Computer Fan In Kegerator (not for tower)?

So I have noticed that the plate at the back of my kegerator ices up (and is -3° F), but the beer in the keg is closer to 44°. Obviously, this is not optimal in the least, and is probably why my beer hasn't been carbing fully.

I did a search, but all I could find was posts about using fans to cool the tower. Has anyone had any experience using fans or something of the like to circulate air within the fridge?

Subscribing because I've been contemplating the same thing.

I think most people blow the warmer air from the top down toward the cooler air in the bottom of the kegerator.

That could make sense...I'd assume any air blowing anywhere within the kegerator would get air moving around since it's such a small space.

It seems like the biggest issue for me is that it's cool at the back and warmer near the front. I may end up making a system that both circulates the air *and* cools the tower and post up what I end up doing.

LarrySteeze said:

That could make sense...I'd assume any air blowing anywhere within the kegerator would get air moving around since it's such a small space.

It seems like the biggest issue for me is that it's cool at the back and warmer near the front. I may end up making a system that both circulates the air *and* cools the tower and post up what I end up doing.

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You could use multiple fans that kick on when the compressor kicks on and have them blowing in multiple directions.

I have a computer fan taped to a piece of PVC pipe. I drilled holes on one end and put that end in the bottom of my keezer. The fan is taped to the top end. I have the air circulating from the bottom to the top.

I use a bilge fan to blow the air from the bottom up into my coffin box (it's a keezer rather than a kegerator). The advantage to this type of fan is that it's designed to run in a damper environment than a PC fan. Also it's a lot more powerful and therefore better able to push the air.
I use an Atwood 4" Quiet blower. The only challenge was that it requires a 12 volt 3 amp DC Power source. If you've got a rudimentary knowledge of electronics all you need to do is wire it up to a stepdown transformer from Radioshack (110v to 12v 3A) then added 4 diodes to convert it to DC power. It runs like a champ and keeps my coffin box cold.

Bridge rectifier! I teach this stuff daily.

milesvdustin said:

Bridge rectifier! I teach this stuff daily.

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I didn't know that's what it was called but looking at a wiring diagram for one that sure is what it is.

thanks a ton for the input. I'm absolutely going to check out that route!

Yep, don't make the mistake I did. That bridge rectifier is SUPER important. That motor spins very fast and even with the right amperage/voltage AC power will burn that motor out in about 2 minutes. It really is very easy to install. If you have any questions be sure to ask me (or the teacher ) milesvdustin!

Dangit, I wish I'd know that had a name as was a thing I could just buy. soldering the 4 diodes to a board in sequence that would fit in the box I built was kind of a pain in the posterior. Seeing how compact they can be makes me wish I'd just gotten one of them instead of 4 individual diodes.

deadboy said:

I use a bilge fan to blow the air from the bottom up into my coffin box (it's a keezer rather than a kegerator). The advantage to this type of fan is that it's designed to run in a damper environment than a PC fan. Also it's a lot more powerful and therefore better able to push the air.
I use an Atwood 4" Quiet blower. The only challenge was that it requires a 12 volt 3 amp DC Power source. If you've got a rudimentary knowledge of electronics all you need to do is wire it up to a stepdown transformer from Radioshack (110v to 12v 3A) then added 4 diodes to convert it to DC power. It runs like a champ and keeps my coffin box cold.

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That looks like a good idea. When my CPU fan breaks(and it will) I think I will replace it with one of these.

Now I just need to figure out that 4 diode thingy. Can I buy something already built?

Yep, absolutely. You could would use a 10A bridge rectifier and a step down transformer to turn 120v AC from the outlet into 12v 3A for the fan.. The rectifier will have 4 pins. One +, one -, and two ~. You solder the two ~ into the yellow wires from the transformer and the + and - to the appropriate leads on the fan and presto.

I should probably add that the "quiet" description is a relative term. It is a bilge fan for a boat with a motor. you'll hear it blowing inside your keezer/kegerator. It's not loud but you'll hear it. When you open said beer receptacle you will DEFINITELY hear it. It moves a LOT of air.

Having a lot of air is a good thing. I was planning on running a supply to the tower from the same fan, so that works even better!

When you say it makes noise, how much noise are we talking? Is my wife going to make me "undo" the work after I do it? ;-)

Where is your kegerator/keezer? Mine is in my garage/man cave so even when it's open it's quieter than anything I'd be doing in there.

It's inside a box that is insulated to stay cold so it generally will be pretty good at keeping the noise in. I'd say when my Keezer is shut, which it should be 99.8% of the time, it's not much louder than a box fan on low.

my fridge has a couple of 12V connectors, one tied to the compressor and another circuit on the light switch. I hooked up a 3" computer fan to blow across the plate when the compressor is on and a 1" fan to blow up into the tower (using flexible fiber conduit).

