Written by: Alex

Created: 04 December 2022

Hits: 400

A cold room is essential in most modern breweries and tap houses. The room provides an unfluctuating environment for yeast reducing stress during fermentation, allows conditioning at cellar temperatures and cold storage for finished products. Generally the desired temperature is around 11-12 degrees C which is much warmer than most walk-in fridges and freezers. I calculate the maximum delta is around 8 degrees above/below ambient temperature, and this should be easy to achieve with a reasonably powered mini-split air conditioning unit. I've been considering the cold room design from the start of my brewery build, and created two insulated areas of floor at the back of the room to serve as the base. I was originally planning on spanning the entire width of the room but considering the cost of materials in the current climate have decided to just use half of the available space and expand later if required. I plan to construct a timber-framed free-standing insulated room with easy to clean walls in case of beer accidents. The remaining space will serve as my dry area (as it is raised from the main floor) in which I'll store my grain.

So at the start of this task the date is December 2021, the COVID pandemic is still rampant, fuel prices are rising, timber is in short supply, and my local builder's merchant has very little in stock. Things are not off to a good start! I have to bite the bullet and get started, so I decide to only buy half of the required timber in hopes that the prices will drop as the new year progresses. I only have limited space anyway and I can get started straight away. My plan is not complicated, it's just to build a set of standard stud walls and fill the interiors with insulation. The walls will then be covered with a vapour barrier and then a washable surface which is in turn sealed against the already existant epoxy floor. If a pressurized barrel sprays beer down the wall it won't be the end of the world and all that liquid should be funneled down the floor drain.

Framing

I must admit I find timber sizes to be quite confusing. Even though the builder's merchant lists the timber at e.g. 100mm x 50mm, what you actually get is 89mm x 45mm. This is because it has been planed down to a straight edge and wood is obviously very variable by nature. I needed to get some slightly larger timber as I need to find a measurement that matches the insulation I'm going to buy, otherwise it will stick out of the sides by a small amount ( unless I choose a type of insulation that can be squished smaller ). Generally solid insulation performs better than soft insulation, but I may not have a choice in this regard. A chat with my local Jewson's and they suggest 100x50mm joists as these are a standard size and are normally reasonably straight. They also turn out to be cheaper than CLS timber that you'd use for creating stud walls. I'm happy with the joists as I'm not planning on putting any weight on the wall from above ( such as a second floor ). The first set of wood is delivered and I can start work cutting it to size. To do this I bought a small mitre saw from Screwfix and even though it's their cheap 'own' brand it does the job very well! At the end of the first day after the wood was delivered I have my first set of timber pieces cut to size and ready to assemble. Unfortnately as they are wood they are required to be sealed by painting them with a suitable substance before I can do anything with them. I'm taking no chances with any timber so I'm painting them with Zinsser BullsEye 123 ( which takes 1 hour to dry ) and then topping that with Zinsser Permawhite which will provide a good surface which is anti-bacterial and anti-mould. This should protect the wood in case it does get damp and produces all sorts of wild yeasts and other nasties that may interfere with my fermentation.

Painting a large amount of wood with multiple coats of paint in January turns out to take a long time. It's possible to paint multiple sides at a time but the drying times for the paint are extended due to the low temperatures at this time of year. The sealant coat takes 4hrs to dry and the top coat 8hrs. I quickly get into a routine of two coats a day, one at the start of the day, and another before it gets dark as I still have no lighting in the brewery. The top coat is just a single coat once per day. It turns out that I need to do two coats of each type of paint and this takes a week to achieve. Whilst all this exciting drying is happening I need to fill the gap in the wall that houses the window that I have blocked up. My plan is to fill it with lamb's wool insulation and use some wire and wood sections anchored to the wall to hold it in place. The lamb's wool will allow the control of any moisture that may occur due to condensation or the natural breathing of the stone wall. I'm also planning on using a vapour barrier to seperate this section from the insulation that will be placed inside and behind the timber sections closest to the walls.

