Newbie Building a waterchilling unit from old fridge...

[blackjackel]

I posted on overclockers, but not many "mr freezes" over there, so im reposting here to hopefully draw more experienced feedback =D

BTW, I do know how refridgeration works, I just dont know alot of the terminology...




I gutted an old fridge i found on the side of the road, took me about 30 minutes to unscrew everything and hammer and smash what i couldnt unscrew...

I now have nothing but the guts of this fridge, I ripped it out so that they are still intact and working....

I rewired it so that the temperature sensor is no longer part of the "guts" and the compressor is running directly off the electricity (through a starter-capacitor of course. I ran the setup for a good 6 hours and i had frost over the icebox part of the guts...


The "icebox part" is D x W x H 16in x 20.5in x 7.5in. I list the DxWxH when looking at it as if it were still installed in the fridge....

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the problem is, I have NO CLUE how to put it all together in a compact portable setup so that its nice and neat.

Anyone have any idea how i could do this? Maybe a link to someone that did this? A howto? Anything?




P.S: I was thinking of buying one of those plastic storage boxes you see at kmart or homedepot... Those big tubs of plastic....

The problem i have is, the dilemma of which box to get...

On one hand, i can get a box for JUST the "icebox" part of the setup, and i can stuff the rest of the crap somewhere outside this plastic box... but if i do this, i have no clue where to put the other stuff (such as compressor, and hot coil thing).



On the other hand, i can get a bigger box and split it in two pieces, one piece i can fill with the water and have the "icebox' part in it, while the other part of this big box will hold the compressor, extra wiring... And the "hot coil" thing can sit outside the plastic box (maybe on the side)...

and i can seal the entire box sealing in the compressor and water, etc.


The only problem i can think of, is when i ran the setup for 6 hours, the compressor got extremely hot... almost scalding to the touch.... This makes me think that putting the compressor in an enclosed space is not such a good idea.... i would perhaps need to ventilate it somehow with maybe a small fan or something....





Any advice on the P.S. part?


Thanks in advance to any help given.

[unixxx]

Here's an excellent thread of starting with an already charged system and converting it to a phase-change unit: http://xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22968 You'd probably want to use a cooler if possible for your "icebox" as it'll have better insulation, or you could just insulate the bin you were talking about before. From most pictures I've seen most people just leave the rest of their system caseless and put it on a shelf, you could build a case for it if you want. The "hot coil" is the condenser which radiates off all of the heat absorbed by the evaporator (aka "ice box"). To solve your heating problem you could put a vent in both the top and the bottom of your enclosure and let convection do the rest, or even better you could add a fan to the top vent. Good luck.

[blackjackel]

the link to the guide you gave me seems to be completely different than what i am doing...

In the guide he is making it out of a air conditioning unit he opened up, and im using the guts of a fridge... He already has the basic structure of his setup, and i have just guts hanging out with no solid structure...

My problem is that i need to give these guts some structure, some backbone, and somehow make them carryable, because right now they are nothing but the pure guts of a fridge, working, with nothing really holding them together...

[DocGolem]

Unixxx said that some make cases or just place them on shelves or blocks of wood.

When I made mine out of an air conditioner, I put everything on a piece of wood so I could carry it easier. For you to do this would be simple, but you would have to attach the compressor and somehow latch down the condenser and the evap/res.

The only difference between A/Cs and fridges is that the fridge has a different shaped evaporator.

[blackjackel]

bump...

any other ideas?