Question for Icemaster G40 owners

[stevodevo]

Hi All,

I just got my new G40, and wanted to get opinions on a sound I'm hearing. There's a link below to a video I took of it last night (no rick roll I promise) .

TL;DR - is the sound that comes in at 11 seconds in this video (https://photos.app.goo.gl/b1uc2buzQV3zmWQR9) normal for the G40 units?

The phone mic actually makes it seem louder than it is, and the compressor/fan is actually fairly quite. There's another louder sound that kicks in about 10 seconds after the compressor fires up (at 11 secs in my video) that I initially thought was just a loose panel, but it actually seems more like it's coming from inside the tank, so might be refrigerant flowing through the coils perhaps? That sounds does bring the overall sound level up quite a bit, but it does seem to taper off after the a while, so it's acceptable if that's just the way it is for these units.

Oh and it's probably worth mentioning I don't have any liquid in the tank yet, so I assume that would help dampen the sound a lot too.

As many others have reported, the unit does come with quite a lot of loose screws (in my case the fan was barely bolted down at all), so I've been around and tightened everything up, so I'm pretty confident it's not just something loose inside.

At about 48 seconds I shut the power off and you'll see the sound continues on for a bit longer, even after the fan stops, so I'm thinking it's just something to do with refrigerant, but just wanted to check and see if it's normal

If that sound is "normal", I'd say this is a pretty decent unit - for the price. Build quality is a bit rough, but once everything is tightened up, it's a simple yet solid little unit and doesn't appear to have too many things that could go wrong with it.


Thanks,
Steve

 

[stevodevo]

Just a quick update. I filled the tank with water and that extra sound is barely noticeable. The main sound is now the compressor and fan which is what I'd expect. So I think unless anyone did the same as me and tried it without water, you probably wouldn't have known what I was on about.

 

[GoonLurker]

I picked one of these up a couple weeks ago and have been really happy with it. Has been holding temperature great and barely turns on. How has your experience been so far?

 

[stevodevo]

I haven't actually used it yet. Still getting everything setup but should hopefully get going soon. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[krz]

I've had one for 10 months now, I use it for controlling the temperature of my fermenter.
When keeping the wort at about 19C, I set it to about 8C.
When I want to crash cool the fermenter, I set it to -4C.
I have 10 litres of glycol in the unit, so mixture is about 50/50.
I used to have only 5 litres of glycol in it, but it froze at -4.

Issues

1. The right hand side panel should have a hole in the top of it so that you can run your hoses thru. It was incorrrectly installed on the left side, so I had to unscrew both side panels and swap them.
2. When the compressor shuts down, I now hear a loud bang, like someone knocked twice your front door. There is something loose inside, so I will need to open it up again.

 

[stevodevo]

Thanks for the info krz. I was about to go looking for good info about the best water to glycol ration for these. I bought 2 x 5L bottles of glycol when I ordered the chiller, so it sounds like that was a pretty good guess. Interesting you mentioned 10L gives about 50/50 because I didn't think it was my imagination that the tank isn't 40L as the specs say. That's probably not accounting for the space taken up by the coils I suppose, but anyway, thanks again, it saves me having to figure it out myself.

 

[Belgrave Brewer]

Thanks for the info krz. I was about to go looking for good info about the best water to glycol ration for these. I bought 2 x 5L bottles of glycol when I ordered the chiller, so it sounds like that was a pretty good guess. Interesting you mentioned 10L gives about 50/50 because I didn't think it was my imagination that the tank isn't 40L as the specs say. That's probably not accounting for the space taken up by the coils I suppose, but anyway, thanks again, it saves me having to figure it out myself.

How did you go Stevo?

The tank is 40L, but with coils, it can hold about 38L.

I have 2 fermentors going on the G40, and each holds about 10L in the fermentor jacket plus the plumbing, so I have around 60L in my system all up. 33% glycol is what I've been told, so after testing with just water, I'm thinking I'll drain 20L of water and add 20L of glycol.