Around Mid-January I'm able to assemble my first section of wall. I've been watching a series of Youtube videos in which a famous American carpenter builds a wooden framed house from scratch. I'll be using the same techniques as him when I'm doing this. The only notable difference is that I'll be using screws instead of nails as I may wish to disassemble the walls at a future date. The size of the panels are dictated by what I can handle by myself as I'm doing this work totally on my own. I've therefore decided to split the long walls in half so I can manage these sections, simply bolting them together when they are in place. I manage to man-handle the first section onto the base and i'm pretty pleased with it. I have to build all the wall segments before I can purchase more timber due to lack of space. I progress steadily through January and buy the second half of the timber at the start of February, repeating the tedious painting once more. On Valentine's Day I've managed to build four out of six segments and these are standing up by themselves on the base. The end segment is slightly different as it has a door, the odd shape of which provides too much for me a lug around the room by myself. My parents are visiting so I leave it on the floor as a "welcome to stay" job! With Mum and Dad providing extra hands to hold things I'm able to get the walls squared up and screwed together. I'm anchoring the sections to the stone walls using some heavy duty angled brackets and some painted wooden stand off's. For extra strength I add the standard double row of timber at the top of the wall and some roofing pieces are placed at intervals to hold the ceiling panels.

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Insulation

I happen to have a good deal of rockwool rolls that I need to use so I'll be using these to fill the gap between the existing stone walls and the timber frame on two sides. I firstly place a layer of lamb's wool to help control moisture and allow the walls to breathe. I plan to provide some ventilation to allow any moisture to evaporate, but I don't expect to many issues with this as the walls are in good conditon. Once I've got the basic layers of insulation in place I'm able to make a box around the section exposed to the window at the back. This will enclose the insulation and make the cold-room to window interface more tidy. There is a ventilation hole in the wall which I'm planning to use to run the air-conditioning pipes between in the inside and outside, and this saves me drilling a hole through a metre-thick wall! I plan to allow access to it via a removable hatch in the finished room. Once the area between the walls and the timber is full we work on installing the cavity slabs between the timbers and very soon we've got a yellow cube. The next stage is to add a vapour barrier which should prevent the insulation becoming damp as this will reduce it's effectiveness. This is stretched over the surface and stapled at intervals.

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Surfacing

With Mum & Dad returning home I begin the work to enclose the insulation and provide a solid surface for the room. I was originally planning on buying a waterproof material such as PVC or another set of the Aluminium Composite cladding to use on the inside of the cold room. This would make it simple to install and clean, but unfortunately world events were against me this time. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has meant that petrol and diesel prices have sky-rocketed and couriers that deal with big and bulky items, such as 8ft x 4ft panels are now charging very high prices for delivery. Once these charges are factored in it raises the cost to stupid levels that just don't make sense. Mistakes with the installation become costly when all the material requires expensive and specialist handling. I have therefore decided to use plasterboard as it is available locally and can be tanked to make it waterproof. I'll then apply some white tiles over this surface in order to make everything easy to clean. The first stage was to put down some architrave onto which the plasterboards would rest. I can then tile right down to the floor and then seal everything tight to allow the water to run straight down. I decided to buy a laser level and took a gamble on a cheap chinese brand I found on Ebay. The Level has made everything so much easier, especially as the cold room floor is sloped and there are some wacky angles to cut. It make finding the studs easy as I could set up the laser to shine down the centre of the timber and simply put the screws in once the board was in place. Plasterboard is not something I've done much with and I made sure to watch some good Youtube videos on the subject which helped greatly avoiding mistakes. At the end of April I had the room fully covered and ready to tape. I didn't realise plasterboard was so easy to cut using a simple sharp knife, but I really wish it wasn't quite so heavy. Plasterboard seems to be the ultimate material that is 'just good enough'. It's pretty rubbish but manages to achieve the desired results without being too expensive.

