Kegarator Question

[Reymez]

I bought a refrigerator a while back and planned to convert it to a Kegarator.

For the first couple of months I just put the C02 Tank into the fridge along with the kegs and am using picnic taps.

Later I'll install some other taps, but as a first step I decided to drill a hole through the bottom/back side of the fridge to run the C02 host through and keep the tank outside of the fridge. I'm not completely done with that yet though so I stuffed a kitchen town into the hole, later I'll seal it with the expanding foam spray.

I didn't cut through anything other than plastic, foam, and some sheet metal. No hoses or lines were damaged that I'm aware of.

But I did notice that the fridge is pretty cold now, close to 30*F and there was frost/ice on the outside of the kegs. The beer in the lines seemed to be a little slushy too. The setting was set to 6, the highest it would go.

I turned the coldness dial down to 1 but the temp seems to be about the same and there is still a bit of ice on the kegs. Still seems to be about 30*F.

Could it be the hole that I drilled into it that's causing the issue? I'm thinking maybe the piece that's keeping track of the tenp might be getting some warm air from the hole and that's making the refrigerator work harder trying to bring the temp down based not he temp of the warm air that's getting into it.

What do you guys think?

 

[Puddlethumper]

If you cut through a Freon line your fridge won't get cold at all. If you cut through a control wire it might mess up the unit's ability to control the temperature, but I'm no refrigeration tech. Will leave comments on that issue to someone who knows more about it than I do.

You probably need to spring for a temperature controller. There are a number of commercially available units for $65-$100 or you can build an STC-1000 unit for about $35-$40. The commercially built units come ready to go but have their limitations. STC-1000 provides control of heat and cold and is cheaper but you'll need to build it yourself. There are some threads here that tell you how to build it.

What any of these units will do is to sense the temperature inside the fridge and turn it on or off as needed to hold the temperature you set it at +/- one or two degrees. I use a commercially built unit for my kegerator and it does a good job of holding 38-40F.

Cheers!