Turning an old chest freezer into a wine fridge? FAQ

Can't think of any. The compressor will be cycling less often but then they cycle all day long anyway. (Digital controls might be an issue, but it's been a long time since I had a freezer with any controls beyond a fast freeze button)

By external mounting, do you mean in the rain? Or just outside the freezer in the garage?

The universal stats start at £10 for your finest Chinesium:

Theo

Just in the garage.

Spendthrift. £5.85 ;-)

That’s my plan unless the stat controller needs to be inside the fridge/freezer as well.

Tim

Our garage freezer has a removable plastic plug on the front, for draining during defrosting. If the OP's freezer has anything similar, that might be ideal.

Not a frost free version so not possible alas. Sadly management has decided that she prefers a free fridge freezer (with a non-functioning freezer) on Facebook market place.

As it’s one with twin stats & pumps it’s ideal for going in our garage and we didn’t want the freezer part anyway.

Tim

Yebbut that's just the 'stat, mine is a finished product with an LED display and mains plug and socket, in a case. For another fiver it does everything you want with no DIY - just plug in and mount the probe somewhere.

I can't see why you'd want the controller inside the freezer - for one thing it'll be a source of heat inside.

Now time to think of uses for the dead freezer section of your 'new' fridge freezer... I wonder if you could drill a hole through into the fridge section, and then you'd have a bigger fridge compartment?

Theo

No way you could fiddle the freezer thermostat to bring it into fridge range?

nib

Not impossible I suppose but I’ve not looked in depth as to how these things work and what determines there temperature range. Anyhow, I’ve ordered the stat that Theo posted a link to which should do the job.

Tim

Apologies, I just saw the price. I didn’t follow the link. Looks perfect.

Given the price I’m gonna buy it to try as I’m getting bad vibes about the odds of getting this other fridge freezer.

It’s always possible that the freezer might be an easy fix, if the fecking Facebook market place user will ever reply to our messages!

Tim

I'd check the range on ebay/Amazon/etc... that was the cheapest but there are others for a couple of quid more that look slightly less sketchy - search 'plug thermostat'.

(it needs to have an external probe, which some don't as they're just room stats)

That's true... then you need to work out what you can use a freezer for. Or you could perhaps use this stat to turn the freezer into more of a fridge, so you have double the fridge space.

(having separate compressors for each half sounds rather nice. Is it a fancy model?)

Theo

Should would.

Certainly 30 years ago - possibly still now- many domestic fridge freezers relied on one main thermostat- even some of the more expensive ones.

( We had a ‘saga’ with a new fridge freezer and learned a lot from the engineer who eventually fixed it.)

It may be worth looking on YouTube for videos about running a 240V fridge in a camper van. I know it sounds unrelated but part of it isn’t.

There is a recentish craze for modifying simple domestic fridges to run of inverters but modifying the thermostat wiring to control the 12V supply. The thermostat information may be helpful.

Simple freezers often have plugs / bungs for draining.

We had a cheap ( I think Tricity) chest freezer - it lasted years, the seals went the end. It had one.

The current one, not really expensive, John Lewis own brand, simple as they come, has one.

That said, we’ve decided chest freezers are not a good idea. Finding stuff is a pain- even if you are meticulous with labelling.

Have you check the fridge / freezer is suitable for use in the garage - some are only rated for temperatures higher than some garages.

If your garage is integral, you are probably ok. We have a fridge/ freezer and a chest freeze in our integral garage and I have a remote ( Wi-Fi) temp sensor. While ours are rated for the lower temperatures - at least as far as I could check, the fridge was one we had in the kitchen so getting details of an older model wasn’t easy- I set the sensor to warm me if the temperature drops below 10C. It hasn’t in the last year.

Well the stat arrived today (the fridge freezer never materialised) and after struggling a bit with the instructions printed in the tiniest font ever, I got it set up and plugged in.

It seems to be doing exactly what I want and the temperature readout seems to be pretty accurate.

The only issue that is concerning me now is that as my freezer wasn’t intended to be a fridge, there’s nowhere for any condensation to go other than to puddle in the bottom so I’ll need to think of a way to deal with that.

Our garage is very dry and I don’t expect there will be as much air movement in and out when opening as a conventional fridge so it may not turn out to be much of a problem but it’s definitely something I’ll have to keep an eye on. I might tilt it ever so slightly so that any condensate collects along one edge where I can keep an eye on it.

Tim

I've come back to this because I now have a similar requirement. I have surplus freezer capacity and have just taken delivery of a lot of beer from Westbrook which is supposed to be kept in a refrigerator.

The thermostat linked to seems ideal. However they seem to be out of stock at the moment. I am reluctant to order another random one as this has been purchased and tested. [Updates welcome.]

In the mean time, I was wondering about putting a simple timer on the freezer and running it, for example, for 1 hour per day.

I currently have for a beer/wine fridge a camping cooler box which doesn't have a thermostat so I run it all the time in the summer and during daylight hours in spring/autumn. Mid winter booze keeps cool anywhere outside. Condensation does gather, but nothing I put in there is susceptible; beer bottles and cans, wine bottles etc. are used to this kind of thing. I mop it out now and then with a cloth.

Cheers

Dave R