Two fans? Kegerator help!

I recently swapped my converted Frigidaire mini fridge for a Danby 5.2. I fully insulated my tower and added a tower chiller, which works really good for the tower. The fan box sits on the back shelf and the hose stops directly under the faucet elbow stems. I left plenty of room for cold air to drop back down.

I used the same thermometer set up from the Frigidaire - which always worked pretty good. Using a wired thermometer, I set a thermometer probe in a bottle of water on the floor of the fridge and ran the wire to the display outside the fridge. I then set a digital refrigerator thermometer at the top of the fridge. In the beginning, the top thermometer ran about 3-4 degrees higher than the one at the bottom (38 bottom, 41 top) - as expected. Now, suddenly, it's keeping a 7-8 degree difference, (37 bottom, 44 top). The fridge is inside the house. There has been a recent weather change here to dramatically higher temps and higher humidity outside, and slightly so inside due the weather.

I haven't put a keg in the new fridge yet, I was letting it run for a couple weeks so that everything gets stabilized temp-wise and normal. I was supposed to hook up the first keg tomorrow.

1. What would cause this change in the temp differential?
2. Should I add another fan to circulate air inside or could there be a bigger problem?

I'll bet some of that goes away once you've got a keg in there, to help provide some cold thermal mass. Any idea what the temp in the tower is reading? Its possible that even with your insulation, its running warmer than the freezer, and your fan is now pushing that warm air back down into the freezer, where it can cool off. Essentially that's what you want, you'll just have to see if adding a few kegs helps.

Even still, it might not hurt in the future to think about a second fan to circulate within a freezer (I've got one in my collared keezer). I figure for a few bucks, I've got that piece of mind that I'm at least doing something to help.

So strange... it had that 7-8 degree difference starting sometime yesterday and throughout today. Tonight it's back to a 3 degree difference - 37 at the bottom, 40 at the top. Not sure that it matters, but we had a massive cold front come through last night and the humidity dropped from high 50's in my house to upper 30's and the outside temp dropped from yesterday's 70's to todays upper 40's (crazy Louisiana weather).

The tower is sitting around 49 and feels pretty cold to the touch. I hadn't thought about the thermal mass of the keg, I bet you're right about it helping even it out. I have a couple fans already wired that I experimented with for the tower before settling on the one I used. If the keg doesn't settle it, I'll add one.

It's still odd that the top/bottom variance changed from 3 degree difference for a week to a 7 degree difference for a day, then back to a 3 degree difference. I've only opened the door once every couple days to quickly check the top thermostat - takes less than a second. I've read a little bit about Danby's having a crazy auto defrost that varies from fridge to fridge and even varied by the room temp/humidity. Could it be that I caught it in the middle of a defrosting period (and possibly missed any previous defrosting cycles)?

It's the outside temperature plus the air is stratifying inside the kegerator.

thargrav said:

It's the outside temperature plus the air is stratifying inside the kegerator.

Click to expand...

So even if the kegerator is indoors, the major outdoor temp swing in our area (which did raise the indoor temp a couple degrees) plus the big indoor humidity change could cause this weird temp deal in my kegerator?

As far as stratification... I'm gonna definitely add another small fan tonight and see what it looks like in the morning.

It's the indoor temperature change that causes the issue. Full size refrigerators have circulating fans to stop temperature stratification from happening but counter top refrigerators don't. They hust have a simple cold plate in the back and the air gets cold & falls to the bottom.