DIY Walk In Cooler Build

I just tossed my last bill as I paid it the other day and I shred them as they get paid. I won't know until next month.

Thanks for the update. I'm going to check out the panels on Monday after I get home from vacation. If they're in decent enough shape the only thing left for me is to figure out how I'm going to cool it. A window unit isn't an option since this is an interior room, so I haven't quite figured out what is going to work the best for me yet.

OK I have a power bill in hand and this month was 93.25 total. It was quite warm this month so this is a higher than average use month.

Looks like I used 662 kWh and the rate is 0.0906 for the first 450 kWh ($40.78), then it jumps to 0.137 for the last 212 kWh ($29.12). There are also fuel cost adjustment fees and taxes which brings up the rest.

Y'all can do your analysis as needed but I don't think this unit is causing me much pain electricity wise. The fan is on all the time, but the AC only kicks in very occasionally. If I sit outside the unit for an hour in the middle of the day, it'll kick in 2 or 3 times.

If I can wrangle the funds to do a PV system, this thing will be essentially free to run in the future. I'm sure my dad's house, which has a pool and a whole house AC unit uses way more juice as his bill used to be over 200 a month. He installed a 16 panel PV system last year and now his bill is only about 15 bucks a month.

I need some of that PV! Mine was $615 and $556 over the last 2 months.

What's a PV? Some kind of solar I'm assuming.

PV is photovoltaic. Solar panels...

Surprised your HOA would allow solar panels...considering how uptight they were about the cooler.

They do allow panels but there is a big fight about them right now. A couple years back, the architectural committee was staffed by a large number of solar advocates and they allowed 21 large motorized arrays to be installed throughout the area. Now there is an earth biscuit woman suing them for allowing these to be in play. She's upset as she is claiming they ruin her view of the mountains. At this point, I think they are only allowing 10 degree roof top mounted panels, but that's really all you need.

Bump this back up, I'm building one now but the door is the big issue. What sorts of DIY options are out there? I've seen the insulated exterior doors but are the R factors high enough? Doing 4" walls with spray in insulation sone all and ceilings will have R28. The door is the tricky part.

I'm not sure how much detail I posted but I took a walk in cooler panel, deskinned it (took the metal skins off) and glued the foam to the back of the residential door I used. I then re-skinned it with FRP to keep the foam from getting dented and abused (which it will, as you are routinely hitting the door with kegs etc.). It has held up incredibly well and has not been an issue. I had a guy over with a FLIR gun and he couldn't find any leaks at the door or anywhere else.

Or you can frame it out for a cooler door, which are around 1200 as I recall.

Thanks, we plan to do the same thing. I must have missed tour initial posting about the door, I thought you picked up something used. We will be using the same setup. We are finishing the garage as well right now so this month we start framing and blowing in insulation. I have a header beam to contend with which is going to make this build pretty interesting.