looking to get an inline fan for my electric brewery in the basement (5500 watt, 240V). I have two I am looking at. The Hurricane 6 inch 435 CFM for $90.96 or the Hydrofarm 6 inch 400 CFM for $80.99 from Amazon.
Looking for some guidance from all you basement brewers out there.
Either of the two in-line fans you have described will work fine for your exhausting purpose. However, much of what you’re trying to accomplish — exhausting your brew station — depends on a couple factors:
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available air to replace the air being exhausted. If you’re in a large open area, these fans will work great because there is plenty of open area for makeup air to come from. However, if you’re in a tight closed in area, you will need to replace the air being removed and that can be done with a simple transfer grill to a larger area.
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what will the duct configuration be? If you have many turns, bends and long length of duct, your flow will be restricted and your fan will not be able to move as much air as you expect or that’s specified. Also, where will the duct deposit the air? Outside the building? If so, what will be used outside to prevent backdrafts (wind back into the duct restricting flow)?
As a general rule, these fans should work fine for your application. However, there are a few clinkers that could throw a monkey wrench into the plan. The CFM specified by the manufacturer is based on a specific static pressure. Without knowing this static pressure specification, it’s difficult to predict if 400 [+/-] will be enough.
A few additional pointers (additional to KellerBrauer):
- blowers generally work better pushing air down a duct than sucking air so the blower should be close to the kettles
- capturing steam works better if you have some kind of hood or enclosure around your kettles to reduce the amount of dry air that is sucked into the blower. You can use curtains that reach down to the top of your kettles for this purpose. I reconmend nylon ofr the curtains as it melts above the boiling point of water.
I strongly suggest you look for a variable or multi-speed exhaust fan, 350 - 400 CFM may be exactly what the doctor ordered, or it might be a whole lot more than is ideal. The more air you have flowing past & around your BK the more your heat source has to work to maintain the desired boil intensity, and the more make-up air your home will have to heat in the winter and cool in the summer.
I’m assuming you’re going to exhaust out of the building, moving hot moist air from one room to another accomplishes little, if so then to Keller’s point, you’ll want to install a backdraft damper at the discharge point. If the ducting is going to pass through an unconditioned space [attic, crawlspace, etc.] then you’ll want to externally insulate it and install a second backdraft damper at the point where the ducting passes from conditioned to unconditioned space.
I recently came to the realization that I REALLY need to install a kitchen hood exhaust for brewing in the winter, Amazon has a Terrabloom 6", 350 CFM 0%-100% variable speed exhauster for $89.99 that I think may work well for my installation.
Good luck & cheers.
I went with the vortex. Vortex Powerfans - VTX Series
update: brewery in a large basement with ceiling open in the brew room, already have air vented from outside to inside next to furnace. Fan will be vented to a window though plexiglass to keep window sealed, will come directly from window down to boil pot under it with some sort of hood. Outside will have a flap to close when no air is being blown though it. brewery room has walls and a door but unfinished ceiling floor will be tile (about 100 sq feet floor).
Your responses leaves me with more questions than answers and without knowing the exact specifications of the fans you’re considering, I’m very reluctant to offer a recommendation. However, reviewing the specification provided by BrewBama, I would recommend the VTX600 (Thanks BrewBama!). This fan will move 318 CFM @ 1” static pressure. So, providing you don’t have a bunch of turns and bends in your duct, this fan should work well for you. It doesn’t sound like you will have nearly 1” of static unless it’s windy outside. So this fan should actually move much more than 318 CFM.
Also, you mention an air inlet duct next to the furnace. You also mention the brew room to be about 100 sqft with walls and a door. Can I assume the furnace is in the brew room? If not, I suggest a transfer grill to allow air from the inlet duct into the brew room. A 20” X 16” should work fine. Unless, of coarse, you leave the door to the brew room open while the fan is running. As such, a transfer grill will not be necessary.