 

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Tanking

I decided to use a liquid tanking solution in order to make my plasterboard totally waterproof. The first stage was to apply a special 'fudge' tape with a hairy backing over all the corners and joints. It was pretty tricky trying to get the tap smooth and wrinkle free. I did the best I could and it turned out that it didn't really matter once the tiles were in place. I also took this opportunity to drill holes ready for services such water, electric, beer and gas. I had to order the tanking solution from a specialist company and this took some time to be delivered. I managed to save some money as it turned out I had already got a large amount of the required primer liquid from my work on the floor screed. The process of applying the tanking liquid to the walls was very messy but quite straightforward overall. It took around four coats to get it properly sealed by applying each coat at right angles to each other. The liquid itself was quite expensive and it dawned on me just how big my project was as the amount I used was about the same as ten standard shower installs. This process took me most of May due to delivery issues and drying times, but at least the temperatures were higher at this time of year!

 

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Tiling

I'm after a medium sized white tile of an acceptable quality at a good price. I was sure that I'd be able to find something on one of the many tile websites in the UK. It turns out that tiles are now a lot more expensive than I remember. Finding simple white tiles wasn't as straightforward as I thought. Most of the tile companies cater to those installing bathrooms so the difference in paying £30 per square metre and £40 per square metre isn't too bad when you only need around 4 square metres. The surface area of the cold room is around 33 square metres so a small price increase matters a lot more to me. I needed to wait for a special offer and after a couple of weeks I managed to find some Turkish white tiles at £10 a square metre, so I ordered 400. These turned up at 9am the next day and not a single one was broken or damaged! I wish that more tile companies would list the thickness and weights of their tiles as plasterboard has limits and it's annoying having to work it out from the tile size and density. I decided that after my slightly shonky tiling on the house I would use a tile-levelling system for the first time. These are a number of tabs and wedges that pull the tiles closely together and ensure that the corners are all at the same height. The first row of tiles was the most critical as these needed to be cut precisely to fit the slope of the room. I tried a number of different methods of cutting the tiles and after some experimentation decided to use a jigsaw with a tile cutting blade. I don't own and didn't want to spent the money hiring a wet saw for the job, and the tile jigsaw blades were £3 for 2.

I am not the world's fastest tiler, and I managed to install around 45 tiles a day working through with no lunch. As I am creating a wet room it is recommended to back-butter each tile which drastically increases the time it takes. I was really pleased with the tile-levelling system - it didn't add too much work and improved the overall results making me look far more professional than I actually am! I decided to use a brand of pre-mixed tile adhesive from Mapei which got good reviews and I'm glad I did because it would taken so much longer having to stop and mix more adhesive every so often. I estimated how much tile adhesive I'd need based on the product guidelines, but it turned out I needed way more. I encountered a problem mid-way as there didn't seem to be any more of the tile adhesive anywhere to buy. This summer has been incredible hot and much of Europe is suffering massive heatwaves. Italy was hit very hard and had water shortages, and I wonder whether this could have been the cause of the tile adhesive shortage. Pretty much all shops and websites were out of stock. I managed to hunt down some more but was forced to stop and start plasterboarding the outside of the room whilst I waited for more adhesive to become available. I had to switch brands for the last row and a half and I hope that it doesn't cause any future problems. Once all of the tiles were dry and the levelling system wedges removed I had something that looked really good. The whole tiling process took two months due to the hunt for adhesive and I'm glad it's finally done.

 

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Grouting

In order to ensure that my wet room can be hosed down if necessary I need to choose a waterproof grout. I settled on Kerapoxy CQ which is a specialist epoxy-based grout with anti-bacterial properties and chemical resistance. I had to order this specially online and I am REALLY glad that I was cautious using it. The instructions said to dump the entire hardener gel into the bucket and mix, but instead I divided the contents of the hardener and base cement into four parts. I wasn't confident that I could grout quickly enough before it became unworkable ( 45 mins ) and it turned out that I was right. Using small amounts I filled the gaps between the tiles. Epoxy grout has got to be the stickiest substance known to man. I frequently had to scrub it from my skin using an abrasive pad. The float I was using to apply the grout was basically unusable at the end. Epoxy grout is much thicker and harder to work than normal grout and the videos on youtube were no use in practise. I think I did a good job. After the grout had mostly set I had to use a very expensive bottle of spray to clean the tiles in order to get rid of the epoxy residue that was left behind. The tiles needed to be cleaned another four times before I got them clean enough.

