Cooling Walk-In with outside air

[hillhousesawdustco]

Suppose you had a walk-in cooler in your nice temp-controlled building and that you happen to live in one the coldest areas imaginable.

Rather than having the condenser do all sorts of work cooling the room down in the middle of the winter, what about putting in ducts to the outside to circulate cold air. Maybe have some kind of thermostatically controlled damper and blower fan to cut on when the differential between the outside air and the walk-in temp are about right.

Obviously you'd turn this system off when it is warm outside (or -30, don't need to be freezing your kegs or deer carcases or whatever solid).

Any thoughts? Has this already been done a million times or is it just stupid?

Feel free to chime in.

 

[BigRob]

It works, I use a small scale version of this when my outside temps are under 15C. Biggest issue is blocking the air when it's really windy

 

[Erroneous]

Also you open yourself up to wild dust born yeast and bacteria even more so than normal AC so be sure you have it off on transfer and brew days.

 

[Chrisl77]

Also you open yourself up to wild dust born yeast and bacteria even more so than normal AC so be sure you have it off on transfer and brew days.

If you use a blower why not use a good air filter for an ac unit? They make good filters that can filter out mold spores and even smaller.

 

[Junkster]

Sure, why not? Large, packaged A/C units sometimes use outside air when the conditions are right - they're called economizers and they use motorized dampers / louvers and have a control with temp sensors to make the decision when it's appropriate. If air quality is too big of a problem, then a tiny pump circulating antifreeze or glycol between inside and outside heat exchangers (or radiators) might do it.

 

[Erroneous]

If you use a blower why not use a good air filter for an ac unit? They make good filters that can filter out mold spores and even smaller.

I don't work on AC units at all but I'd estimate you'd need a fairly hefty blower to get any kind of airflow through a decent filter. But I'm sure you could easily scavenge one from an old AC. Just another consideration really, but if you're worried I'm sure the cheap blue ones would provide little resistance.