Modified Keezer/Ferment. Chamber aka The Beast

He're is my new baby for my brew room. The Beast!!! It's a modified keezer I guess. I took the guts out of a 3.0 cf fridge and created this 6'x6.5'x3' fridge/ferment chamber. Controlled by a 2 zone Love Controller. Framed the whole thing with 2x4's and plywood. Insulated with a layer of R60 foil then some pink foam insulation and another layer of R60 on top of that. I have two computer fans inside to help circulate the air between the top chamber and bottom chamber.

Missing my pic of the close to finished product with two of the tree doors and controller installed.

 

Interesting build. What temps are you planning on keeping that thing at? I'd be curious if the cooling unit is able to cool that large of a space below ~50

 

Might work, but you are asking a lot out of that tiny refrigeration unit. You are asking it to cool about a 39 times greater volume than the original unit. It might be a good idea to install an additional fan and have it blow across the evaporator shell thingy. I suspect the compressor may run continuously and never cycle off, but there's only one way to find out and that's to give it a try. I'm going to try something similar using the guts taken from an in-room air conditioning unit. I don't have really high hopes for success with my project, but the in-room AC unit is worthless for it's original purpose. That thing has to be one of the dumbest designs I've ever seen. What were they thinking?

 

Nice looking build, one question is did you leave room in the back for air flow across the coils? I have the guts from an ancient kegerator chilling my smaller (4x2) chamber and it works but the cold plate will ice up pretty fast if I put it in cold crash mode, otherwise it works well.

 

How's the Beast doin?

 

Not as well as I wanted. Only cools down to 55ish without running constantly. I plan on taking a stand up freezer and using that inside....if I can figure out how to do it without damaging the internal cooling coils. I will document if I get it to work.

Cheers

 

Don't know if you have access or room, but you may also be able to pick up another fridge or a window AC and run them together to improve your cooling.

If the beast is not always full, another alternative would be to build some insulated walls that you can velcro into the inside, so you can reduce the volume you need to cool.

Nice build though.