Freezer Advice

[darren996]

Got it sorted in the end, got the dremel out and trimmed off some excess off the middle shelf and bent it back carefully and pinned it to the top.  Drilled a few vent holes and put a condensation drain at the back of the shelf, going to throw a few fans in next and connect it up to an stc.  I managed to fit two kegs in, so that will keep me going for a while.  Planning on building a bar around it at some stage.

[Leann ull]

Snug

[nigel_c]

Not being smart but will there be room for disconnects & lines?

[darren996]

Yeah, just about got two in

[darren996]

Yep, checked the disconnects, its a tight fit but they fit

[Will_D]

Remember the advice for JG fittings:

They don't like to be strained! If you are tight for space a couple of 90 degree elbows will give you full 3d flexibility of gas and beer lines.

[darren996]

Cheers will, I will probably only put one keg in, I might source another fridge and use this for something else. I will order a few elbows, don't want an empty co2 tank

[BrewDorg]

Looking good Darren, just need to fill them up now.

[darren996]

So a little update on this.

The freezer was a bit tight for two kegs.  I had great difficulty getting a second hand freezer so I decided to turn it into a kegerator and fermentation chamber.  I had seen a few similar builds and said f&ck it, why not.

Laid out the frame in 2*2, all insulation was 8*4 *2 " styrofoam.  I used the styrofoam for framing all the angles, it was a great help.

It works really well.  I have the kegerator chamber working with an stc1000 and a brewpi on the ferm chamber, I still have a bit of work to do on the ferm chamber.
The compressor comes on every 40 to 45 minutes for 4 minutes roughly.  The stc probe is between the kegs and I have two 120" fans in the chamber. 
The fans are really important as the vastly reduce the cooling times in the chamber by circulating the cold air.  By having the fans running it reduced by cooling time from 11 minutes down to 4. The fans only come on when the freezer kicks in and this also reduces the cycle time of the freezer.  I can easily fit six kegs in with plenty of storage for hops and other stuff.  It was a fun project with a lot of head scratching and still a bit left to do.

[molc]

Looks great! How does the fridge cool the chamber, did you put a hole in the side? Also how how do you isolate the fern chamber to only cool as much as you need when running a fermentation around 20C

[darren996]

No I just reused the door. If you see on  the last pic the fridge is concealed to the left of the door.

The chambers are separated by 2" styrofoam and then the chambers are all wrapped in a roll of therm wrap silver insulation.

[Qs]

That looks great. Well done.

[darren996]

Looks great! How does the fridge cool the chamber, did you put a hole in the side? Also how how do you isolate the fern chamber to only cool as much as you need when running a fermentation around 20C

Did you mean cooling the ferm chamber? Haven't done anything there yet.  I have a shower extractor fan that I am going to use for this.   The plan is to build a heat exchanger.

I plan on putting some aluminium ducting in the keg chamber and sucking the hot air from the ferm chamber into the keg chamber to cool and return into the ferm chamber. This does two things
1. Minimise condensation
2. Reduce pressure. This thing is airtight. If I don't recirc the air I will have pressure issues. I will update when I have it finished.

[molc]

Lovely stuff. Interested to see how you do that, as it's a great multi use for the kegerator and a fermentation chamber

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

[darren996]

I will keep you posted, hopefully it will work