 

Roofing

Now that the inside was done it was time for the roof. I need to buy a few more timbers to decrease the gaps and of course these needed to be painted. I looked at a number of different roofing options but decided to go with ceiling tiles. These are made of gypsum with a pvc coating and can be cleaned easily as well as conforming to fire regulations. Each tile is pretty light and will be screwed directly to the joists with PVC H sections to hide the gaps down the long axis of the room. I'll install another type of trim over the short axis gaps at a future date. I plan to create a sandwich with tiles on the top and bottom and insulation wrapped in vapour barrier as the filling. This is something I can do on my own and is easier than trying to install huge sheet materials by myself. I was able to progress steadly and the result looked quite good. Gradually the light inside slowly faded as I installed more and more tiles until it was mostly dark. On the whole the tiles were easy to work with, but the PVC tape used to seal the edges of the tiles kept coming loose during the process. Luckily these will all be covered with trim once finished.

 

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Door

The last stage was to build a door. This was a simple figure of eight design with a hollow core that would be filled with the same sandwich filling as the roof. This would allow more of the door to be insulated. As usual with doors they can be a pain to get to hang correctly. I needed to ensure that the door created an air tight seal so that my colder air would not escape. The facings of the door were made out of 5.5mm plywood and I was very disappointed with the results. I should have gone for a thicker plywood sheet but this is a material that has doubled in price since the pandemic and I hoped that 5.5mm would be sufficient with enough fixings applied. 'New' plywood seems to be made of eucalyptus wood which peels apart very easily, especially after you've cut it. I installed some magnetic catches to keep the door closed and plenty of rubber seals to keep the cold air in place. Surprisingly I could not find a stainless steel handle of the type I required locally, so I was forced to go with cast iron. I also installed a hairy draight excluder and a kick and hand plate on the inside.

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Finishing Up and Conclusions

I needed a method of containing the insulation down the side of the cold room and encouraging air flow to allow the wall to breathe. I decided to construct a simple wooded frame to hold some fibreglass mesh as this will achieve my goals and won't allow insects to take up residence. Once this was in place the final piece of cladding could be added and everything sealed. The last thing that is needed are some plastic PVC trims to cover the edges both externally and internally. These will applied later as I need to batch buy trims for all parts of the brewery.

Whilst I'm very happy with how the cold room has turned out it has taken me so much longer than I expected (almost 11 months). The world has changed in the last 2-3 years and it's now so much more difficult to get things done. It used to be the case that items ordered online offered next day delivery, and usually they turned up on time or a day late. Now orders advertise 3 day delivery and usually turn up a week or so later. More and more parcels are not turning up at all. None of this has been helped by the rise in petrol prices, the current cost of living problems, COVID restrictions, strikes and changes to foreign imports of goods. Everything seems to be gradually taking longer and longer and some products are becoming lower in quality whilst their prices have doubled. This has had a large impact on me and I'm having to wait longer to find good deals to avoid wasting money. I think this is affecting other people just as much as me, I've definately noticed houses in my local area seem to be taking longer to be built. I don't know what the future holds but I will continue to trudge forward.

 

Written by: Alex

Created: 21 December 2021

Hits: 383

Beer is brown, sticky and messy. It is inevitable that I'm going to spill some at some point during the manufacturing process so it's important to make it easy to clean up as possible. The first step in achieving this was made with the epoxy flooring but it's time to address the walls. At the moment they are nice and white, but lime is known to absorb liquids and once they've been splattered with beer for a few weeks things could start looking very messy indeed. Most commercial kitchens solve this problem by applying some sort of cladding to the walls - either tiles, splash-backs or special coatings. The problem with this approach is that coating the walls in something waterproof works against the design philosophy of the building. The walls need to breathe, and moisture must be controlled by allowing it to travel to a surface where it can evaporate quickly. Trapping it behind tiles or a piece of plastic is only going to cause problems. What I need is a rigid material that can be mounted a small distance away from the walls allowing air to circulate behind and moisture to evaporate.

