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- Jan 18, 2011
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Got lucky on a "top-fridge/freezer-bottom" fridge this week. It's a rather large fridge, but it fits fine in my messy garage (yes, believe it or not, I found wall space!).
Paid $200 for this thing that I found on Craiglist. It's more $$ than the average old school top-freezer fridge (usually they go for $75-125) but it's more recent (prob 5-6 years old) and therefore will use less power than an older fridge. I figure the extra $100 will be made up over a year or two.
I promptly gutted the inside to reveal a mostly flat surface.
I attached a homemade aquarium temperature controller. Those are well known on Homebrew Talk, they can be had for about $25. I went the minimalistic route (read: cheap) and used a 3-gang outlet box, and I set the fridge at 18C (64F) with a swing of 2C, which means the fridge gets switched on @ 20C (68F). Perfect for my use.
The moment of truth came when I loaded up 4x 6-gallon fermenters in there. It's not really a tight fit inside the box, but the fit was tight due to the protrusions from inside the door. I could have trimmed the plastic, but I wanted this to be as simple/easy as possible, so I used 3 shims to balance the rear and the front fermenters. After some moving around, I realized that if I pushed the rear fermenters as far apart as possible, that I could sneak in the left front fermenter slightly in the small gap. It worked!
A slightly closer look shows the left front fermenter moved towards the right.
The floor of the fridge is not 100% flat. It has an indentation about 4" from each side. The shims help, but I intend to replace the shims with a sheet of 3/4" plywood to make a flat floor. There's also a vent in the back left corner that I will have to make a cut out for when I make that sheet of plywood.
M_C
Paid $200 for this thing that I found on Craiglist. It's more $$ than the average old school top-freezer fridge (usually they go for $75-125) but it's more recent (prob 5-6 years old) and therefore will use less power than an older fridge. I figure the extra $100 will be made up over a year or two.
I promptly gutted the inside to reveal a mostly flat surface.
I attached a homemade aquarium temperature controller. Those are well known on Homebrew Talk, they can be had for about $25. I went the minimalistic route (read: cheap) and used a 3-gang outlet box, and I set the fridge at 18C (64F) with a swing of 2C, which means the fridge gets switched on @ 20C (68F). Perfect for my use.
The moment of truth came when I loaded up 4x 6-gallon fermenters in there. It's not really a tight fit inside the box, but the fit was tight due to the protrusions from inside the door. I could have trimmed the plastic, but I wanted this to be as simple/easy as possible, so I used 3 shims to balance the rear and the front fermenters. After some moving around, I realized that if I pushed the rear fermenters as far apart as possible, that I could sneak in the left front fermenter slightly in the small gap. It worked!
A slightly closer look shows the left front fermenter moved towards the right.
The floor of the fridge is not 100% flat. It has an indentation about 4" from each side. The shims help, but I intend to replace the shims with a sheet of 3/4" plywood to make a flat floor. There's also a vent in the back left corner that I will have to make a cut out for when I make that sheet of plywood.
M_C
