I’m on the verge of losing my second chest freezer in the last several months. The first was no big deal it lasted almost 10 years as a “keezer”. When I replaced that one, I bought a nice big new freezer and swapped it with a smaller freezer we used for frozen food. At that time I took the 3 year old chest freezer(that was replaced by the new big one) that was the perfect size for a half barrel fermenter set it up with a Fermostat controller. Couple days ago during the lager phase of a Munich Dunkel I noticed an error on the fermostat and a temp reading of 40 degrees. Reset the controller to 35 and let’r rip. The fermostat keeps a log of data and this morning when I checked it was keeping cold but when I checked the “cooling run time” for yesterday, the compressor was running for 18 of the past 24 hours. I don’t think it should need to run for 18 hours a day to keep 10 gallons of beer cold when I never lift the lid. It is getting cold, but it just takes forever, What am I doing wrong? New Freezer every 3 years will quickly put an end to homebrewing for me.
Maybe it is cycling too often? I put my probe in a small bottle of water so it runs for a while and then stays off for a long time. The temp may swing from 36-44 but that’s ok by me.
Greg, I had a similar thought, I have a gallon juice jug that I put a thermowell in the lid (just some 1/2 copper tube) and put that in there as well with the temp probe down in the tube…so we will see how it does over the next day or so.
I’m still a bit concerned with how slowly the temperature drops, but that could be an issue with the thermal mass of 1/2 barrel with 10-11 gallons of liquid in that small of a space.
Even with a gallon of water as a heat sink, the freezer is running just about all day. Hopefully it can limp thru another week and next weekend i will look for a new one.
[quote=“lwrehm”]Even with a gallon of water as a heat sink, the freezer is running just about all day. Hopefully it can limp thru another week and next weekend i will look for a new one.[/quote]A gallon of water is a lot. I use a very skinny Swiss liquor bottle which holds maybe 3-5 oz.
dirty condenser or if its a fan cooled condenser, see if it seized up, these are shaded pole motors and can easily be torn own cleaned and the bushing relubed. 3in 1 oil… if the motor is shot, easy replace, universal part is about $20. most kits even come with a new blade.
