Fridgie Question - Chest-freezer Is Struggling

[bigholty]

A year or two ago I bought a new 200 litre chest-freezer and made it into a kegerator with the addition of a collar and fridgemate temp controller. I stand to be corrected, but I suspect it has dropped some of its refrigerant charge (contained 110g of R134a when new) as the compressor is running pretty much all the time and only a small portion of the inside of the freezer is icing-up. This is not providing enough cooling to get it below 3 degrees (forget about minus 18), so it just keeps running.

My question is, how detrimental is it to run a system designed for minus 18 degrees, at a temp of 3 degrees? Outwardly, you might think that if a freezer can run at minus 18, then 3 degrees should be a breeze. But, the compressor, expansion orifice or capillary, evaporator and condensor have all been designed and selected to run at minus 18. The gas going into the compressor is 20 degrees warmer than it should be. Is this a problem, and could it lead to premature loss of refrigerant or damage/wear on the compressor?

Admittedly, it was a pretty cheap freezer **slaps own forehead for buying cheapest imported products AGAIN**. Option 1 is to just go and buy another one, hope I can get it exactly the same size, and transfer my collar and plumbing to the new one, then dump the old one in a ditch by the roadside. Option 2 is to call-out a fridge-mechanic to come and fix it, but I can see this being more expensive than Option 1, given the current rates for skilled trades. However, if I went for option 2, this might be the oportunity to buy a new compressor more suited to the intended duty of the system and end up with a kergerator that will stand the test of time. My ferment fridge is also a freezer (upright freezer) so I have the same concerns about operating this at tempertures well above what it was designed for.

Any fridgie mechanics out there who can offer some advice?

Cheers, Mark.

 

[vajoiner]

Mark,

Sorry about the slow reply i was just looking around at making kegerators etc and tripped over this.

I doubt you would have a refrigerant leak.

With your fridgemate do you have a compressor delay on there and also what is the differential set up at on the fridge mate? The worst thing you can do is short cycle the compressor (runs for a short amount of time, stops for a short amount of time, runs for a short amount of time and so on). This will shorten the life of it somewhat.

Ideally you should have a fridge running at 3 degree's but there is probably 100's of people on here that aren't having a problem with chest freezers or freezers running as fermenter fridges or kegerators.

Just check out all the parameter's on the fridgemate. Make sure the differential is a bit wider (running at three degree's maybe have a 4 or 5 degree differential, shouldn't affect the temperature in the kegs) and also make sure the fridgemate is on the highest short cycle function (haven't used fridgemates before so it might be compressor delay or something.

Hopefully that helps you out.