Keezer cooling issue

[GreenEnvy22]

I've had an old chest freezer in the garage for close to a year now, with an inkbird controller keeping it between 1-3 C. It's been rock solid until this past week.
I walked into the garage one day and saw temp reading was up around 8 C. Opened up the keezer and there is some ice buildup inside, near the top.

So I 'rebooted' the controller, but temps have still not gone down to normal. It's not hot outside compared to earlier in the summer. I stuck another thermometer in there just to be sure the inkbird was reading right, and it is. It's been sitting around 5-6 degrees pretty regularly. I was surprised to see such a reading with ice forming inside.

This afternoon I plugged the keezer directly into power, instead of the inkbird, but it's still around the same temp, 5 degrees when it should be below 3.

So I'm thinking my old chest freezer might be starting to fail, but anything I can try? Maybe let it defrost and see if that helps?

 

[day_trippr]

The "ice buildup inside, near the top" is a classic symptom of a chest freezer running waaay low on refrigerant. Eventually the area of the buildup will shrink to nothing and the cabinet temperature will rise to ambient or close to it.

You might be able to charge-up the system to keep it alive for awhile - though there's no telling how long. As related in the linked thread I'm nursing my current keezer along until I get its replacement built...

Cheers!

 

[GreenEnvy22]

I looked into trying to recharge it, but this freezer is old and uses r12, so 134 isn't really compatible, are 12a probably would have worked, but I found a free upright fridge and freezer online, so I went and picked that up.

I'll get all my stuff moved over into it tomorrow.
one issue, I washed out the fridge because it was a little dirty and stinky inside from sitting in a garage, and now I'm getting a shock whenever I touch the handle or anything metal. I checked and there's about 7 volts on any metal surface.
I'm hoping that's only because of the water, and not some weird grounding issue I'm going to have to track down. the seller said he wasn't aware of any issues with it.

 

[GreenEnvy22]

The shocking went away once it dried out, working well now.
Got everything moved over. If I move the CO2 outside the fridge, I can fit 6 corny kegs in here. I guess I need some more taps

 

[kevink]

The "ice buildup inside, near the top" is a classic symptom of a chest freezer running waaay low on refrigerant. Eventually the area of the buildup will shrink to nothing and the cabinet temperature will rise to ambient or close to it.

You might be able to charge-up the system to keep it alive for awhile - though there's no telling how long. As related in the linked thread I'm nursing my current keezer along until I get its replacement built...

Cheers!

My keezer has been making a little noise and has ice buildup at the bottom. It's about 5-10 years old. Can ice buildup at the bottom also mean low refrigerant? It's still holding temps just fine, but it does seem to be running more than usual, unless that's just because I'm noticing the noise now.