No external noise from the fans. But it really depends on the fan, i've seen some that sound like jet engines (usually server fans).

Computer fans GENERALLY run on 300-500mA. The atwood bilge fan I'm using wants between 2.5 and 3.2 A (nearly 10x the amperage). It's considerably louder but it's moving a LOT more air.

My kegerator is in the kitchen, virtually right next to the dinner table

I listened to it again. Mine doesn't currently have any sort of enclosure around it to muffle the sound and it's not any louder than a box fan on low. Unless you or your wife are PARTICULARLY sensitive to sound it's just a soft white noise.


When you open it up that's when it gets loud.

I had noticed my lines (at the top I my keezer) were a lot warmer than the kegs, so I added a fan to my keezer to circulate the cool air and break the stratification. My kegs are on a stand in my keezer so all the cool air just sat below Ye kegs and wasn't cooling them nearly as well as I wanted. The holes in the PVC sit below the stand and the fan pulls the cool air up to the top. I've had this guy running 100% of the time for over a year and it's worked great (looks like crap, but cost me nothing).

i have a 120MM fan mounted at the base of my collar along the front freezer rim that pulls the cool air up from the bottom to fill the space created by the collar, then I have a 60MM fan pulling air into the coffin box and another smaller one pushing air back down into the freezer. Seems to work pretty well so far.

I have this setup in both of my ferm chests and my kegerator and they work great at circulating the cold air.

If you don't have a computer fan laying around and/or don't want to wire one up, you can find some 120-ready fans on Amazon. That's the one that I got but haven't had a chance to put to use yet in my kegerator just to move the air around. If you just look at the fans made by AC Infinity, they've got a bunch of speeds and sizes to choose from.

Now I've just got to decide how I want to regulate the fan's running. I don't think its probably necessary to run it 24/7. Haven't decided if I want to run it off the same thermo controller to only go on when the compressor kicks on, or set it to run intermittantly on a vacation light switch.

Here is a pic of my air circulation system:

There is 3" PVC running around the bottom of the keezer with holes drilled out in order to suck in the colder air at the base. It's then pushed up thru the bilge fan to a 4" T.

The T is capped at the top so that when the lid is open it doesn't just shoot all the cold air straight out. Beneath the cap I cut out a gap that is about 4" x 1/2" around the diameter of the T to give an outlet for the circulated air in the keezer.

The side port on the T is a 3" opening which I connected to a dryer exhaust hose to push cold air up into the coffin box.

On the whole it works pretty well but I do think I'm going to need to get in there and add some caulk or firm up the insulation or something. The taps on the side with the air in are considerably cooler than the side with the air out (and the beer lines).

As far as the noise, I added a sheet of plywood to the lid for the top of the cabinet I'm building for the keezer and even before I add the tile to it I can BARELY hear the fan motor.

EDIT: One of the reasons I would/did steer clear of PC fans is because my keezer is made from an older chest freezer that is NOT frost free. As a result I wanted to go with something that wouldn't be adversly effected by the extra moisture. If your box doesn't have that issue then a PC fan might be the way to go.

I've got a computer fan-like device just sitting in the bottom of my keezer. I bought it online and it plugs into a regular outlet. It's just sitting up on it's edge so it blows horizontally. I added it primarily to help reduce condensation that would develop and it's worked wonderfully for that.

I'm sure it's not as effective as those on pipes that pull or push air up or down, but even as-is, when I open the keezer lid I can feel a breeze coming out the top, so it's helping somewhat.

I'll probably mount it at some point if for nothing else than to make it a little more permanent and to keep from knocking it over when I change kegs, as I happen to do on occasion.

I'm about to hard wire in this
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007YMLPCO/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
to blow full time past my beer lines in the keezer and keep them cool and hopefully eliminate the 1/2 glass of foam I've been living with. I think I'll have a drilled-perf pipe involved at the top end to distribute.

Hi

110 volts AC is something you need to be worried about in a wet environment. The inside of your kegerator will get damp from condensation. I would avoid putting any AC house current power inside the kegerator if at all possible. Yes indeed current is what kills, but voltage is what gets the current to you. Getting blasted by low voltage is technically possible, but it's pretty uncommon.

Computer fans come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Outfits like Newegg will gladly sell you as many as you could ever wish for. They mostly all run off of 12 vdc and use fairly standard PC power plugs. If one dies, plug in another.

Most of what you see used are fans and not a blowers. If you are going to run a length of pipe or duct on the output of the device, you want a blower. A fan drops off in air volume quickly as back pressure builds up. A blower will keep pushing volume long after a fan has fallen back to near nothing at all.

