The puzzle mats are a good idea! and probably easier to clean up spills on. I work in a room with bare concrete floor, but have IKEA rag rugs left over from college days that I put them on. Protects the glass from the concrete. I have two PET carboys that I use for the first rack from my initial ferment with all the fruit (I mostly make country wines). Then I move into glass for long term storage.
HELP I dropped a carboy...how do I clean the concrete floor?
- Thread starter LenoreFrost
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LenoreFrost
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I love the various ideas for dollies and crates! I've been moving carboys back and forth between the counter for racking and a low storage shelf for processing/aging (which is a super sketchy process) and this is happening in a basement that is somewhere between normal basement height and crawlspace, so I'm also kind of ducking my head while moving stuff around (which makes it even sketchier). I thought about putting down rubber mats of some kind to cushion the carboys that get set on the floor and make cleanup easier, but honestly the whole space is wrong for doing this safely. The shelves are built in, which I thought was a cool feature until I realized that that meant I'd constantly be moving carboys on and off of them because there's nowhere to just store them on a counter or floor and the shelf is sized wrong for doing any racking there. There's a sink, but it's just barely too small to rinse out a carboy. I have a mini-jet pump that I might try and do racking with for now to avoid moving anything, but I think it's time to figure out a better workspace and different containers (maybe PETs or stainless). Just rinsing out a carboy on Saturday, my hands were shaking because I was so nervous about breaking another one. 
@LenoreFrost , If you wouldn't mind posting pictures of you current and possible available space for winemaking/aging/storing, I'll bet you'd get a lot of good ideas from others on the forum. Just a thought. Safety first!
I love the various ideas for dollies and crates! I've been moving carboys back and forth between the counter for racking and a low storage shelf for processing/aging (which is a super sketchy process) and this is happening in a basement that is somewhere between normal basement height and crawlspace, so I'm also kind of ducking my head while moving stuff around (which makes it even sketchier). I thought about putting down rubber mats of some kind to cushion the carboys that get set on the floor and make cleanup easier, but honestly the whole space is wrong for doing this safely. The shelves are built in, which I thought was a cool feature until I realized that that meant I'd constantly be moving carboys on and off of them because there's nowhere to just store them on a counter or floor and the shelf is sized wrong for doing any racking there. There's a sink, but it's just barely too small to rinse out a carboy. I have a mini-jet pump that I might try and do racking with for now to avoid moving anything, but I think it's time to figure out a better workspace and different containers (maybe PETs or stainless). Just rinsing out a carboy on Saturday, my hands were shaking because I was so nervous about breaking another one.