My initial plan was to use 3mm hygienic UPVC sheet. I was hoping that I could mount some sort of railings on the wall and clip them in place. I ordered a couple of sample thicknesses of the material online and it seemed to be quite suitable. I decided to order 4 large 8ftx4ft sheets to investigate their suitability. I needed to cover a couple of areas in the brewery that were standing out to me and the PVC in this order would be used for that. If all went well I would use it to clad the rest of the room. Unfortunately when it arrived it was much more flexible then I'd imagined. I needed to add a support behind it every 200mm just to make it seem as if it were a rigid surface. I probably should have bought a larger sample earlier to see this. The four panels were suitable for the jobs that I wanted to use them for, and these included covering a bookshelf, tidying up a doorway and covering an area of the ceiling that I'd worked on when I had a leak. The doorway required me to support the panel with a lot of wood and each of these needed sealing and painting to prevent mold in the long term. If I wanted to use PVC as my main cladding material I'd have to put insane amounts of supports on the walls and this turned out to not be practical at all.

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With PVC out of the picture we really only have other types of plastic and metal to choose from. Plastic of any rigidity is pretty expensive, I considered HDPE and acrylic sheets but these were just out of my budget. Stainless steel would be the gold standard but is even more expensive than the plastic options. Around October 2021 I had settled on Aluminium sheets and was trying to work out the thickness I needed by ordering slightly larger samples when I came across Aluminium Composite. This material is a sandwich of two layers of Aluminium and a core of HDPE and has a thickness of 3mm. It's used in the sign printing industry to make rigid shop signs and panels. I ordered a A3 sample sheet of it and was surprise how light and rigid it was. I decided that this was the material I needed and I tracked down an Ebay seller that was offering to sell sheets wholesale. At this time the HGV driver shortage was in full swing and there were very few companies that were offering shipping of big and bulky items to Wales. In the end I had to pay over £150 shipping to get the 9 sheets delivered.

When they arrived I needed to figure out a method of attaching them to the wall. There are lots of nice stainless steel "stand-off" brackets you can buy to mount your signs and posters to the wall but experimentation led me to believe I'd need to support the panel every 350mm in order to make it seem rigid. This meant a staggering number of brackets would need to be purchased at £8 each which was clearly unfeasible. In the end I settled on making my own stand off brackets from PVC rod cut into 18mm chunks with a hole drilled in the centre. This worked out at 50 brackets for £10 or 20p each. I also managed to cut down on the number of brackets by realising that the panels didn't need to be attached to the wall along their entire surface. They just needed something to prevent them from bending inwards and screws holding them in place infrequently. I had a lot of polystyrene off-cuts from when I was creating expansion/movements joints in my screeding days and I'd kept a big bag in case they were useful later. Cutting squares of polystyrene I stuck these to the back of the panels and typically drilled 18 holes that would be used with the stand offs to attach them to wall. I made life easier for myself by using 10mm rawl plugs and this made guiding the screws simple. The walls behaved for the most part and I only had to patch a few places with filler when needed.

I stuck a baseplate using PVC architrave to floor on which to rest the base of each panel and then this would be sealed with silicone at a later date. I decided on two heights of panels - 8ft (2440mm) in areas where I would be manufacturing beer, and 4ft (1220mm) on the rest of the majority of the room. The areas around the windows needed extra wooden supports and I had some of the old maple floorboards to use. The last thing to do was to fit trims between the panels and around the edges. I decided on Aluminium strips for between the panels and PVC right angle profile to seal the edges. I drilled holes in the PVC profile to allow air flow. Silicone sealant is then applied to the base of the panels and we now have a watertight envelope in which beer should mostly flow down into the drain in the centre of the room. This cladding stage has taken me a good deal of time, but now this is completed I can move on to the cold room at last!

