Birch Plywood Fermentation Chamber

After seeing all the great fermentation chambers that folks on here have made, I decided to take a crack at it myself. In a few weeks I should have a week to myself (kids in daycare and wife at work) to put it together but in the meantime I've been doing a layout of my design in CAD. I'd like to share it with you and get your feedback before I cut any wood.

Being the father of two young boys and busy with work most of the time it is rare that I get a week to myself, so I thought I'd brew some beer and improve my beer setup. Currently I have a 30 gallon storage bin that I fill with water and an aquarium heater as my fermentation chamber. My basement usually hovers in the high 60's so for doing cooler fermentation's during the warmer months I'm SOL. My goal with this build is to produce a functional chamber with cooling and heating with a build time in the one to two day range while looking like something that SWMBO might allow into the finished part of the basement. For that I have chosen to gut a mini-fridge ($20 off of craigslist) to minimize the chambers size and go with plywood construction for fast build time. In order to make it look furniture-like I decided to use birch plywood with the end grain exposed. I got some inspiration from this picture:



I'm new to wood working so I looked for easy ways to join the plywood and the Kreg Jig pocket holes looked like the way to go.



So here's the concept:





The blue rectangle on the top is where I am thinking about putting a register like this one, to allow airflow across the condenser coils.


The black box on the front is an STC-1000 controller.

What's not shown and what I don't have figured out yet is the feet I want to use to lift it off the ground an inch or two for more air circulation for the compressor.

Anyway, please give me any feedback you have on how I could improve this design and expect to see some pictures of the build the week of 12/16.


-Rich

 

Will the adhesives/binders in the birch plywood stand up to condensation or spills?

 

Not unless its marine or outdoor rated. Might want to look into epoxy coating or using truck bedliner on the inside.

 

My plan for moisture protection is to put bath sheet over the insulation and caulk the seams. Do you think this will be sufficient? Are there better hardwoods that are more moisture resistant?

-Rich