How I Made My Own Chest Fridge During the Pandemic
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- čas přidán 28. 11. 2020
- My old superefficient Sundanzer freezer was DOA when I got back to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage from Florida last spring. Living mostly off grid and on solar power, I like the efficiency of a chest fridge since they don't dump all the cold every time you open the door, but didn't want to shell out the over $1000 for a new one purpose built. This time, I wanted to convert a chest freezer to a chest fridge with an external thermostat so I could get it for cheaper. But when I looked into chest freezers, they were not available and were on backorder for months into the future because of all the hoarding from the pandemic. Everyone needed a chest freezer to put all the food they'd hoarded from the grocery store in.
But I noticed a number of appliances on the curb waiting to be brought in for recycling, one of which was a small freezer that still looked in good shape. I thought I'd do some troubleshooting and see if I could get it running again and set myself up with another superefficient solar powered refrigerator.
#ChestFridge #HardcoreSustainable
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Many older appliances are easily and inexpensively fixed if someone takes the time to check the parts. Thanks for this video and showing people how to fix a relay.
Hey Dan, this was brilliant! Keep sharing your discoveries because we can learn so much from you. I LOVED the fact that you did not need to get an external thermostat -- just set it to the lowest setting.
Yes I was curious as to how that freezer had a fridge setting, but it made life easier.
@@HardcoreSustainable thermostats are mechanical devices and sometimes have sloppy tolerances, so occasionally you'll get lucky and find a chest freezer that will function as a refrigerator. the downside to this is if you are looking for a chest freezer to use as a freezer it might not be able to get as cold as you would like due to the sloppy thermostat. i have 2 chest freezers, an old whirlpool made in the 70's using r-12 refrigerant and a newer one also made by whirlpool in 2002 but sold at costco under the kirkland brand using r-134a refrigerant and both of them freeze hard at their lowest settings. one cool thing is that the old whirlpool will get all the way down to -35, and at that temperature food will last forever as long as it is packaged properly.
What a brilliant fix! I honestly would'nt want to tamper with something like that. When I moved here a year ago I bought no white goods with me apart from a small chest freezer. They had left a washing machine and a 6 foot fridge freezer which is about 17 years old,Im guessing it was installed when the place was new,its a little rusty but works just fine! A friend and I regularly look in skips (dumpsters) to see whats on offer lol
Awesome! Great job!
Tytyty! Wonderful and timely.
Good shit good job man saved another freezer I like old school👍👍👍
Very inspiring video!
Excellent info!!Awesome!Thanks a lot!!😊🙌
Thank you! Great video.
Awesome fix 👍🏿
Nice! How does it compare for energy use?
That's a good question. I'm sure it uses more per cu. ft. because it isn't superinsulated like the Sundanzer, but it still uses less than an upright fridge. I'll hook up the wattsup and see what it says over a day of use.
@@HardcoreSustainable ty for that follow up. I'd love to know if it's worth it if your starting from zip. Loving your playlists.
I was getting a reading of 10W. After 91hrs it used .91kW of power.
@@HardcoreSustainable thanks!
@@HardcoreSustainable chest freezers have much better insulation than other refrigeration appliances because they are designed to hold food frozen at subzero temps while minimizing energy usage in order to get a good energy star rating. so when you use it as a refrigerator they become very efficient.
Really great video! How would you use an external thermostat to manage a freezer as a refrigerator?
very easy. connect the freezer's power cord to the external thermostat, place the thermostat's temperature sensing bulb inside the freezer, then plug in the external thermostat's power cord to a power source.
How do you recapture the refrigerant when you dispose of a AC or frig?
A certiified HVAC technician will use a refrigerant recovery machine to pump out all of the refrigerant to be returned to an approved reclamation facility for destruction in the case of CFC or HCFC refrigerants, or reclamation in the case of HFC and newer blends of refrigerants!
@@johnhinson9866 Thanks for the more detailed info.
How were you able to determine that relay was burnt out?
I just opened up the guts of the fridge and did troubleshooting based on what few things could cause such a problem. When I tested different components for continuity and resistance, meaning the current that could flow through them, it showed that everything else, the compressor, the capacitor, the on/off switch, were showing what they should show. The relay didn't have the right resistance. I opened it up and found that resistor disk had all that charring, and I knew that was the culprit. Then I had to find the right replacement part online.
It's difficult to troubleshoot more complicated electronics this way because there are so many circuits, usually on a motherboard. On a motherboard, there could be a short or a blown part anywhere in the maze of circuits, and fixing them is much harder. But fridges have really simple components, like the one I show here.
One idea for an old chest freezer that's not working anymore, is bury it, and make a mini Root cellar.
People have done that here. I don't know if it's always water tight though and with our high water table in spring you could end up with flooded veggies. the other thing is you should probably get the refrigerant captured, and maybe take out the guts first.
DOES IT MAKE CONDESATION INSIDE THE FRIDGE WHATS THE HUMIDITY LEVEL LIKE
It does make a small amount of condensation. You just have to clean it out from time to time.
there are chest freezers that can go up to 50F (so you can use it as a fridge) wanai makes one
Yes that is what I did with this one.
@@HardcoreSustainable you made it into a brand that already came with those temps available? What's the brand?
@@gg-gn3re Yes, if you set this chest freezer on a lower setting it's a fridge. It's an Avantco.
Here is a list of every substance in nature recognized and classified as a refrigerant.
Check out the R-700's:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refrigerants
Thanks for that. I was looking for something similar. It is interesting that the switch from CHFCs to HFCs was done to prevent ozone depletion, but some of those gases end up being astronomical contributors to climate change. Got to phase them out too.
The R-700s are mostly gases we know by name. They must not have the best refrigeration properties, but maybe they can still be used in some future technology.
john hinson: why are you fascinated with the 700-series refrigerants? do you have any idea how a refrigeration system actually works?
@@marzsit9833
After making a pretty good living 45 years in the HVACR industry, including teaching it, and being an RSES member and officer... Yeah, I'm pretty confident that I know how the refrigeration cycle works! Including ammonia and CO2.
Honestly, it's been so far in the past, that I had forgotten about this video.
I believe my ansgt was over the OP confusing ozone depletion POTENTIAL with GW POTENTIAL!
Hope this allays your concern!
Bless your heart.
"Refrigerants are so harmful to the planet."
When the A/C folks replaced our house Air conditioner
they just cut the copper line and bled the unit out.
No capture.
They don't give a chit.
Ever live in China ?
You would not believe what they do at industrial levels.
So, yes, we should do our part to "save the planet".
Thanks for the info.
My best advice has always been:
"Do not have children".
We didn't.
Retired very early.
Love kids? Love somebody else's and return later.
im sure all of india and china are properly disposing of their fridges lol
Why do you say that? China actually has much higher standards for a lot of things than we do in the US. I don't know about India. I'm sure a lot of people don't even have fridges.
@@HardcoreSustainable czcams.com/video/ZHTWRYXy2gE/video.html
Refrigerants are the 5th worst contributors to climate change. According to the drawdown project. But your view as the single worst can be understood, since theses gases have to chance to be simply recaptured into plant material, as co2 can, eventually...
No chance. I meant no chance.
And somehow the edit function had disapeared on yt
Do you have a source for your info besides just the reference to project drawdown? I remember reading somewhere about refrigerants being the single biggest contributor to global warming, simply because they are thousands of times more potent than CO2 and so persistent for thousands of years depending on the type, but currently I can't seem to find much online that consolidates info and compares different GHGs and their impacts as a whole.