Brewery Build - Progress

Unfortunately my wife, Sarah had a resurgence of a trapped nerve problem she had last year and had to spend a few days in hospital so I'm a bit behind schedule on the brewery.

The floor is done and I've now sorted out a stable type door for it. It's amazing what you can make with a couple of packs of bargain floorboards.

Top bit of door and the finished floor with fully functional floordrain.

Pretty much finished, there's now a drip strip that covers the gap along the bottom of the top door.

A well deserved pint of what I'm calling Vieux Sanglier (Old Boar).

Brewery Build, sloped floor first bay...

Started on the concreting today. Smallest bay first as I've never done a sloped floor before.... actually, I've never done a floor before. Wasn't too painful all in all.

And it slopes to the drain. A drop of about 1/4", enough to let the water run to the drain but not enough to feel like the place is falling over.

80l Marmite Thermos and 100l Shiny Brew Pots Arrived

One word, YAY!

2 x 100l stock pots and an 80l thermo pot for mash tun.

One photo, shiny!

And now another photo with them sat in their place.

Left to right - Copper, Hot Liquor Tank and Mash Tun

Brewery build - Putting in the floor drain.

This wasn't quite as complex a job as I'd been expecting but it was a bit fiddly. The plumbing runs were a bit aukward and I managed to slice the end of my finger open trying to move a piece of ceramic tile I was using as packing to support the pipework before concreting it all in.

Anyway, pics...

The floor as it was, bottom right of pic is the fortuitously situated manhole cover for an external drain. Should be easy to knnck through and bring the new floor drain waste pipe through...

All marked up and the disk cutting begins, the fan is to blow the foul dust out as quickly as possible. I still looked  like  a dusty old corpse afterwards.

No too deep before hitting soil so nor to start digging. Living in a part of rural France that was  quite a large area of Resistance fighters in the war there's a tendency to come across caches of weapons and explosives from time to time. The Gendarmes promptly arrive to dispose of said items but I'm always a little worried about digging.

Loosely fitted with the plumbing for the u-trap to make sure I've dug deep enough.

Now to start gluing it all together. I made the u-trap using a series of 90 degree bends as  the actual formed/moulded u-traps were 30 bloody euros! Made this one for about a fiver. Picked up the actual metre long drain for only 15 euros too.

Ready to fit. The pipe running off to the left is the pipe to the drain outside. To the right will be for the sink waste.

I actually managed to get all the angles right.

In place and ready to start filling it all back in again. Knocking through the wall of the outside drain was an absolute bastard. No idea what material it was cast from but it made my hammer drill earn it's keep. Chisel bits and drills, you name it. Almost 2 hours to get a 50mm hole through.

The drain currently sits about an inch above the present floor surface as I'm concreting a new top layer that'll be gently sloped to the drain from all directions.. Even using loads of rubble as back fill I've still managed to get through a bag and a half (45kg ish) of ready mix at this point so I'll need to get some more before I can finish the floor surface. It'll be good to get the old cement mixer out again :)

Reward, a pint of my Apollo IPA. 

The Build - Pt 1

Conversion of an old outbuilding into my dedicated brewhouse is underway, here's a few piccies for now.

2x 100l stainless pots and an 80l thermo pot for mash tun are enroute. Kaixin pumps also en-route and I now have to plan the floor drain and make good the tatty old floor.