provide enough benefit to justify doubling the cost of the unit.

Here’s some more notable photos of the unit throughout its progress:

· Completed chest freezer to beer keg conversion.
· Looking inside at two corney kegs, party tap-style dispensing lines, gas lines, temperature sensor, etc.
· Gas line transition from the compressor compartment into the body of the freezer. It is held in place with twist-type reusable cable ties.
· Temperature probe in place and gas line and Y fitted. Excess foam was left in place to serve as a hose guide.
· Operational Johnson Controls A419 temperature control indicating that it is currently cooling.

All of the photos can be found here. And yes, Roxie approves of it.

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Temperature Control Fitted

Published March 3, 2011

The temperature control for the kegged beer cooler fitted and it seems to work. It started, cooled the unit until the appropriate temperature was reached, then turned itself off. Now I just have to run the gas lines and see how it goes with actually cooling beer. This will require a little bit more hardware, although I’ll probably only fit it out for two kegs for the time being, as that’s how many I have. It’s too bad that my current kegs are also almost empty, as I won’t be able to run it fully loaded. I guess it’ll be time to brew more soon.

I also need to consider monitoring temperature in the unit or attaching the probe to a specific keg. I think that in the unit will be sufficient, but for the first couple weeks I’ll double-check this by occasionally checking the temperature of a keg itself.

New photos from tonight’s work are can be found on this page.

(Yes, I know those screws are too long, but they are what I had laying available. Oh well, they neither interfere with anything nor will they be seen once the unit is closed up.)

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Kegged Beer Cooler Ingress Fittings

Published March 1, 2011

Meijer is great for when it’s 10pm and the next step of your project requires Great Stuff spray foam insulation.

Continuing the project to turn a chest freezer into a temperature controlled cooler for home-brewed beer (previously) I made a hole inside the cabinet (picture) the size of a film canister without hitting any of the gas lines. This was done by marking a hole, then carefully tearing away the aluminum liner with pliers, then digging through the foam with a screwdriver before finishing off the hole with a drill and file. Looking around the basement I came across some plastic pieces that were perfect for the gas and temperature probe ingress fittings, fashioned out of a 10cc syringe and a used bathroom water supply line that I’d once had (incorrectly) fitted to my to my toilet (picture).

These fit very nicely into the hole. With the flange on the syringe and the water line nicely fitting up against the inside of the freezer’s compressor compartment both plastic bits nicely stayed in place nicely (picture) making surrounding them with spray foam insulation (picture) very easy. I fitted a scrap piece of vinyl tubing in the syringe housing to keep foam out, and it did a great job. Once removed (picture) there is now a clear ingress for gas, and the temperature probe should sit nicely on top of the grey plastic tube holding it nicely mid-level in the unit without touching any sidewalls.

Now all I have to do is fashion a mount for the temperature controller, wire it in, fit the temperature probe, run gas lines, and build a CO₂ tank retention system. This is probably only a couple more evenings worth of work, which should be right in time for the wit that I’ve currently got aging and which is due to be kegged on Monday. Oh, and I might cover the lid with some horrible contact paper design, perhaps even something as bad as butcher block.

(Yes, this does mean that all beer served from this cooling unit will be heavily dependent on both an old (but unused) syringe and something which once supplied water to one of my toilets.)

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Chest Freezer First Steps

Published February 28, 2011

Now that I’m brewing beer again and kegging it (1 · 2 · 3 · 4), the approach of warm weather means that I have to find a way to keep the kegs cool so that I may serve them. To do this I purchased a chest freezer and am in the process of adapting it to use a more precise temperature control system so that I may try and keep the kegs at a consistant 40°F.

After receiving a Johnson Controls A419ABC-1C temperature control I opened up the 7.0 ft³ Holiday-brand chest freezer acquired from Lowes (item number 0073849) and set to understanding it’s temperature control system. It turns out that this chest freezer just has a basic on/off control that switches mains on and off for the compressor based on a temperature probe fed into the wall of the freezer. This should make it very easy to replace the controller with the A419.