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Written by: Alex

Created: 15 August 2021

Hits: 583

It's now time to address the safety of the big hole I've left in the Brewery floor. Whilst not terribly deep it's not very convenient climbing up and down into what I have affectionately dubbed 'The Pit'. The lack of any safety precautions around the edge would also provide a field day for Health and Safety! It's time to install a rail around the edge and a ladder to allow me to climb up and down easily. I've always been very keen to try and build something using the Q-Clamp system. It looks just like a giant lego set for adults, so I decided to embrace my inner child and have a go. I ordered a number of lengths of what essentially is scaffolding pole and a whole box of awesome looking connectors and set to work building a ladder. The pipe was pretty easy to cut using an angle grinder but it was challenging getting the cut to be straight. There is a tendency to spiral as you cut around the pipe, but this doesn't matter too much as long as the spiral isn't too large as the cut ends of each pipe are contained within the connectors. Once I'd cut all the lengths to size I laid them out on the brewery and painted them with two coats of Rustoleum Combicolour Original in bright yellow. The option to buy pre-power coated pipe does exist but it makes everything so much more expensive, so I figured why not paint everything myself. I was very happy with the finish that the paint provided. Initally the coating looks very uneven, but over time the surface sort of "self levels" making everything look pretty professional. The only mistakes with the painting that I think I made were underestimating the drying time and putting on too thick a coat in places so that "drips" formed on the underside of the pipes. Overall though not a bad result!

The problems started when assembling the ladder however. I was working to a design that I'd created but you are never sure just how practical a design is until you assemble it. Q-Clamp works by extending a worm screw into the side of the pipe causing it to grip by friction, and this also destroys any painted surface that the worm screw is tightened into. There were times when I just needed to temporarily slightly tighten some of the connectors so that I could work on another section of the ladder and each time I left a mark on the paint. There were also fine tuning that needed to be made on the design in things like the spacing between the rungs. I did finally manage to get the ladder into position and attached to the wall and floor but the paintwork was severely scratched in quite a few places. The final assembled ladder was also really heavy. The wall plates were attached using stainless screws and 10mm All4One rawl plugs and the floor plates were screwed into the floor using Thunderbolts. I'd previously not had any experience with these, the thunderbolts are self tapping concrete screws and seem to have seated well. The main problem with these was getting a deep enough hole and removing the dust created during drilling in order that there was enough space for the bolt to full screw down.

The fence around the edge of the hole was much less work, the main problems occurred here when slotting the long horizontal pipes through the uprights. Once again there is repainting to do :( Once all the joints were tight I was actually pretty pleased with the results. I think the only thing I need to decide on is a non-slip covering for the ladder rungs in case of wet feet. There are several options including foam pipe covers and non slip plastic layers that I can apply at a later date.

 

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Written by: Alex

Created: 08 July 2021

Hits: 608

I don’t think that anyone would argue with me when I say that the last 12 months have been distinctly odd. The Pandemic has changed a great deal of things for many people around the world and I don’t think there is anyone who hasn’t been affected by it in some way or another. I consider myself to be very lucky to be able to continue working from home and progressing the brewery with low to medium amounts of disruption. Having a project to concentrate on has allowed me to make my way through these ‘interesting’ times with my sanity more or less intact.

Now that my lovely epoxy floor has dried it was time to concentrate on the walls and ceilings. The ceiling in the brewery is modern pink plasterboard so it can be treated and painted using modern paints ( of which there are so many ). I needed a coating that would be more or less maintenance free for a number of years due to the height of the ceiling in the building. I decided to use a paint normally used by modern builders in wet environments such as bathrooms and showers. The treatment consisted of two coats of moisture sealant and two coats of ‘top’ coat which contained a much stronger anti-mould component. Supposedly the paint should stay white for at least 7 years, but we’ll have to see if this is true. I decided against using a very long pole and roller to reach the 6 metre high peak of the ceiling as I deduced that I’d probably end up wasting a lot of the paint as it dripped on the floor. Instead I fetched my trusty scaffolding tower and climbed up to reach the ceiling with a much shorter roller.

This approach did indeed result in fewer drips, spills, and damage to the ceiling from me waving around a very long stick but it was a good deal slower. The area of ceiling I could reach from the scaffolding was about a fifth of the width of the room so I had to move the scaffolding between painting ‘stripes’. Each base coat of paint took 1hr at 20C ( thanks summer weather) to dry before it could be re-coated and each top coat took 2hrs. Initially it took around 1hr to dismantle, move and rebuild the scaffolding (as I don’t have wheels ), but I managed to speed things up as I got more practised. I was impressed by the coverage of the paint and even more by the excellent delivery service by ToolStation who must have become tired of shipping so many paint cans to me. The whole ceiling took around 3 weeks to paint and I was lucky to have some help when COVID restrictions were eased around September 2020. Now that the room had a pure white ceiling everything looked a lot bigger, cleaner and brighter.

