So as if I didn't have enough projects around the house
In the spare few minutes I have here and there i've been working on converting an old side by side fridge into a fermentation chamber.
My plan is to keep the sides separated so that I can run two different temperatures. I am going to have a computer fan in the duct that connects the two chambers that will cycle on and off to blow cold air from the freezer to the fridge side.
Here is the fridge as I started out. I first removed the ice maker since I needed the space and it ended up being the perfect place to mount the controller and LCD. I'm going to paint a piece of plexiglass black and mount the LCD and encoder to it. I should also be able to fit the control relays to turn the compressor on and off.
Here you can see the inside of the freezer door, i'm going to be replacing the panel that went here with a simple sheet of thin plexi. The original door cover had all the pockets for the freezer and the ice maker which make it very deep.
Here is the inside of the fridge compartment, I still have to build the wooden shelves for the carboys/kegs. It has enough room to stack 2 sanke kegs on top of one another with room to spare. I am going to be fermenting in the kegs now.
This is a picture of the duct that runs from the top of the freezer section to the top of the fridge section. I'm going to be putting a computer fan into this hole to pull the cold air over from the freezer. I don't have a picture here but I removed the duct that goes from the cooling unit to this hole so that when the fridge is running it no longer blows cold air into the chamber on it's own. I'm hoping since cold air falls that it will allow me to accurately control the chamber temp. If not I may have to figure out some sort of valve that will close when the fan is off.
In the spare few minutes I have here and there i've been working on converting an old side by side fridge into a fermentation chamber.
My plan is to keep the sides separated so that I can run two different temperatures. I am going to have a computer fan in the duct that connects the two chambers that will cycle on and off to blow cold air from the freezer to the fridge side.
Here is the fridge as I started out. I first removed the ice maker since I needed the space and it ended up being the perfect place to mount the controller and LCD. I'm going to paint a piece of plexiglass black and mount the LCD and encoder to it. I should also be able to fit the control relays to turn the compressor on and off.
Here you can see the inside of the freezer door, i'm going to be replacing the panel that went here with a simple sheet of thin plexi. The original door cover had all the pockets for the freezer and the ice maker which make it very deep.
Here is the inside of the fridge compartment, I still have to build the wooden shelves for the carboys/kegs. It has enough room to stack 2 sanke kegs on top of one another with room to spare. I am going to be fermenting in the kegs now.
This is a picture of the duct that runs from the top of the freezer section to the top of the fridge section. I'm going to be putting a computer fan into this hole to pull the cold air over from the freezer. I don't have a picture here but I removed the duct that goes from the cooling unit to this hole so that when the fridge is running it no longer blows cold air into the chamber on it's own. I'm hoping since cold air falls that it will allow me to accurately control the chamber temp. If not I may have to figure out some sort of valve that will close when the fan is off.