Hi everyone, long time lurker here, who has gotten some good ideas from this forum.
I have a 15G conical, so its too big for a converted freezer. So, I built a fermentation chamber out of scrap particle board shelving and styrofoam packaging. heat source is a 25W coffee can lamp, and the cooling source is a small 5000BTU window AC unit that I picked up cheap. it's all tied together with the STC1000 controller, and my contraption is ugly as sin, but it is working very well holding my temp at 64.
my ferm chamber is sat in the basement right next to the water heater and furnace - which can be good or bad, depending...
I do have a question/ concern though that maybe someone can answer - the AC cycles a lot, no doubt its oversized for a small cabinet. its approx 45 seconds on, and 12 minutes off. so it runs maybe 5 minutes per hour.
But, I'm worried the short "on" cycle will cause significant harm to the compressor ?
What do you think ?
I tried googling but wasnt able to find anything. maybe this would be better in a HVAC forum, but I figure there are probably other homebrewers who have done something similar.
I have a 15G conical, so its too big for a converted freezer. So, I built a fermentation chamber out of scrap particle board shelving and styrofoam packaging. heat source is a 25W coffee can lamp, and the cooling source is a small 5000BTU window AC unit that I picked up cheap. it's all tied together with the STC1000 controller, and my contraption is ugly as sin, but it is working very well holding my temp at 64.
my ferm chamber is sat in the basement right next to the water heater and furnace - which can be good or bad, depending...
I do have a question/ concern though that maybe someone can answer - the AC cycles a lot, no doubt its oversized for a small cabinet. its approx 45 seconds on, and 12 minutes off. so it runs maybe 5 minutes per hour.
But, I'm worried the short "on" cycle will cause significant harm to the compressor ?
What do you think ?
I tried googling but wasnt able to find anything. maybe this would be better in a HVAC forum, but I figure there are probably other homebrewers who have done something similar.