On days that I wasn’t up scaffolding painting the ceiling I was starting to tackle to walls in the building. The first stage involved paint scraping, and I’m sure that anyone who has ever visited a school knows the type of paint they use, and more importantly - it’s thickness! I had already scraped some of the paint off in previous years and this allowed moisture to permeate under the edges of the more stubborn areas making it easier to remove. Peeling back the layers of paint was like exploring the stratification of sedimentary rocks. It was during this process that a lot more weak areas of plaster were exposed. I even found hollow areas that had been filled with coal and mud and then been painted. In the end some of the paint just wouldn’t shift with any type of scraper, chemical or heat gun. I had to experiment with my angle grinder and I found that using ‘Semi-flexible discs’ from ToolStation made short work of even the most stubborn paint, although the levels of dust made the room look like the aftermath of a nuclear incident. They lasted a lot longer than standard flap discs.

Now that I had removed the paint it was easy to see what types of surfaces were present. The plaster on walls was a mix of concrete, modern pink plaster and old lime. All of the pink plaster had absorbed moisture as you’d expect and had turned into a kind of very light honeycomb. There was a lot of very weak lime plaster which turned to powder as soon as the top ‘skin’ was scraped off. The areas under the windows were prime examples of this. In addition there were sections of the walls that contained wood that supported the roof beams. Pretty much all the plaster had de-bonded from the wood and cracked and bowed outwards. There was quite a lot of work to do and I think I ended up replacing around a third of the plaster in the room with new lime. A lot of the blown plaster was very thick and in places was around 4 inches, which required 5-6 coats. There were lovely sections that just disintegrated into holes so big I could put my foot through. I finally finished the last of the plastering in December 2020 and due to a very cold winter ( and who can forget the snow in April ) there were still areas of the walls that weren’t dry enough to paint until July 2021.

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My main concern with the walls was to support good moisture control and in order to do this I needed a paint that would allow moisture to travel through it. Most modern paints are unsuitable as they contain plasticisers which block the flow of moisture. This is a good thing in modern houses as moisture makes cement based surfaces weaker over time. As these paints were no good for me I turned to the range of specialist lime paints and found a UK company that produced a product that sounded good. This paint was based on lime and due to it’s alkalinity would provide good anti-bacterial and anti-mould properties. To my surprise the paint also contained strands of graphene which gave it a tough easy-to-clean surface. I was able to source the paint locally from Celtic Sustainables in Cardigan and I bought the recommended primer to go with it. The Primer turned out to look like used dishwater and was very thin, the coverage was excellent however and I’ve only had to buy a single pot to cover all the walls. The white top-coat was also thinner than I expected and didn’t seem to cover very well when applied. It was blatantly transparent after the first coat but it did go more opaque once dry. Many of the surfaces required three coats which made the total cost of painting rather high. The other downside to the process was that the lime paint required 28 days to cure and during that time it was recommended to keep the surfaces free of direct sunlight.

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Now that the room is painted everything looks so much cleaner and brighter. To finish some of the wall areas ( such as the fire place, extra doorway and bookcase ) I bought some uPVC sheets and cut panels that I affixed over them. I also used some of the uPVC on the ceiling to cover the repairs I’d made due to water damage from a missing tile. As I plan to build the cold-room at the back of the room this will result in me mostly blocking an existing window. I decided to remove the glass window units from the frames and replace them with insulted uPVC panels. I’m hoping that this will prevent problems from blown or leaking glass units in the future that will be problematic to fix once the cold-room walls are built. Due the ridiculous price of pre-made uPVC window panels I ended up once again making my own from uPVC sheet, polystyrene sheet, glue and gaffer tape. I think they look pretty good.

The last thing to do was to give Cerdigion Council Building Control a call to get signed off with them. This seemed to go fine so the next stage of the project is to begin the task of moving the company into the now finished albeit basic building and start to install the brewery specific equipment. I can finally stop being a builder and start making a brewery!