I hope this is an appropriate post for this section of the forum, it seems like it's on topic.
My wife and I drink a lot of sparkling water. We started out using SodaSream years ago, which works but is expensive and is kind of a pain in the butt if you actually drink a lot of sparkling water. Eventually we started drinking the Safeway brand Refreshe drinks which are really pretty good and reasonably cheap (~$3.00/12 pack). However, as I did not anticipate, our investment in this appliance is paying off in other unexpected ways....
Financially, there is no doubt it will take us awhile to recover the cost spent on this appliance. I bought all new equipment, mini fridge, tap, CO2 regulator, kegs, etc. You could save a lot of money on the build if you were able to score this stuff used. However, the build I wanted requires a specific model of mini fridge and I didn't want to buy used kegs. In the end, we are thrilled with the final product and having sparking water on tap on demand and I don't regret buying new components. This item is food related, I want to know the history of my stuff when it comes to that type of product.
The costs for the actual sparkling water are now: 5 lb CO2 tank refill, electricity usage (E star rating was $2.50-3.00/month) plus tap water. We are now getting ice cold, bubbly goodness sparking water for pennies (probably around a nickel) a gallon. The Refreshes were costing around 25 cents per 12 oz can plus a host of less quantifiable costs, like constant trips to Safeway (gas time, poor diet ((more on this in a bit..)), lugging that stuff home, and recycling time and effort. I was re-selling the cans at a local scrapyard but ended up stopping because my can collection was taking up most of my limited, valuable storage space. I would crush them and take in a big load every six months or so. I will say that my last load netted me $117 which is awesome, but in reality, it's just not worth the time to store, crush and take them in.
A few pics...
Finished Product
The build
The guts
I mentioned some other unexpected benefits of this build... (I'm typing this with my best Steven Dubner voice impression in my head for those of you who listen to Freakanomics!) The largest standout is that our Safeway bill is next to zero since this thing went online which is great. The Refreshes were causing a constant flow of trips to Safeway which inevitably lead to buying other things, usually things like donuts, chicken fingers and bagels, essentially, food that I should really be avoiding anyways. While this might be more of a willpower shortcoming than anything else, having the on-going need to stop at Safeway to get more waters has reduced my intake of crappy carry out food from the grocery store. We are shopping more at Trader Joes which is much more preferred by myself and my wife. Of course this has bumped up our TJs bill but this seems like a reasonable tradeoff to us. So I think there is less money being spent at Safeway on less healthy things which were directly attributed to our needs to be kept with a healthy supply of sparkling water.
Other benefits include less trips to take the recycling outside. Those cans add up quick and if we aren't drinking a twelve pack every other day, the recycling can go out a lot less often. I know it seems trivial, but as most of us know, all these little things actually add up. We can flavor our water exactly how we like it which usually involves a squeeze of fresh lime (these are cheap) or other juice or just plain. We can control the amount of carbonation so we get our water just how we like it (extra bubbly) and the two keg setup allows us to always have cold sparkling water on demand, no waiting, no screwing with tanks (okay the CO2 tank has to be refilled but a 5 lb lasts months).
I don't regret putting some coin into this appliance at all, I recommend it if anyone is dealing with all those containers of carbonated water.
The build was based upon this incredible blog post
http://ifoodblogger.com/how-to/make-carbonated-water/ which breaks down the various methods of making sparking water at home. My wife convinced me we needed to go all in and do it right, so we did. The actual kegerator build I followed is incredibly detailed and is from the same guy who wrote the post above,
http://ifoodblogger.com/how-to/build-a-kegerator/
