Wine cooler incubator.

[pumpkinman]

Man, did I get the gloat of the century today. I have been looking online for a used wine cooler to make a incubator out of. I saw a week old ad this morning for a 1 year old wine cooler with a shot circuit board for free! I emailed the lady and she said "do you want it for scrap or are you going to fix it?". Apparently she had many scrap guys email here and she wanted nothing to do with that! So I got it!
I looked it up online and it is a $400 dollar wine cooler with 2 zones, digital readout and wood shelves. It's a big one too!!!!
Anyways to make a short story long, I won't be breeding any animals for a long time but I wanted it for my supers and also my other hobby of extreme gardening.
I have a brand new herpstat II just waiting for something to do so I will use that. Would like advise on whether to use fans or not and also what should I use for the heat source? I was thinking I will use both chanels of the herpstat, one near the bottom and one near the top of the wine cooler.
Any thoughts are welcomed.

Chris

 

[tanya1974]

i would be very intrested in seeing who helps you with this one as i have allways fancied doing it. my questions would be do you take the harmful gass out and how and how do you regulate the heat sorce?? i have had many chances of coco cola fridges but didnt dare as havnt a clue how to do it.. to al keep chacking on your progress and help if you dont mind

 

[pumpkinman]

Well I took the unit to a appliance repair shop to have the coolant removed but there was none. They said there was a pinhole in the line and it leaked out so they didn't charge me anything!
I spent a half hour yesterday gutting the cooler. Took everything out and tossed most of it except the 3 circulation fans that were in the unit.
I plan on using 2 of the fans. One at the top and one at the bottom. There is a 2" air space behind the rear panel where the cooling coil was. I will utilize that space to circulate the air. The problem with some of the conversions I have seen on the net that use a fan at the top to blow air down is that I don't think it will be effective when the cooler is loaded.
I will take pic and post a tutorial when I am done.

 

[tanya1974]

looking forward to seeing it pumpkinman :study:

 

[pumpkinman]

I am done Tanya! Pics in the Diy forum.

Chris