making ferm chiller / cannibalizing avanti wine cooler

Alright guys, title says it all. I picked up an avanti wine chiller for free from craigslist. It doesnt cool and avanti doesnt seem to be very repair friendly. It was just barely too small to fit a 6.5 gallon carboy, so i decided to get creative. The model has a really nice digital display and temp probes and 3 fans throughout the whole thing. Right now im in the process of taking it apart and plan to use the display and the fans with a modified son of a fermentation chiller design. Ill post a couple of pictures of me tearing it apart, and post pictures throughout the process for anyone who wants to follow along. Also, any questions and comments welcome.

 

Here are a couple pics of what i have taken apart so far

 

Wow, this thing is build really well, and it looks like all the wiring in run through what was expanding foam insulation, so im having to chisel away at insulation to get the whole wiring.assembly out. Im gonna clean up amd through away all the "trash" and ill post a couple pics of the destruction/progress.

 

Alright phase 1 complete. Got all the wiring harness out of the insulation. Took me about three hours between taking the paneling off and breaking up the insulation and taking about the fridge pieces. Cut my thumb with a razor blade, other than that a very successful first step, didnt damage any of the wires or circuits or anything. Heres a couple photos. Let me know what you guys think.

 

I actually did that same thing but for dual stage kenmore wine chiller. I got it for free on craigslist bc it wouldn't cool and i figured I'd use it for parts later down the row. It took me about an hour or so go follow the wires through the insulation foam and ripping it apart slowly to protect the wires. I got 2 probes, 2 fans, power supply, UV glass door, and the dual controller. Can't complain. Definally a project in the making when I have some free time and an idea.

 

Hah I'm doing the same thing with a Danby wine cooler that wasn't cooling anymore, got it for free as well. Yeah they're a pain to get apart with wiring intact. I decided I wouldn't bother with that, and sorta cut the wires as close to where they went into the insulation as possible, and labeled them all with their purpose. So cut the temp probes out of the walls and I'll just re splice them together later on. Mine is a dual zone with a little low wattage baseboard-style heater in it as well.

In my case I'm planning on using this core temperature control to power some fridge guts I pulled out of a too-small mini fridge.

 

Here's something to consider, which I just discovered for my own build this weekend: My wine fridge I was pulling all of the temperature control stuff out of was a dual zone, one for whites (range 40-50f) and one for reds (range 55-65). I thought "Bingo, perfect temps for everything I need!", however the compressor is ONLY controlled by the coldest temp.

So I managed to get this whole dealy plugged into my other fridge's compressor, with the temps reading 72f on my workbench the compressor kicked in just as planned, I cooled that probe down to below 40f using an ice pack, it shut off...right on! But oh wait, I have no nice and easy way to get this thing to hang out at 64, for instance, as the 'red wine zone' was controlled just by a fan moving cold air from the 'white wine zone' until it hit that temp. The only way I could do that would be to have a chamber where all the cold happens, set to 40 or 50, then use a fan to move that air out into the larger chamber until it hits 64.

Too much hassle and extra room inside needed for additional walls, so I've ordered the $20 STC-1000 off of Ebay, via Hong Kong I can just build that directly into the build and it'll actually take up far less room than the wine fridge controls would have.

Good luck with yours!

 

Right on, my plan is to use the son of a fermentation build using these parts, so ill only be using the cooling part of it, via the fans and ice.

 

That should work perfectly for you then, that's the only scenario that'd work in my case and it's not the one I wanted hehe

Was kinda surprised when the compressor actually kicked in, after tying it into the wine fridge electronic thermostat stuff. No transplanted organ rejection here!

 

Ok, so heres an update.
Got all of the wiring out and wired back, and man was that fun after having it stuffed away for months. Ive got 2 temp sensors and 1 fan. The fan pretty much stays on at all times even when ive got the temp probe sittin in ice water.

Ive tried isolating the temp sensors, and it seems only one of them will chamge the reading on the panel, not sure what the other one does, this was a fridge unit so i dont think it has any warming capsbilities.
Im uploading a few pics, and am open the ANY suggestions.

