Walk-In Cooler

[Hammer]

My AC is some old yard sale special. I have not had a chance to test it really well in the cooler. When it was in the bedroom window it would make the room 65 when the rest of the house was 83-85. I figured I would go cheap until I am forced to go spend money.

[Crut]

my cooler is 5x6, with the smallest ac unit abc warehouse had. doesnt take much. In the heat of summer it runs quite a bit so lagering is out of question, but it can hold fifties if needed without frosting up. I have mine hooked up o a ranco controller, so all i did was disconnect the ac thermostat and hook the two wires together so it can run below 60 if i want it to.
-Crut

[Hammer]

When these units frost up, is that due to lack of air movement after the compressor shuts off? I kinda remember seeing a post where a guy hooked up a bank of PC fans that ran all the time to force air accross the condenser to allow cooler temps. Anyone know about this?

[JediHopTrick]

I have seen this. It seems that is the biggest flaw of the set up. Although easily resolved. Here's another thing to ponder. So most of my winter is below freezing, therefor I will need to prevent the room from freezing up several months out of the year. The building will be heated w/ a wood stove. This is my idea. 1 thermostat to operate a small space heater, 1 to operate a gate valve of sorts w/ a fan to the outside. Silly? Seems like would work well w/ little energy used, as long as it has a differential of 5 degrees or so.

[foomench]

I've been thinking about a walk-in cooler and/or wine cellar. The wine cellar industry has a/c units designed to work indoors that will typically cool your space 30 degrees below ambient, which in my Colorado basement would get me to 30-40 degrees depending on the season. A lot of the considerations for building a wine cooler are the same. Check out
http://www.rosehillwinecellars.com/3rsV ... uction.pdf
http://www.vinotheque.com/anim/cellar_interactive.html

That Rosehill place sells five or six brands of coolers. You can also find them at the big box home improvement stores, at least online.
http://www.rosehillwinecellars.com/3rsV ... ne_cooling

Now I need to figure out how to combine the wine cellar and the beer cooler efficiently.

-Eric

[Crut]

I have seen this. It seems that is the biggest flaw of the set up. Although easily resolved. Here's another thing to ponder. So most of my winter is below freezing, therefor I will need to prevent the room from freezing up several months out of the year. The building will be heated w/ a wood stove. This is my idea. 1 thermostat to operate a small space heater, 1 to operate a gate valve of sorts w/ a fan to the outside. Silly? Seems like would work well w/ little energy used, as long as it has a differential of 5 degrees or so.

for winter i just use a small space heater hooked up to my dual stage ranco. Heat on one, cool on the other. This way i can hold the ambient temp within 1-2 degrees. pretty simple really
-Crut

[Hammer]

I remember reading somewhere that a gradual fluctuation will age a beer better than a steady constant temperature. I don't know if it is true or not. If it is I would expect just a few degrees change over time. Nothing fast or violent.

Jedi- your idea should work. The commercial device that does just that is called an economizer. It kicks in when the outside temp is colder than the room temp. You may know this already. But just in case it may save you from re-inventing the wheel.

[JediHopTrick]

Thanks again Christian.