Sw1ftr1ver
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- Apr 24, 2016
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Hey,
Im not really keen on posting to forums, mostly just a lurker but seeing as this might help someone out in the future I thought that maybe it would be useful for me to post my fermentation chamber.
Here is a link to an imgur post with a lot of the pictures I took while working on this. I can add more/better pictures upon request.
https://imgur.com/gallery/SwyZr
So story time, i was trying to ferment in my bathroom with fans and wet towels then eventually got a smallish ac unit to just keep the temps lower than my house gets but living in TX the temps swing pretty good depending on what time of the year it is. I wanted an upright freezer ferm chamber with a Ranco controller and checked craigslist only finding some old nasty looking things that were not what i would call cheap. A guy i work with who lives in a 5th wheel rv full time had a Norcold residential fridge that he sold me super cheap when he found out what i was doing. Found out about love controllers and picked up. Tss2-2100 and two probes and set up shop in my shed outside. I just finished up the practice mock-up/test run before I make everything mostly permeant and sealed up.
Fridge- Norcold 1210 IMSS (stainless steel and has two independent freezers and a large fresh food compartment. It will fit my SSBrewtech brew bucket and a glass carboy so thats cool
Controller- Love tss2-2100 with SS probes, one ntc and one ptc.(ts-81&ts-21 respectivly)
http://www.dwyer-inst.com/Product/Temperature/Switches/DigitalPanelMount/SeriesTSS2
http://www.dwyer-inst.com/Product/Temperature/Sensors/SeriesTS-PROBES
12 gauge wire from lowes, 25' rolls of black, white and green
Tools involved were a cordless drill with philips and drill bits, (drill bits for a big enough opening for the wires I ran)
Razor knife
Crimpers and strippers
Flathead driver for the love controller wire set screws
5/16th and maybe 1/4 sockets and driver
Small piece of copper wire for a wire snake
Theres probably more but just general stuff diy guys will have on hand
Will need some silicone and i will prolly go back and re-connect all wiring with better butt connectors and heat shrink as i dont like nylon covered crimp connectors.
I plan to add 12vdc fans and lights so ill end up getting a transformer to run those.
So pretty much I set the fridge inside the shed and started playing around with it. Being an rv fridge it used to be able to run off 12vdc, propane or 120vac shore power. I found out that this unit was a beer cooler on a porch for a while as the 12vdc board had fried and pretty much just bypassed. It uses heating elements to heat (ammonia?) gas inside the system to cool the interior. This style is called absorption refrigeration. So it just had a large extension cord wired in to the two elements and the chassis. No controller functionality and a lot of the stuff(wires and temp limit switch) was pulled off or cut. So what i did was find a good spot between the doors (its called an eyebrow) and cut my hole with the drill and a razor knife. After fitting the controller i figured where to run the wires from the controller to the back. Luckily it had an ice maker so there was a hole clean through the back of the unit in the top left freezer.
Now from inside that freezer section i had to drill through the exterior (bulkhead?) to get behind the eyebrow trim piece where i mounted the love controller. This was a little sketchy as i did t know if there were parts or vacuum sealed areas there but i only found foam. I didnt have a long drill bit so i had to grab just the tip and got it to punch through. I widened the hole on the outer side. The probe goes from the same hole down through the area where the fridge light switch had been. A little drilling and snaking the probe wire and i had wires run from the back of he unit to the controller and the probe to the main chamber. I wired up the controller (i have 12vdc experience but no 120vac experience what so ever- be cautious) using information online and from this thread
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=88369
Super easy, double checked my work had a fire extinguisher ready and plugged it in.
And it came on!
And then an alarm started going off and it was loud and annoying and from there i used this thread to set up the controller...
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=367363
So now it seems that i have very basic functions enabled, i will eventually set up alarms and possibly run my second probe later as i just have one right now. Oh and on probes, so i had gotten an error code about the probes and ended up being ooo after messing with some parameters. Couldnt figure out why it wasn't working. Wire color doesnt matter when you have one in the 1 and 3 hole or the 2 and 3 hole evidentially but i have to guess because its working how i have it now ( black to 1, white to 3) but i never saw if it mattered.
The issue i found out was because i thought i installed the ptc probe and had put in the ntc but had the controller set for ptc. After that it showed current temp, fired up the heating elements and started cooling. That was at around fiveish. Its now halftime and the temp is 65.1 in the cooler confirmed by both the love controller and my kestrel weather station. I had it set for 66 with 1degree range. Its back up to 65.5 in the few mins im standing here so maybe this will work how i like it without too much tweaking. Its not gotten too hot in the shed but its also not up against the wall and its a comfortable night at 70*. Ill leave it plugged in over night and have the kestrel log the temps every min and see what it does and how it will do during the day and report back. So far it seem like it will work, im just messing around with ale temps but I think it should be able to lager. I need to experiment and log everything but I have high hopes. So theres a bunch of pictures and if yall have questions ask away and ill try to elaborate. Sorry for my horrible writing but like i said before, im not usually one to chip in like this. Just thought this might be helpful.
