Mounting temp controller in door

[ibwahooka]

Hey guys,
I have the Danby DAR440BL, already converted to a kegerator, and I was wondering it if would be possible to mount a Love/Ebay Temperature Controller into the door and also replace the refrigerator's thermostat with it?
I know I've seen people mount them on the door, but I wasn't quite sure if they just wired into the fridge's power and left the original thermostat in there or if they replaced the thermostat. I know I can just do the power cord trick, but I was just curious.
Any thoughts on doing that?

Shawn

 

[awarner322]

It would be possible....but if you have a fridge you would not need one? Also if you put it in the door and it swings open and close...you would need to account for slack in the wiring. I wired my controller into a extension cord that I used to extend the cord on my freezer just in case I screwed something up...that is the only way I know how to wire them...so you would probably need to run the cord from the fridge inside..run wire to it....then run it back out. A lot of people use those project boxes too so they don't have to cut into their fridge.

 

[ibwahooka]

That's what I thought, but I was going for the coolness factor. I know that I would have to have some slack when the door opened and closed and to account for that. Maybe I can play around with it first before I cut a hole in the door and then see what happens. I was just more curious about replacing the fridge's original thermostat with a digital one.

 

[awarner322]

Well you could just run your thermostat on the fridge at high...and wire in a love controller to the power cord and the love controller would still control the temp because it basically kills the power to the fridge and turns it back on just like the internal thermostat...I am guessing there is not much good literature on this however...I do see guys have them in fridges on here...the big upright ones.

They are cool tho I will give you that have you thought about just getting a chest freezer? If you are getting a love controller might be worth while...then you could possibly even have a separate lagering fridge

 

[day_trippr]

If you can gain access to the fridge's stock thermostat wiring and identify the pair going to the compressor, you could cut that pair and wire them through the NO relay in an add-in controller.

In that case you would only need to get power into the controller to run its brain and not have to run a cord back out. You may even be able to source that power from within the fridge...

Cheers!

 

[raouliii]

A little off-topic, but I mounted my stc1000 in the lower louvers of my TRUE GDM-10 fermentation chamber, rather than an external box. I think it looks and functions very well.

I wired it such that the controller handles the compressor and heating element but the evaporator fan stays on for even temperature distribution.