SOF Chamber help

So I built a variation on the Son of a Fermentation Chamber, out of plywood and the pink board. Of course only now I realize that my apartment fridge/freezer just can't keep up with the freezing of 2L bottles that the chamber is demanding (2 6gal carboys are easily eating 3 2L bottles worth of ice every 12 hours just to keep 68F)

A week after building the chamber my neighbour gave me an old GE bar fridge, with the cooling unit located in the freezer compartment, which I carefully bent against the rear wall, and mounted a 120mm fan blowing directly against it.

The chamber can be modified slightly, but something like mounting the fridge inside is going to require a complete rebuild. Ideally I want to keep investment in the whole venture to a minimum. The fridge I wanted to keep for use as kegerator, so dismantling it and mounting the compressor/cooling unit into the fermentation chiller defeats that purpose.

The equipment I have:

eBay temp controller unit
GE mini Fridge
Plywood SOF Chamber
120mm fans and 12vdc adapters
power tools
budget 40$ or so

Just wondering if anyone has used a mini fridge to house a liquid reservoir for use in something like: this if so does it work well? Obviously I could place the carboys in any old container, due to the insulation of the cabinet. So my only investment would be a pump, some tubing, and a bucket or two.

Only other option I see is some kind of duct system between the two cabinets using the fans and some cheap flexible dryer ducting from the hardware store.

Ideally I'd love to be able to ferment a lager in this chamber, even if I had to lager it elsewhere.

How are you going to get the liquid out of the fridge? Are you going to drill a hole in it?

I have to drill a hole either way, ducting or water cooling, there's no coils in the walls of this fridge whatsoever.

Going to rip the door off the mini fridge and butt it up against the one side. That's my plan.

I dont see why it wont work. Might want to insulate the tubing running from the fridge to the SOF but it should be good.

The alternative to ripping off the door is to drill a hole where your tower would go and run your cooling lines in/out of that. That way your hole is still useful for your kegerator build. The expense of the glycol bucket, copper lines and a pump may be prohibitive though.

The_Dog_42 said:

The alternative to ripping off the door is to drill a hole where your tower would go and run your cooling lines in/out of that. That way your hole is still useful for your kegerator build. The expense of the glycol bucket, copper lines and a pump may be prohibitive though.

Click to expand...

Fridge is less than 2 cu ft. Can't fit a 40 in it. Lol.