 

Just reread what psych wrote and maybe im having the same issue, can i make this work using a son of fermentatiin build? Maybe put the white wine probe in the ice chamber and the red wine probe in the ferm chamber? Would that work?

 

Is there anyone that can chime in on this? I'd really like this to work, but am unsure of exactly how these sensors work. From my small understanding, it seems that i will need to put one probe (the white zone probe) in the chamber with the ice and the red probe in the chamber with the fermenter for this to work. It just has me in slumps because I couldn't get the fan to shut off regardless of how low i got the temps on the probes. i'm going to try an experiment tonight by putting one probe in the freezer and the other in the fridge and play around with the setting and see if that shows anything more.

Still open for any insight from someone with a little more hands on.
Thanks,
RonJon

 

Yeah this would work, providing you have one chamber (of whatever size, it could be as small as you want really) with the cold probe in it, and then put your red-wine probe in the chamber you're fermenting in. Presumably the difference in temp between what the red-wine probe reads and what the setpoint of the red-wine "zone" is on your chamber, it'll kick in a fan that cools it down to that set point, pulling cold air from the cold chamber.

If there's no heating capability it must rely upon ambient heat to warm up, or presume that it never will really need warming other than ambient heat.

When I stripped my wine fridge down I wound up with four temp probes, only two of them seemed to do anything at all - one controlled the compressor and cold/white zone, and one controlled the fan and heater coil between that zone and the warmer red zone. If temp difference was too high it'd pull with the fan from the cold chamber, if temp difference too low it'd fire up the heater.

Would you be using this with the compressor from your fridge, or just with straight ice in the cold zone of your ferm chamber?

 

I'm just planning on using just ice from cold zone from ferm chamber. Thanks soooo much for putting this so black and white, this is what I kind of assumed, but so much more at ease now with a veteran chiming in. I'll continue to post pics of progress, and still plan to experiment with the probes in the freezer/fridge and making sure the fan kicks on appropriately.

What is the logic behind having a separate probe, when there's obviously one taking temps in the area where the temp runs of the one probe?
if it works, it works, i'm just curious about what's behind the design.

Thanks Again PSYCH!

 

I typed a whole bunch of stuff here that I thought might be helpful but just realized you said you're using just ice on the cold chamber. So you're not using your powered compressor from the fridge or anything, right? You're using this as just a method to measure the temps in your fermentation chamber and bring in cold air as needed from the ice chamber?

It's still valid then actually, yeah. Your controller will basically just be powering the fan between the two chambers, so it may need to know the difference between them. It may not though, you may be able to just drop the warm probe in your ferm chamber and set it to the temp you want. It may then power the fan up whenever it senses it's too warm, no matter if you have the cold probe in the cold chamber or not.

Definitely should work for you in one way or the other, worthwhile testing that though, put the cold and warm probe in the same place, say at 64f, then get them both warmer than this and see if the fan turns on. If it does you know you don't need to be concerned about the cold probe at all. It may need to be attached and working, but may not need to be in the cold chamber.

Though I could see it being beneficial to know the temp of your cold chamber, so you know when it's not going to offer any chilling

Anyways good luck!

 

Ok, ive tried pretty much every single possible combination of freezer and fridge, even tried another plug the fan fits because i tought maybe there was a always on fan. No matter what i do the fan stays on. Always. Even set at the highest setting of 65 with both probes in the freezer reading 32. I guess im gonna get the volt meter out and see if i can find something that goes hot the it reads higher than the set temp. Maybe i missed a feedback loop that lets the fan know it can stop running. Anything else you can think of to try?



This is the fan spinning away with the display at 32

 

why would you want the fan to go off in a fermentation chamber? I leave mine running the entire time. You want a running fan to circulate air.

 

Im out of ideas at this point, i may just end up getting an stc1000 and wiring up this fan and sensor to it maybe using the led for a fan on indicator. Bummed cuz this display is freakin sweet.

 

The whole point of my build was to use these parts in conjunction with a son of fermentation chiller where the fan only runs to pull cool air from the ice chamber into the femntation chamber part.

 

I didnt want to use a fridge/compressor unit for this, just bottles of ice.