This project took me a lot longer than I expected but having a 1 year old and planning her first birthday party look up quite a bit of my time.
For those of you interested in building your own kegerator without using a tower, I thought I might include a few pics of what I did.
As I said in my previous post I had to raise my sink up so that I could fit the fridge under the bar and still allow it to open when I need to replace the kegs.
I did quite a bit of research and testing on my mini fridge (Haier HRQ04WNAWW) and found out that there aren't any coolant lines or wiring running thru the top of the fridge. This meant that I could drill into the top and run my CO2 in and my Beer lines out from this point. So using a hole saw and a dremel I cut out the hole for my beer lines:
I then Cut a piece of PVC pipe to fit into the hole. I wanted to make sure my beer lines wouldn't rub up against any sharp metal or be pinched when "making turns"
I added a PVC 90 degree piece onto the end of this to help my beer lines head in the right direction. The beer lines then run about 12 inches to the wall. I noticed that to get to the barrel the lines had to run between the wall and a frame piece for the bar. The frame is Very Securely attached at the top and bottom and spaced out from the wall due to the sink but JUST IN CASE in the unlikely event that the bar shifts slightly I wanted to make sure my beer lines were safe. So I fashioned this piece out of some PVC:
I shoved this piece snugly between the beam and the wall to use a a safe guard and guide for my beer lines:
From here my beer lines run about 6 inches before they go into the wall where they run along the copper cold water line. This line not only helped guide the beer line but will also assist in keeping them cool.
Using a circular saw I cut a barrel planter that I bought at Home Depot down. To about 6 inches in depth:
I knew that I wanted to run two beer faucets out of this barrel and the hole already drilled in the center would be used for the water faucet. So using the hole saw I drilled a hole on either side of the center and installed my faucets:
After the faucets were installed I attached the beer lines to them, installed the kitchen sprayer as my bar faucet (which runs from the cold water line that is also cooling my beer), and mounted the barrel onto my wall:
I still need to install a CO2 Distributor(which will have to wait until after the holidays. Until then I have a single CO2 line running into my fridge that I use to pressure each keg individually.
All in All, I am VERY happy with this system! The beer lines stay pretty cool since they only run about 18 inches in insulation wrap then another 2 feet along the cold water line. The flow rate is quite nice. It could perhaps be a tad quicker. I have Plenty of extra beer line in the fridge so I can shorten the run a bit if I wanted to but for the time being I am happy with it.
I apologize that I don't have more pictures of my process but I was so excited to get this project done that I didn't think to take more. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them