Visor suggested a multi speed fan. Good idea! However, finding a multi speed fan could be costly. You may have better luck installing a high capacity variable potentiometer capable of handling the amperage of the fan. This will allow you a wider range of speed control for less money.
As a side note: The gooseneck curve I have exiting the fan was not only required to hit the window but was suggested as an actual design feature. The thought is the air velocity will cause any condensation to move quickly past the curve then dribble down the tube vs back into the kettle.
When in operation I can see the steam exiting the tube thru the plexiglass covered window.
I easily found several variable & multi-speed fans in the $60 to $110 range, I like the Terrabloom cuz it is variable from 0% to 100%, many of the others are only variable from ~50% to 100%. I also like the fact that unlike most of the others which have an attached power cord & speed controller, the Terrabloom has a detached controller and no power cord. My fan will be installed in the attic and I want the controller on the hood. As BrewBama did, if possible you want all your vertical rise immediately above your hood, then grade down all the way to your discharge point.
My handy dandy duct calculator is hiding from me this morning, but I’m reasonably certain the 400CFM through 6" pipe will be well below an inch of static, even through flex tubing. My suggestion if possible is avoid the flex and run galvanized pipe as there is significantly less friction loss through smooth pipe than corrugated flex duct. 30ga. furnace pipe & elbows may even cost less than the flex, IIRC the last time I bought any it was well under a buck per foot and ~ 2$ @ for the ells.
more info: furnace is in another room, door will be open to the brewery, ceiling is open (not drywalled) I would hope this would allow more air from outside of the brewery. I will have a hood over the boil pot.
Thank you guys for information on the fans, I will use the information for my quest for a fan and for the install. If you need for information from me let me know.
You could probably solve that problem by putting a condensation ring inside the exit tube, right above the fan. The condensation would then drip down the tube into the ring (which is like a half piece of pipe or metal tubing) and would exit through a piece of brewery hose routed to an external drain. That is how the commercial guys do it. Just an additional idea.
I had considered that and had my curve not worked would try it. Fortunately, the curve works as advertised so I am MC.
thank everyone for the responses. they are a great help to me. I bought the TerraBloom 6" 410 CFM Inline Fan with Variable Speed Controller. which will be attached to some kind of exhaust hood, I have yet to figure out what I will use, it could be as simple as a plastic tub from home depot or a range hood I could maybe find at the reuse store. I will work on having a drip tube, that sounds like a great idea.
When you get it installed, I’d be interested to know how loud it is. The biggest problem with most kitchen exhausters in my mind, is that most are so damn loud people won’t turn them on when they need to.
I have a 6" 440 CFM inline fan with a variable speed control routed to the outdoors through a 4-flap plastic vent cover (Home Depot) installed in a glass block basement window. It works great for my 5500-watt 3-vessel HERMS (15-gal Spike Brewing System). My “hood” is very similar to Brewbama’s, but I used a 30-qt stainless mixing bowl (Amazon) instead of a galvanized tub. I used an angle grinder to cut the 6" hole in the bowl. Some cutting wheels that I’d worn down to about 2-1/2" diameter did the trick (I’m “frugal” and hang on to such things for situations like this).
Remember that you really only need a hood above your boil kettle, and it only needs to be on when when you have that kettle running. I only need to run the fan at about 1/4-1/2 speed to keep up with the steam. Running it higher than that starts to affect boil-off rate and makes the elements have to run harder. I keep the lids on my HLT and MLT - so there’s little, if any, steam from those.
great information yugamrap this is what I planed on doing, but I may need to look at Amazon to find something like you have. Always up for good ideas.
Search Amazon for:
Hood = “Update International MB-3000HD SS Mixing Bowl 30 Qt Heavy Duty”
Fan = “VenTech IF6 6” Inline Duct Fan 440 CFM"
Variable Speed Control = “KB Electronics Model KBWC-18K (UL) Variable Speed Fan Control, Wall Mount, Rated 8.0 Amps @ 120 VAC for use with Shaded Pole and PSC Motors”