Got a nice fridge. Questions

[dvizard]

Hi,

I got myself a nice beverage fridge from Ebay for 50$, which (after extensive cleaning. Baaah) looks like this, without and with a cover for the cooling system:

It will hold one 6.5G plastic fermenter. I measured it with my temperature logger and it performs nicely as I want it - the built-in thermostat (which I will bridge) shuts cooling down at 30F and retriggers at 40F (air temp) and a test water jug was held constantly at 40F with no problem. With bridged internal thermostat it will get a lot cooler. I will operate it with my selfmade Arduino based thermostat (18B20 sensor).

The insulation of the front door is crap, of course, which is why I will probably cut out a styrofoam board that fits the fridge front to put inside.

My questions:

• The thing above the thermostat is apparently a fan that circulates air through the cooling system like this (or that's how I understand it):
  
  
  
  However the fan is quite loud, much louder than the compressor, and it runs all the time (as long as the fridge is not yet under my thermostat's control). From the looks of it, it seems that I could just disconnect the thing. If I disconnect the fan and take off the white cover, such that I only get "passive diffusion" of heat instead of active distribution, will I still be able to cool decently? (Of course I have to see. If with better insulation the duty cycle is low enough to keep my temperatures, it might not be much of a problem. At first it won't be lagers anyway.)
• The fridge dissipates heat both from the back and from the bottom. I'm a bit worried that this might not be so healthy for my wooden floor? Do you have experiences with that, or respectively, would you recommend I put something between the floor and the fridge (like an additional wooden plate or so)?

 

[outside92129]

You should have a fan to circulate the air, i have a fridge of similar design and i got it for free because the fan shorted out. But because of that it didn't cool worth a budweiser, and the cooling area got wet because the air didn't move fast enough to prevent condensation. But you can change out the fan for something quieter. The unit has a bigger fan than you need, it was designed to push air through 3 or 4 racks full of little bottles, you're not going to have nearly as much wind resistance. Just make sure you get the same voltage fan (to keep it simple). I'm just running a cheapo 12V fan scavenged from a computer.

Your door is probably dual paned with argon. It's not as bad as you think it is, and the glass door would be cool and convenient to see what's going on.

What's the back of the unit look like? Are there cooling fins or just the compressor tank? My fridge is sitting on concrete/tile so i'm not concerned about heat. What's the temp behind the unit?

 

[chessking]

+1 on changing fans. I've got three small fans in my side by side kegerator, and they run independent of the compressor. I can barely tell that they are on.