Named in honour of some small froglets I found playing in the puddles made by emptying the boiler after its very first leak test. The HLT and boiler are about 25gallons and the MT is about 15gallons so by fly sparging I'm hoping to get up to four-cornie sized batches out of it. The shiny insulated bit on the ceiling over the HLT and MT is mainly because the roof is dirty asbestos and I didn't fancy vapour condensing on that and dripping back in. On reflection the frame may be a little excessive - its built from 3" fence posts and decking as I had some posts left from a garden project, but I guess it should last.
The most time consuming part was actually laying the new screed floor - the old cracked, root ridden one was a lot more uneven than I realised and so took nearly four tonnes of sand and cement to level (almost 9" thick in one corner!), and for some obscure reason I didn't buy it ready mixed.. However, whilst my back will take some time to recover, I now have a damp proof membrane and the floor drains both towards the front of the garage and away from the walls and central service pit - rather than into it. Next year when its dried enough I'll seal it with floor paint so it should then be easy to clean down. I'll probably do something similar to the walls too, which look a bit grim at the mo.
Anyway the major components were detailed in other threads: Boiler, MT and HLT (and the IC). The fermentation fridge is like many others on this site (and now needs extending as it'll only hold about 40L) - its on legs so that I can rack to cornies etc without having to move/disturb the FV. The box on the wall over the MT has a 16A immersion heater timer and an ATC 800+ (with an external relay to boost its power handling - see this thread for info) for controlling the HLT, and a thermometer (also from forttex) for measuring the Boiler and MT temperatures (I've not fitted my dial thermometer to the MT yet). It also has two 20A switches, so that I can bypass the timer and/or ATC if I want to. The sockets (and those on the wall) are quality MK ones, because the elements are 3kw and with this size of tank will be on for hours continuously.
As you can see the height of the ceiling is a little low - I'm concerned that the sparge will get very slow as the HLT level lowers so I may need to adjust the hole sizes in the sparge arm. It also gives precious little head for the totton pump which will pump from the boiler to the FV. So my solution is to put the pump in the service pit - normally it would be covered by boards with holes for the pipes to stop me falling in, but I always wanted a stealth pump anyway
This only uses half the length of the garage so I'm envisioning stage two will be to construct a bigger FV cupboard and also a temperature controlled storage/conditioning cupboard in the remainder. However I can still get the car in (though now only with opening the doors at one side) so if I decide to go for larger/wider FVs in the future (I'm considering one of these conicals) I could end up having to put this in the pit, but I suspect that may be overkill. If such a thing exists in brewing.
Cheers
kev
