tower cooling idea

My minifridge that I use for my kegerator has a freezer tray that I had to bend back. If I were to clip a piece of metal or wire to it that I could run up into the tower, would that keep it cool up there?

bwomp313 said:

My minifridge that I use for my kegerator has a freezer tray that I had to bend back. If I were to clip a piece of metal or wire to it that I could run up into the tower, would that keep it cool up there?

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Nope. Speaking from experience.

I put two long pieces of 1/2" diameter copper pipe up through my tower. The pipe touches my bent-down freezer tray on the inside of the fridge. The beer lines run through the center of those pipes up to the taps.

The first pour still gets that extra 1"-2" of foam. The copper is not cold at the top like I had hoped. It's room temp.

pics:

So Walker, would you even recommend putting in the copper or is it just a waste of time/money?

cincybrewer said:

So Walker, would you even recommend putting in the copper or is it just a waste of time/money?

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I've never used this tower WITHOUT the copper, but if I had to guess....

yep... total waste of time and money.

I wouldn't recommend it unless you have the copper laying there and want to go for it for sh!ts and giggles.

I did the copper thing (probably at Walker's recommendation). It MIGHT be a little cooler. Like Walker, I don't think it's doing much of anything but it was cheap, really easy to do and worth a shot.

Yeah... When I started on this project, I had read rave reviews of others doing it and saying it worked great. So, I decided to try it and was probably suggesting it to others.

Then, after I did it, I decided it was a crock. Coincidentally, many of those folks that were raving about it at first changed their tune.

Darn. I was really hoping it would be a nice simple easy solution. guess not!!

Ha. Me too. I don't want to build a cooling system for my tower. Maybe I'll just suck it up with the foamy pours.

Walker: how long is your line? Could that have more to do with it?

From what I have heard if you make a sealed loop of cooper and fill it with mineral oil it should sink the heat a lot better. Or rad fluid but make sure it can't leak in

It's not the line length. It's just the 10 inches of warm beer inside the tower. If I sacrifice that first few oz of the first pour, I can then pour beers all night with no issues.

Oh, i gotcha. It's the issue of the beer sitting in the line getting warm. Makes sense now.

Sealed loop of copper. seems out of my area on DIY skills, or lack thereof.

I've seen threads somewhere where someone has gotten a small cpu fan and a small project box from radio shack and rigged it up with a small piece of duct and blow cold are into the tower.

Just tossing that out there if your willing to try it.

http://www.kegkits.com/kegerator5.htm

I recently did a kegerator conversion and did the copper tubes method to see myself (had it laying around). If that doesn't pan out i'll be doing something similar to the above link.

repomanz said:

http://www.kegkits.com/kegerator5.htm

I recently did a kegerator conversion and did the copper tubes method to see myself (had it laying around). If that doesn't pan out i'll be doing something similar to the above link.

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Not the thread I remember seeing and it looked a lot more ghetto than the one in your link, but yes, exactly like that.

airmek said:

I've seen threads somewhere where someone has gotten a small cpu fan and a small project box from radio shack and rigged it up with a small piece of duct and blow cold are into the tower.

Just tossing that out there if your willing to try it.

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Yeah, the cpu fan is the 'traditional' way of keeping the tower cool. The idea of the pieces of copper acting as heat sinks seemed to spark up a year or two ago... then it died out.

Thanks for all the responses. I really didn't wanna go the cpu fan route because I wasn't really sure how I would power it and definitely didn't wanna drill through the fridge any more. I was hoping it might just be a simple little fix. Guess not!!!