Bob

I did this within the last week. I'm using a USB fan - a slightly larger version of the one I used to make my stir plate: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002OJN250/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Plus a tiny USB hub.

It rocks. Definitely dropped my serving temp down - this is sans tower, cobra tap sitting in the kegerator (for now). Actually, I probably need to bump the temp up a touch - it's serving at about 38 now with a good bit of play left on the fridge thermostat, sitting in my garage in Houston.

I've got the standard computer fan wired to a cell phone charger setup. It just sits on my compressor hump and blows horizontally. Not sure if that's the best way to do it, but it cured my foaming issues easily enough. I'll probably end up gluing magnets to two sides of it so it can just stick in one of the corners and point down.

Hi

Your typical fridge or freezer is in the 5 to 15 cubic foot range. A very slow (and very quiet) computer fan will move 20 cubic feet of air per minute. A fast (and maybe noisy) one will move over a hundred. The big gain ( 10 degree drop) comes from moving the air in the first place. Anything you do past that is going to be one or two degree sort of stuff.

Bob

Yeah, after everything, I think I'm all set with a computer fan. I just need to figure out the best way to do it for me.

Hi

I went with a sub $10 12V power supply from eBay. The thing puts out six amps, so it will run a room full of fans. I mounted it down in the same compartment as the compressor. For fans - Newegg (or one of their competitors ). I just Gorilla glued mine to a plywood scarp. I figure they will die long before the plywood...

Bob

where do you guys get a power supply for the fans? I mostly see them with the round single plug with the + and - connections inside each other. rechargable RC batteries at least have 2 separate wires. anyone seen one that already has the computer fan connection?

SnidelyWhiplash said:

where do you guys get a power supply for the fans? I mostly see them with the round single plug with the + and - connections inside each other. rechargable RC batteries at least have 2 separate wires. anyone seen one that already has the computer fan connection?

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I went to Radio shack, bought a 12V DC power supply, hacked the end off and with a wire stripper and some electrical tape, did the job. I've got boxes of computer crap laying around, so finding the mating connector for the 4-pin power connector for the PC fan was easy.

I ended up putting three fans in the kegerator (8.8 cu ft keezer), because I had an old PC shell I didn't need them for anymore...

If you don't want to do any wiring, or don't know how, and don't want to deal with matching power supplies, I came up with this solution.

Dual USB powered computer/auxiliary fans (lots of other options with USB connections): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002NVC1DS/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Could probably get these cheaper at local Radio Shack, but if you're going there, have them wire up an old fan.

Plug the USB end into an iPhone power plug adaptor, or any USB power adaptor, which is already stepping down to reasonable power for these fans.

I ran my USB extension cord thru the CO2 tubing hole in my kegerator and insulated around it with a rubber stopper with but you could just pack insulation around the cord.

I also didn't want the fans to run constantly, but didn't want to hard-wire into the compressor. So I used a programmable plug (meant for Christmas lights, I think): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035GAXA8/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

It works great! I run the fans about 1/3 of the time and the temperature is much steadier. I just put one of the fans low in the front and have it blowing upward and to the back, and attached it with 2-sided tape (3M command hook tape). The other fan is actually rigged to get some air into the tower. Just about any air flow will help when you have a full kegerator with plate-based cooling, even tiny fans like these.

You could cut down on cost by getting cheaper components (like a cheaper programmable plug, or shopping harder for the fan). If you want more power for more fans or more airflow, use an iPad adaptor and a small USB hub. If anyone is interested, I could post a few pics.

Currently on tap (1/6 barrels): Short's Huma Lupa Licious; Atwater Dirty Blonde

I went to amazon.com and searched for 115V AC Fan
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...eywords=115V+AC+Fan&rh=n:228013,k:115V+AC+Fan
chose a low noise, low airflow, and 15 bucks later was set.
hooked it up to the 120v "in" on my temp controler.
mounted it at the top of a short length of pvc drain pipe to move air from bottom to top.
runs continuous. draws about 5 dollars of electricity a year.
it works. now i need to insulate my collar btter.
*** solved my foamy first pores too!!! ***

I finally finished my keezer collar and will use this amazon fan listed with the plug. Use a splitter on my temp controller cooler plug and then it will kick on when the keezer kicks on....KEEP THAT AIR MOVING!

If your keezer is well insulated it will not be running much. Your thermocouple should be located down with the kegs. With the fan off when the compressor is off will make for a temper gradient inside, when not running, and allow the beer in your lines (up top) to warm up and release CO2. My lines are translucent and you could really see the separation. With the fan running full time it separated a lot less. At 5 dollars of electricity a year to just leave it running, I chose to do that.

Cheers