Broken Brew Fridge

[tgarland]

Time for you all to have a laugh at my expense but I just broke my brew fridge

I finnaly decided to take the jump and cut out the section between the fridge/freezer of my brew fridge to turn it into a more effecient fridge.

Rather than cut out the whole section, I decided to use a hole saw in the middle that I could plug up later if reguired.

Unfortunately, I have put a hole in one of the copper cooling pipes and all of the gas escaped. I am capable to soldering up the hole, but have no means to re gas it.

Does any of the SA based members know of anyone that may be able to re gas the fridge without me spending a fortune?

Secondly, I have a brand new brew sitting in there fully carbonated. I am pretty sure I have a good seal on the corny keg, but is there any issues with this keg getting warm? Will I need to slightly re carbonate it again?

Thanks,
Tony

 

[peas_and_corn]

I don't know about getting the fridge regassed, but don't worry about your keg. If the lid seal is functional, you can just cool it back down and it'll be fine.

 

[JestersDarts]

I was thinking about whether or not I could do this with my brewing fridge. Perhpas I will do it slowly!

any info on doing this properly?

Is this a good idea to increase the efficiency of the fridge or not?

(I understand drilling through piping is not the angle we're aiming for haha)

 

[tgarland]

There is a lot of info out on the web stating that it makes a big difference to the fridge efficiency

My advise woudl be to carefully hand drill a small pilot hole through the sheet metal in the freezer compartment. Then you can insert a small object such as a skewer and punch through the insulation foam. If you dont hit anything solid, you woudl be ok to drill a bigger hole with the aim of getting tin snips in there.

A electric stud finder might be another option as it may pick up the copper coil.

it makes sense that if the fridgffe is 4 degrees while th efreezer is minus 18, that combining the two together would make a huge saving in power.

http://ecorenovator.org/diy-superefficient-fridge-1-kwh-day/

makes you wonder why all fridges arent made like chest freezers...

 

[Wolfy]

http://ecorenovator.org/diy-superefficient-fridge-1-kwh-day/

makes you wonder why all fridges arent made like chest freezers...

Since we have 2 digital temperature controllers already, I suggested this to SWMBO and the reply was that it would be next to useless due to the difficulty of stacking/packing/retrieving items on a regular basis (her not being overly tall does not help that situation either).

tgarland, I'm not going to laugh at you, but I am going to run with your idea in my fermenting fridge, but I'll do a bit of research and try to do it a little more carefully than you did. So thanks for the idea, and sorry for your loss. I've already got a couple of 12V fans circulating the air inside the fridge, so I"m sure that 'opening' the freezer compartment will give a nice boost in performance, might even be able to extend the fermenting space in the fridge.

 

[tgarland]

Yes, that was my intention. I am currently building an 60l stainless conical fermenter , which need the additional height to fit in.

I guess power tools after several brews did not help the situation.... a simple case of eager beaver!

Sober is the key