Author Topic: Wine Cooler - Humidity and Defrost Drain making problems  (Read 2306 times)

Offline CaffeineFlo

  • Medium Cheese
  • ***
  • Location: Atlanta
  • Posts: 29
  • Cheeses: 0
  • Default personal text
Wine Cooler - Humidity and Defrost Drain making problems
« on: October 19, 2020, 03:06:57 PM »
Happy Monday morning!

After many smaller problems with my wine fridge cheese cave, I have to ask for help from someone that might have already experienced what's currently going on...

I have a 4.4cu ft magic chef wine fridge that I use for my natural rinds, hence I keep the fridge at around 52F/11.5C with a fogger + water bowl on the bottom of the fridge.
The fridge has a automatic defrost setting - meaning, whenever the cooling element in the back is cooling and evaporation is freezing, it will automatically defrost and the water that this process brings up, will automatically go down a drain hole in the back and gets collected in a small tray on the back.

That tray was repeatedly overflowing due to the water/humidity I'm creating with the fogger on the bottom - Not what I want obviously. So to make my life easier, I went ahead and put a hose on the back of the drain hole and put the other end in a container so I'll be able to easier empty the drain. That's one solution - but I wonder if I should rather just block the drain hole so to keep the water in the fridge?! Maybe someone here can tell me if this is the stupidest idea ever or a great plan?!

Second thing that's happening: Water leaking through the door... My door seems to leak on both corner in the front - the seal isn't perfect but it's not super bad. I normally clean out the water that collects on the bottom, but I still get water coming out there. Is there anything I can do to make the fogger more performant or avoid the water?

I was thinking of adding a 12V 120mm fan into the fridge to distribute the fog that my fogger is creating better and to avoid all the fog staying on the bottom... but I'm not sure how nicely a 120mm fan in a damp environment will work?!

If anyone has input, that'd be greatly appreciated!

Offline CaffeineFlo

  • Medium Cheese
  • ***
  • Location: Atlanta
  • Posts: 29
  • Cheeses: 0
  • Default personal text
Re: Wine Cooler - Humidity and Defrost Drain making problems
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2020, 05:21:55 PM »
Hi Cheeseforum!

I’ve been aging my cheese in a MagicChef Wine cooler that the previous owner left me. To raise the humidity to 80-90% RH I’ve put a fogger in a water tray in the bottom of the fridge, a remote outlet controls the on/off cycles of the fogger for the right RH.

All of that works well, except that I now constantly have water collecting on the bottom of the fridge outside the tray leaking through the door and the defrost pan in the back is constantly full. The fridge also seems to run more often now, although I’m not sure about that.

I’m thinking the fridge is a normal (not thermoelectric) fridge since it has a compressor, but I’m not sure if the compressor indicates that.

Now my question to everyone here:
What can I do to “fix” the fridge, stop the water on the bottom and all the draining?

Thanks!

not_ally

  • Guest
Re: Wine Cooler - Humidity and Defrost Drain making problems
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2020, 12:49:23 PM »
Flo, not sure how helpful this will be, but thought it worth suggesting. It's been so slow here lately, plus this might be a techie question, further reducing possible answers.  Is it worth posting on one of the home brewing sites, maybe one of the reddit sub forums? I think those guys often use wine coolers as fermentation thingies (shows how much I know about it). And I think in these crazy virus days they're as active as ever, maybe more so, I would be if I made/drank wine or beer :)

Offline mikekchar

  • Old Cheese
  • *****
  • Location: Shizuoka, Japan
  • Posts: 1,015
  • Cheeses: 118
  • Default personal text
Re: Wine Cooler - Humidity and Defrost Drain making problems
« Reply #3 on: November 18, 2020, 01:04:17 AM »
Relative humidity is the ratio of the amount of water the air is holding to the amount of water the air *can* hold.  So if the air can hold 100g of water and it is currently holding 90g of water, then the relative humidity is 90%.  As the temperature drops, the amount of water the air can hold also drops.  So you can imagine that at 30 C the air might be able to hold 200g, at 20 C it might be able to hold 100g and at 10 C it might be able to hold 50g (I just made up those numbers -- probably not even close, but hopefully it will help you understand).

Let's image that we have summer air at 30 C (which can hold 200g) and the relative humidity is 25%.  That means that the air is holding 50g of water.  If we cool the air down to 20 C, then the relative humidity will go up to 50% -- the air can hold 100g and it is still currently holding 50g.  If we cool it down to 10C, then the relative humidity is 100%.  The air can hold 50g and it is currently holding 50g.  If we cool it any more, the water will condense and drop out.

Now, imagine your refrigerator.  The air is something like 13C.  You have 90% humidity.  Let's imagine that it can hold 60g of water and is currently holding 54g of water (90% of 60 = 54).  How do we keep the refrigerator cold?  We do it by having a compressor cool some liquid and then run that cool liquid along the back wall of the fridge.  The liquid has to be colder than the air in the fridge because that's how we extract heat from the refrigerator -- the air in the fridge heats up the liquid, and in turn gets a bit colder.  The liquid is pumped to the outside of the fridge where the heat escapes and then we pump it back through the compressor to cool it down again. It is literally a "heat pump".  The liquid takes the heat from the inside of the fridge and is pumped outside (that's why the back of your fridge is warm).

Now imagine that the liquid that we are pumping along the back wall of the fridge is 10C.  It cools the back wall of the fridge to 10C.  This keeps the fridge at an average temperature of 13C.  But there is a problem.  The relative humidity at 13C is 90% (it holds 54 grams of water and *can* cold 60 grams of water), but the relative humidty at 10C will be 104% (it holds 54 grams of water and *can* hold 50 grams of water).  The excess water condenses on the wall of the fridge and runs down to the bottom.

To combat this, most modern fridges have built in dehumidifiers that constantly try to keep the humidity at 70%.  This is one of the reasons why modern fridges are difficult to use for this application -- the fridge will constantly be working against you.  But even if you manage to get the humidity up to 90%, you will have a pool at the bottom of the fridge.  Fridges are just not good for this application.

Walk in cheese cellars are made using air conditioners instead.  They blow cold air into the space.  This means that the walls are always warmer than the air which means that you don't get any condensation on the walls.  The air conditioner will get condensation, but it's easy to drain that.

One thing that may help is to try to set your temperature range in the fridge and the humidity such that the temperature of the back wall gives you a humidity below 100%.  The problem with that is that you will probably have to run the compressor *a lot*.  Basically, what you do is give the temperature controller a very narrow range of temperature so that the back wall is not much colder than the air and then dial back your humidity to 85% or something.  But this means that the controller is going to toggle the compressor on and off again very rapidly and it will eventually burn it out.

Maturation boxes is the answer.  Or a walk in cellar cooled by air conditioners.

Offline CaffeineFlo

  • Medium Cheese
  • ***
  • Location: Atlanta
  • Posts: 29
  • Cheeses: 0
  • Default personal text
Re: Wine Cooler - Humidity and Defrost Drain making problems
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2020, 05:11:48 PM »
I ended up building a humidity box similar to this one: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4182251 with two 12V fan on top pushing the humidity produced from the fogger on the other side.

It worked pretty well, for three days, until I turned up the humidity to 95-97% which fried the fans. Now I need to get better fans and try it again!