take apart mini fridge for ferm chamber

Hi all, I'm planning a fermentation chamber.

Are there any threads here about taking apart a mini fridge and using the compressor, coils, cooling lines, etc, to integrate into a ferm chamber build? There are tonnes of builds here just using the fridge as-is with the door off but I'd like to see something a little more integrated if there's any examples. I searched but the results were too polluted with other stuff.

What do you think?

-Rob

Gremlyn1 had a nice fermentation chamber build at this thread here Fermentation Chamber Build

Razz

I did this very thing for a beer fridge/fermentation chamber aka "The Beast". My problem is that the volume of my fridge is too large for the "guts" from the dorm fridge. I am thinking about using a stand up freezer and pulling out the coils and using that inside my unit. I am controlling The Beast with a two zone love controller. My ferment chamber which I'm using to maintain Ale temps is wired from the Love controller to a outlet in which I have a small hair drier hanging from a hook. Works great. I may end up with 3 chambers in The Beast with one area set aside just for lagering, or i'll wait until MN winters return, it's trying to snow today BTW, and lager in my garage.

something you might consider if you can get hold of a full size fridge.

I took a thermostat from a window ac unit to replace the thermostat on the refrigerator. I now have a fridge that holds from 40 to 70 and anywhere in between within 2 degrees plus or minus.

I have been running this for a month now and have some ciders fermenting away, and some chocolate chipolte stout aging in there. Lots of room, good temp control, AND VERY EASY TO DO!!!.

myty1705 said:

something you might consider if you can get hold of a full size fridge.

I took a thermostat from a window ac unit to replace the thermostat on the refrigerator. I now have a fridge that holds from 40 to 70 and anywhere in between within 2 degrees plus or minus.

I have been running this for a month now and have some ciders fermenting away, and some chocolate chipolte stout aging in there. Lots of room, good temp control, AND VERY EASY TO DO!!!.

Click to expand...

One thing that I am considering is how to get the coils inside my unit. Originally the Beast was build around the other coils. Now I need to open her up and shimmy the parts inside. Can the coil/lines be cut and somehow be put back together?

Here is where I posted my project:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/modified-keezer-ferment-chamber-aka-beast-218288/

if you cut the lines, you can solder the lines back together, but unless you are really good at soldering, I wouldn't. The other thing you have to keep in mind is that you would need to capture the refrigerant and refill once you are done.

I am also not real sure if it's good the have the coil inside. Remember that is where the heat exchange is happening to make the unit cold. The refrigerant picks up heat from the inside of the unit takes it to the coil where it exchanges with the air outside. Same premise as you condenser on you central ac units.

I guess I should have clarified. I'm referring to the chiller coils that are internal, each shelf in the freezer chills/cools the freezer. I thought of placing a sleeve on the lines and soldering but have no way of capturing the coolant. Will have to think this through some more. The external coils will be on the back of the unit as well as the compressor depending how big it is. I may end up on top of the Beast.

rshortt said:

Hi all, I'm planning a fermentation chamber.

Are there any threads here about taking apart a mini fridge and using the compressor, coils, cooling lines, etc, to integrate into a ferm chamber build? There are tonnes of builds here just using the fridge as-is with the door off but I'd like to see something a little more integrated if there's any examples. I searched but the results were too polluted with other stuff.

What do you think?

-Rob

Click to expand...

I removed the guts of a 1.3 or 1.4 cu ft mini fridge and found it pretty easy to do. I didn't care about the final condition of the fridge though. I don't know the proper terms for what I'm about to describe, so bear with me. I can get pictures once I'm home if needed. One other thing that made it easier was the return lines for the coolant were on the outside, back of the fridge. So the only lines I had to worry about removing were inside the fridge. Basically I started by removing the top and following the coolant line into the fridge. In the end, I found out the only cooling portion of this fridge was the mini ice box in the corner. So now I have a condenser, with the return coils and a little ice box as an entire fridge. I ripped off the thermostat and directly wired the condenser to the plug and am going to use the ebay aquarium controller to control it. I won't have a ferm box done for a good while yet, as the honey-do list has grown since the start of spring but when I do, I'll document the whole build.

Thanks for all the replies. Good info here. I have a second ebay temp controller for this as well.

There's a lot of mini fridges available here now too since college is out, or out soon.