Today I met with our architect to discuss my concerns regarding the windows in the tap room and their visibility of the brewery floor. I am not nearly as concerned as I once was. I was worried they were not going to allow enough visibility into what’s going on in the brewery. We decided to swap locations for the 15 bbl system and the boiler for better visibility from the tap room.
We also discussed the boiler. We found some code written in the tenant improvement set of plans that lead our GC to believe the boiler may need to be completely enclosed. This would be terrible news on a multitude of fronts. Anywhere we move it, would result in significant increases in expense. Plus the time it takes to redesign and submit the plans. Craig is going to look into the case with the boiler manufacturer and Brandon and Mark with the city/county. If it is determined the boiler needs to be enclosed, our backup plan will be to put it on the drive in cooler side against the dividing wall and move the drive-in cooler back a few feet. Less than ideal but you gotta do what you gotta do.
We explored the idea of epoxying only part of the brewery floor area and expand it as needed, but everyone concluded that it should all be done upfront. The amount of dust involved in scuffing the floor up to prepare for the application of the putty is substantially more than demo and would leave the brewery a disaster, not something we want to deal with in the midst of production. Demo itself is making the entire place cloudy and you can see the dust billowing out the front opened doors. Epoxying the whole floor now makes our location immediately ready for new tanks with no more risk of permitting problems in the future.
One thing that we overlooked during the designing process was the location of the heat exchanger. We wanted the heat exchanger to be in a location where both our systems (our current 15 bbl and our future 30 bbl) could utilize it. Looking at the plans, there was only one option. To fit the heat exchanger where it needs to go, we need to make the Walk-in cooler for the tap room 2 feet shorter. It makes our cooler a little smaller, but we can work with it. Thank god we haven’t ordered the tap room cooler yet!
Our architect will try to have the plans ready for submittal by Monday. If not I will meet him at the city buildings on Wednesday to submit them.
In terms of construction, the saw cutting has been completed. Tim, our excavator, has been jackhammering away. All the neighbors were freaked out about the noise and came by to see what’s up. The existing slab looks like it was closer to seven inches, we thought it was just 4 inches. One thing that is concern is that we have not found the main drain line yet. It is not where it is supposed to be according to the building plans. Yikes!
Finally, we have been having trouble figuring out how to get our fork lift charger working. We finally broke down and decided to rent a battery to charge the forklift yesterday. Then last night Craig was watching a nature program on TV and the nature program gave him the answer to why our charger wasn’t working. Who says watching the boob tube is a waste of time! He made a special trip down to Tracy in the middle of the night and fixed it haha. We returned the rental today.