hacking the wall between refrigerator and freezer

[jyoung]

does anybody know if there are any cooling lines in most side by side refrigerators that run in the divider wall between the refrigerator and freezer? I am thinking of hacking most of the wall out and maybe having to put a seperate temp control and gain some more keg room?

[Petedadink]

only one way to find out. or you can look up your fridge model online to see if there are some drawings. that would be foolish though

[baltobrewer]

One of the guys on the B3 forum did it and it was fine. However, fridges are made differently depending on manufacturer, so it's a hell of agamble if you don't know.

How big of a hole do you plan on putting in? or do you plan to gut the entire wall?

[jyoung]

My post was kinda a spur of the moment thing, after thinking about it some more I could probably get away with having a few 12vdc fans in the wall just circulating the air between the 2 sides, maybe pulling from the freezer bottom to the frige bottom and the frige top to the freezer top. Maybe I will just cut about a 2"x2" square in the plastic and see if I can see whats inside.

[Henning1966]

Hey jyoung most of your freezers 20 years old and newer put all the coils and evaporator in the back. The evaporator is usual right behind the freezer panel . I took the divider out of my first kegerator for space. It is now my ferment fridge. Here is a pic not a very good one showing the missing divider but you can see the temp control for the fridge laying on the shelf in the back.
edit Opps I thought we were talking about a regular top freezer bottom fridge. I turned a freezer fridge into a big fridge. but if you look for a post by beerbiker on the more beer forum you will find your answer.
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/ ... G_0010.jpg

[Mylo]

does anybody know if there are any cooling lines in most side by side refrigerators that run in the divider wall between the refrigerator and freezer? I am thinking of hacking most of the wall out and maybe having to put a seperate temp control and gain some more keg room?

How much keg room could you possibly gain by doing that to a side-by-side? one keg? and one in the freezer section? Sell that one (or use it for your bottles and give the freezer back to SWMBO - they always like more freezer space), and go pick up yourself a chest freezer. I just got a 14.8 CF one that is like 4 years old for < $50 on Craig's List. If you built a big enough collar (so that you could put a corny on the compressor shelf - you could get like 10 kegs in there...

If you insist on the fan idea, I would put one in the freezer section on top - pushing cold air into the fridge, and put one at the bottom pushing fridge air back into the freezer. If you put both fans pushing the same direction you won't get any movement - it is air tight. The freezer is always going to be colder than the fridge - so you will probably need two controls, one for the freezer, and one for the fans. Still not worth it the fuss, risk, and overall benefit, IMHO.


Mylo

[meisterofpuppets]

does anybody know if there are any cooling lines in most side by side refrigerators that run in the divider wall between the refrigerator and freezer? I am thinking of hacking most of the wall out and maybe having to put a seperate temp control and gain some more keg room?

How much keg room could you possibly gain by doing that to a side-by-side? one keg? and one in the freezer section? Sell that one (or use it for your bottles and give the freezer back to SWMBO - they always like more freezer space), and go pick up yourself a chest freezer. I just got a 14.8 CF one that is like 4 years old for < $50 on Craig's List. If you built a big enough collar (so that you could put a corny on the compressor shelf - you could get like 10 kegs in there...

If you insist on the fan idea, I would put one in the freezer section on top - pushing cold air into the fridge, and put one at the bottom pushing fridge air back into the freezer. If you put both fans pushing the same direction you won't get any movement - it is air tight. The freezer is always going to be colder than the fridge - so you will probably need two controls, one for the freezer, and one for the fans. Still not worth it the fuss, risk, and overall benefit, IMHO.


Mylo

How do you build this collar? I really need to know because I'm planning on getting a chest freezer and a kegging setup eventually. PM me or post it here.

[BDawg]

Meister-

Check out my kegerator:

http://www.west-point.org/users/usma198 ... erator.htm

I did it with a 2x4 collar with a 1x6 facing. You could go bigger (ie, a 2x8 collar with a 1x10 facing). It's not hard to make.