Dual Chamber Chest Freezer

I have a big 23 cubic foot chest freezer that I use to maintain fermentation temps and to lager in I can fit 6 brew buckets in it. The problem is when I'm lagering for a long period I can't use it for anything else. What I would like to do is build an insulated divider have the ranco that controls the freezer in the lager side so the temp is always 34 degrees. I have another controller that I could use with some sort of heater either one of those reptile ceramic heaters or a really small space heater to warm up the other side to fermentation temps. I have laid it out I could get 5 corny kegs on the lager side and three brew buckets on the other side. I would make the divider out of some 4 inch polystyrene (sp) and make it removable for those times my friends and I do large group brews.

Has anyone done this?
Do you think the heater would get the temp up to ale temps, thinking something like this http://www.amazon.com/Lasko-MyHeat-Personal-Ceramic-Heater/dp/B003XDTWN2/ref=pd_sim_hg_3?
Would I need some sort of fan to move the heated air around?
Would 4 inches of insulation be enough to keep the heat on the fermentor side.

Instead of having a freezer and heater fighting each other, I would just hook the second controller to a fan to push cold air into the warmer chamber when needed. This is how most household refrigerators work, the cooling is all done in the freezer and a thermostat controls how much of that cold air gets circulated into the fridge compartment. Make a vertical tube to connect the two chambers with the entrance down low in the cold section and the exit into the warm chamber up high. This will help keep the warmer and cooler air in their respective chambers. A small muffin fan connected to a temp controller at either end of the tube should be plenty to push air and regulate the temps.

The problem I see there is that, at least with my freezer, all 4 walls are cooled. That said, you could probably insulate not just the barrier, but also the walls, then maybe the above solution might work for ya.

From what I've read on most chest freezers, I think you'd either need to build a small insulated box (on bottom and sides) and place it into the chest freezer when needed. Then run a second controller with a muffin fan for cooling.

Or you could cut a hole in the lid and run some duct work with a fan out to a secondary fermentation chamber. I wouldn't be too concerned with putting the fan at the bottom for fermentation temps if you're lagering at 35. But if you want to do that, you can run an insulated PVC pipe to the bottom to ensure you're sucking air up from the bottom of the freezer. All told though, it may be easier to find someone to trade with and get 2 10-11 cu ft freezers and use 2 temp controllers...

I may try to insulate the sides and the divider, the insulation comes in 4x8 sheets so i should be able to do it even if i have to make it smaller for just 2 brew buckets. I did find one link that looks like they did the same type of thing. http://www.oregonbrewcrew.com/freezer/freezer.html

I know I'm a little late to this thread, but a friend and I have done exactly what you're talking about and it works great! We just partitioned off about 1/3 of the freezer on the compressor-hump side using R5 foam insulation. Then we have a temperature probe (one of those really tiny 3-pin ones) on each side and a small space heater in fermenting side. Each probe is connected to a little I/O board that has a web interface. Then, using the web interface on the board, we programmed it to enable a solid state relay when the temperature went above or below a certain value.

I was also worried about the freezer and the heater competing with one another. But I wrote a little program to monitor the state of the outputs to see how long each was actually on. I don't remember the exact numbers and the computer that had the data has since been dismantled, but I think the freezer compressor was only one about 5 minutes every hour, and the heater about 10 minutes.

Here's a link to the control board:
http://cgi.ebay.com/WebControl-time...0?hash=item3eee3e5841&clk_rvr_id=239890372303

And here's a link to some pictures if you're interested:
http://www.theobtuseangle.com/PictureViewer/PictureViewer.aspx?pictureSetId=8