Cold Room Idea

[egolds77]

I read in a home brewing book an idea of using an upright freezer as the chilling source for a cold room. The idea is that you remove the door from the freezer, build a insulated cold room chamber, at least the height of the freezer, attach and seal the insulated chamber to the freezer opening and re-attach the freezer door to the insulated chamber. Essentially you are increasing the size of the cold space. I though this a great idea as you could make it a walk in style cold room for fermenting, largering, cellering etc.

I have a spare upright freezer and pictured a couple of fans attached to the front of the freezer with the door removed, circulating the air for a more even temp dispersion throughout the coldroom.

The book when on to say that the overall power consumption is only slightly more with the added volume, given it is proportional to efficiency of insulation and additional volume.

Has anyone done this and if so how good was it. I'm pricing things at the moment and don't want to waste my time/money if trials weren't that successful.

:icon_chickcheers:

 

[hayden]

sounds like it would work. but you'd have to make very sure that the insulation on the room is good cause if the room heats up too much you'll over tax the motor as it. the hard part is getting it cold getting it to stay there is the easier part once everything is working properly.

but thats my 2 cents worth

 

[sqyre]

It would work if it was a smallish area (i'm talkin perhaps the same area as the freezer again, maybe 2X)
and it would have to be well insulated say 75+mm cold room panel.
Even then you would only want to go down to say 10
But the biggest killer would be everytime you open that door you pretty much dump all that lovely cold air all over the floor.

Personally, i think a large chest freezer / esky style setup would be much more efficient.. :icon_cheers:


Sqyre...

 

[J.T]

You would have to change the thermostat, the standard freezer t/stat will not cut the compressor out until it reaches about -18c, which it would never do.

 

[Sully]

You would have to change the thermostat, the standard freezer t/stat will not cut the compressor out until it reaches about -18c, which it would never do.

A Tempmate or Fridgemate will solve that problem without having to change the thermostat.

 

[tahzan]

You may have seen this but it seems the way to go - I think the change in volume would be a bit much for freezer and it seems awkward to build around the freezer itself.

http://www.mrmalty.com/brewstuff.php

I suggested building one in the garage just to see the look on the govt's face. It is also making my request for a keg system seem more down to earth.

 

[egolds77]

You may have seen this but it seems the way to go - I think the change in volume would be a bit much for freezer and it seems awkward to build around the freezer itself.

http://www.mrmalty.com/brewstuff.php

I suggested building one in the garage just to see the look on the govt's face. It is also making my request for a keg system seem more down to earth.

Mr Malty has an awesome setup, green with envy. It sounds like the way to go, using an A/C unit. Would love to use this freezer for something though. Any ideas anyone? The cooling elements are the shelves.
:icon_chickcheers:

 

[white.grant]

Mr Malty has an awesome setup, green with envy. It sounds like the way to go, using an A/C unit. Would love to use this freezer for something though. Any ideas anyone? The cooling elements are the shelves.
:icon_chickcheers:

I have one like that (it's half of a whirlpool side by side) that I use as a fermentation fridge. I carefully bent the top three shelf elements down flat against the back wall and hooked it up to a tempmate. Great for lagering and I've used it at fridge tem,ps for additional beer storage for parties. Could also work well as a kegerator.

cheers

grant