Part of converting a chest freezer to beer keg holding requires one to drill holes for both CO₂ and the temperature control, which is a very risky task because hitting the refrigerant lines will vent the freezer’s cooling system rendering it useless. To try and understand where the coils are I started the freezer, let it run for a bit, then placed 1L of boiling water in it with the lid closed. The result was this, a nicely frosted freezer showing that almost all of the bottom part contains coils. Knowing this I’m going to attempt to drill the gas/probe holes by first carefully removing some of the lining metal then picking away at the foam to be sure that I’m not going to hit a line when widening the hole. I will start in the corner in the upper right of this picture, as this will allow for both easy gas and temperature probe access once everything is assembled. Hopefully that’ll go well.

If you’re interested, my first photos from this project can be found here.

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Roomba is Not So Smart

Published January 5, 2011

Upon arriving home today I found this. Danielle’s Roomba had driven away from next to its dock, leaving telltale tire marks the whole way, and died. Before leaving for work I set the Roomba up with a virtual wall so that it’d run in a small part of my living room and the kitchen, all of which is within sight of the dock and no more than 20′ long. Once again the Roomba died before it found its way back to the dock.

I’m starting to think the battery is going dead. Thus far it hadn’t docked successfully except for the few times that I placed it in front of the dock and commanded it to charge itself.

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Riding In Circles

Published December 30, 2010

In a fit of boredom I just rode a bit over a mile indoors by doing laps of the basement. With it cleaned up there is a clear figure eight-like path around the futon then around the table near my workbench and I was able to ride a whole mile without running into anything or putting a foot down. This took roughly 15 minutes, as I was probably averaging around 4 MPH. I was riding Danielle’s bike (it’s the only one currently with platform pedals) and its computer doesn’t do elapsed time or average but (strangely) it does do maximum speed, which was 5.2 MPH.

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Successful Ceiling Fan Modification

Published December 21, 2010

For the last two or three works the ceiling fan in my bedroom hasn’t been responding to signals sent by the remote control leaving us with only a dim table lamp to illuminate the room. Not long after cleaning the contacts in the remote the fan would occasionally fail to respond to signals from the remote unless its power was cycled by the light switch under the remote holder. After flipping the switch off then on it would then work for a few days before needing another reset, but this failing state only lasted for a few weeks before the system simply failed leaving neither the light nor fan usable.

Frustrated by this I decided to bypass the wireless entirely and switch the unit to a typical fan/light dual switch setup on the wall. I figured that the light kit and fan motor itself were still fine so I set to work eliminating the failed fan control module. Having a spare dual-switch for the wall and a third (red) wire already between the electrical boxes made the house wiring part easy, but I still had some work to do modifying the fan. By reading Ken L. Klaser’s article Ceiling Fan Capacitor Solutions I was able to understand the basics of fan speed control, but this this schematic which he linked to was most helpful.

After looking over the control board to understand how the wires to the two coils in the motor were connected I came up with this schematic of how I felt the fan would be powered when set to run slow and in reverse. Removing the capacitors and building a test assembly showed that my initial thought was right, and this resulted in my building the assembly shown above. The fan now runs in reverse and on slow speed when powered and the wireless circuitry has found its place in the trash.

I could have purchased a new selector switch and capacitor assembly to have variable speeds and fitted both it and DPDT switch into the housing to offer the original control selection, but throughout its life the fan was almost exclusively used on low and in reverse, so I didn’t see the need. The fan also looks as it originally did with no new switches sticking out of the side or bits hanging off. I may add these selectors in the future if they are needed, but I don’t see that happening. Thus this was a $0 modification, costing only a few hours of time to learn something new and then redo the wiring.

(Yes, I realize that I should have used a longer piece of clear shrink tubing to better facilitate potting the ends. By the time I realized this I had most of the harness together and decided that simple stress relief and a bit of insulation should be sufficient.)

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