Peace, sw1ftr1ver
Im not really keen on posting to forums, mostly just a lurker but seeing as this might help someone out in the future I thought that maybe it would be useful for me to post my fermentation chamber.
Here is a link to an imgur post with a lot of the pictures I took while working on this. I can add more/better pictures upon request.
https://imgur.com/gallery/SwyZr
So story time, i was trying to ferment in my bathroom with fans and wet towels then eventually got a smallish ac unit to just keep the temps lower than my house gets but living in TX the temps swing pretty good depending on what time of the year it is. I wanted an upright freezer ferm chamber with a Ranco controller and checked craigslist only finding some old nasty looking things that were not what i would call cheap. A guy i work with who lives in a 5th wheel rv full time had a Norcold residential fridge that he sold me super cheap when he found out what i was doing. Found out about love controllers and picked up. Tss2-2100 and two probes and set up shop in my shed outside. I just finished up the practice mock-up/test run before I make everything mostly permeant and sealed up.
Fridge- Norcold 1210 IMSS (stainless steel and has two independent freezers and a large fresh food compartment. It will fit my SSBrewtech brew bucket and a glass carboy so thats cool
Controller- Love tss2-2100 with SS probes, one ntc and one ptc.(ts-81&ts-21 respectivly)
http://www.dwyer-inst.com/Product/Temperature/Switches/DigitalPanelMount/SeriesTSS2
http://www.dwyer-inst.com/Product/Temperature/Sensors/SeriesTS-PROBES
12 gauge wire from lowes, 25' rolls of black, white and green
Tools involved were a cordless drill with philips and drill bits, (drill bits for a big enough opening for the wires I ran)
Razor knife
Crimpers and strippers
Flathead driver for the love controller wire set screws
5/16th and maybe 1/4 sockets and driver
Small piece of copper wire for a wire snake
Theres probably more but just general stuff diy guys will have on hand
Will need some silicone and i will prolly go back and re-connect all wiring with better butt connectors and heat shrink as i dont like nylon covered crimp connectors.
I plan to add 12vdc fans and lights so ill end up getting a transformer to run those.
So pretty much I set the fridge inside the shed and started playing around with it. Being an rv fridge it used to be able to run off 12vdc, propane or 120vac shore power. I found out that this unit was a beer cooler on a porch for a while as the 12vdc board had fried and pretty much just bypassed. It uses heating elements to heat (ammonia?) gas inside the system to cool the interior. This style is called absorption refrigeration. So it just had a large extension cord wired in to the two elements and the chassis. No controller functionality and a lot of the stuff(wires and temp limit switch) was pulled off or cut. So what i did was find a good spot between the doors (its called an eyebrow) and cut my hole with the drill and a razor knife. After fitting the controller i figured where to run the wires from the controller to the back. Luckily it had an ice maker so there was a hole clean through the back of the unit in the top left freezer.
Now from inside that freezer section i had to drill through the exterior (bulkhead?) to get behind the eyebrow trim piece where i mounted the love controller. This was a little sketchy as i did t know if there were parts or vacuum sealed areas there but i only found foam. I didnt have a long drill bit so i had to grab just the tip and got it to punch through. I widened the hole on the outer side. The probe goes from the same hole down through the area where the fridge light switch had been. A little drilling and snaking the probe wire and i had wires run from the back of he unit to the controller and the probe to the main chamber. I wired up the controller (i have 12vdc experience but no 120vac experience what so ever- be cautious) using information online and from this thread
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=88369
Super easy, double checked my work had a fire extinguisher ready and plugged it in.
And it came on!
And then an alarm started going off and it was loud and annoying and from there i used this thread to set up the controller...
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=367363
So now it seems that i have very basic functions enabled, i will eventually set up alarms and possibly run my second probe later as i just have one right now. Oh and on probes, so i had gotten an error code about the probes and ended up being ooo after messing with some parameters. Couldnt figure out why it wasn't working. Wire color doesnt matter when you have one in the 1 and 3 hole or the 2 and 3 hole evidentially but i have to guess because its working how i have it now ( black to 1, white to 3) but i never saw if it mattered.
The issue i found out was because i thought i installed the ptc probe and had put in the ntc but had the controller set for ptc. After that it showed current temp, fired up the heating elements and started cooling. That was at around fiveish. Its now halftime and the temp is 65.1 in the cooler confirmed by both the love controller and my kestrel weather station. I had it set for 66 with 1degree range. Its back up to 65.5 in the few mins im standing here so maybe this will work how i like it without too much tweaking. Its not gotten too hot in the shed but its also not up against the wall and its a comfortable night at 70*. Ill leave it plugged in over night and have the kestrel log the temps every min and see what it does and how it will do during the day and report back. So far it seem like it will work, im just messing around with ale temps but I think it should be able to lager. I need to experiment and log everything but I have high hopes. So theres a bunch of pictures and if yall have questions ask away and ill try to elaborate. Sorry for my horrible writing but like i said before, im not usually one to chip in like this. Just thought this might be helpful.
Peace, sw1ftr1ver
