Bought a Danby mini fridge today and also killed it.

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HardBody

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Hi all,

I mainly lurk here but thought I would share some details on my failure to save anyone else the trouble. This was a $200 mistake and I'm sure if I were more patient and used a little common sense I would have saved myself the grief.

Earlier today I bought this,

http://www.hhgregg.com/danby-4-4-cu-ft-stainless-look-compact-all-refrigerator/item/DAR044A5BSLD

Pretty standard no freezer mini fridge. The Danby DAR044A5BSLDD.

I got some expanding foam and thermal tape. I have 2 5 gallon corny kegs and a 10 pound CO2 tank with a dual regulator. I wanted to keep the CO2 tank outside and thought drilling in through the side of the unit would be no problem. I made my first hole through the fridge and it was clean. I made the unfortunate assumption that the right side of the fridge must be free of any refrigerant lines. Welp it seems the heat exchanging lines run through both sides and the top of the unit. This all seems painfully obvious now that I've performed the autopsy.

The point of this post is more educational if anyone was considering the Danby DAR044A5BSLDD on where it is probably not safe to drill. I was thinking of just getting another now that I know where it is and is not okay to drill but I feel I should probably just look for a smaller chest freezer and avoid any sharp objects around appliances all together.

First couple pictures attached are just it out of the box and test fitting the kegs. The rest are the aftermath.

If anyone is curious about measurements on where the lines on the sides are I can take it apart further and do my best to accurately measure in case anyone wants to try and be dumb like me and drill through the sides. I would suggest just cutting out a hole from the ridge in the back. unfortunately I tried this after I had already ruined the fridge just as a proof of concept.

If you need a good laugh please feel free to have one at my expense.

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For a CO2 line?

There's always some place on a cabinet that's safe to hole, you just have to find it...

Cheers!

[edit] And it would be a service to others to figure out where that would be - before discarding the carcass.
In fact, once you figured out a safe place to drill through, it might not be a bad idea to get another identical unit...
 
Uh, I had a refrigerant line break bending down the freezer tray of either this model or a similar one that I got used from a partner's parents. It took some fairly aggressive synthesizing of spotty Google results and I think a roughly $50 Amazon order (this being about what I paid in the first place), but I was able to patch and refill it. It...makes interesting noises and I imagine the efficiency's suffered, but it works. I'll try to get you more details on how I went about it; PM me if I space it.
 
I had no problem drilling 2 holes on the pan on the left side back of the fridge. I checked underneath and there isn't anything there. Now you have me wondering. Was I just lucky or are there no lines running through this part of the fridge?

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Doesn't anyone make a paste and spread it all over to find the lines?Thats how I did my first one years ago and it worked like a charm
 
HHGregg has a pretty good return policy. Just tell them the holes and peeled back shell seemed odd to you too... but it was like that when you took it out of the box.



Report back to us on how the return went! :ban:
 
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