It's been slow progress as I'm on a very tight budget and have been waiting for the various building materials to come up on special offer around the various DIY stores here. Luckily special offers are fairly frequent so it's not been too bad overall so far.
I still have the floor drain to sort out and make good the floor surface once it's in. There is an existing drain in one corner that I thought was going to be perfect. The outbuilding was once upon a time a laundry, there's a huge concrete sink in there that drains into the floor drain. Trouble is I've noticed some fairly dodgy odours coming from it during the summer and further investigation showed it has no form of u-trap so it just runs directly to a soak-away and land drain. So, scrap that idea and go for a new one, properly plumbed into a nearby drain.
The idea is it'll be a pumped system BUT set up in such a way that should a pump fail or a power cut surprise us (we get quite a lot) the system will revert to gravity feeds.
The laundry is not big so I've had to be fairly careful with the layout. 100l HLT up on high, 80l thermo pot mash tun on mid level and 100l copper at around waist height.
I can hear some folks wondering why the 100l HLT for a 100l copper. I'm future proofing as best as I can for, hopefully, having to upgrade to a 200l+ copper next year or the year after. So, biggest pots I could get. These are without doubt the dearest part of the project 230euros all in but still bloody good value in my opinion.
A couple of Kaixin pumps (courtesy of Wolfy's post elsewhere) are on the way and now I'm just waiting for the pots and pumps to arrive so I can place it all out and begin working on piping runs and electrics etc
So, here's a few pics. I'm certainly not a joiner as you'll see but I'm pretty pleased with the work so far.
Brewstand, work area built and end wall clad. Dodgy window hole bricked up in the back wall, ready to begin cladding.
Tidied up a bit to see the brew area and finished cladding.
Middle high bit for the HLT, to the right and abit lower is for the Mash Tun and over to the left, lower still is for the Copper when using pumps. If using gravity the copper and gas burner will move onto the floor. I think I'm going to opt for an electric HLT on a timer and temp controller BUT have a gas burner in situ just in case of the aforementioned power cuts - they can last 2 minutes or 6 hours, the joys of very rural life.
You can just see at the right, part of the old concrete sink. I built the frame around it as I didn't have the heart - or strength to smash it out.
Making a start on the ceiling insulation, the last bit I'll have to leave until I can find an extractor (on offer) for steam extraction duties.
As it looks at the time of writing.
There are a few more on my blog too.