Any one ever build your own homemade walk in fridge

[Slugmar]

Im wanting a big walk in fridge to store veggies in during the summertime before taking them to the farmers market or road side stands.

But it also needs to have a second side to hang the beef/pork/goats we process for our family.

Was wondering if any of you have built one or seen one built.

[Beeman]

Find a refrigerated truck body like a dairy truck.

[Oldcountryboy]

Yep, find yourself a box off of a truck such as some sort of a produce truck. If it doesn't have a fridge compressor you can rig one up yourself. You can even use a window A/C unit in one and use a temperature converter(not sure what they're really called) to draw the temp down. You wont necessarily need one with two sides if you do all your livestock processing in the winter time when your not harvesting garden products.

[Big Dave]

My neighbor uses a 53 foot reefer trailer to store his apples in. Yall are giving me Ideas.

[TnAndy]

I'm getting ready to build one.....adding a 12x20 room on the back of my house garage for a 'canning/meat processing' kitchen, and will use 6x8 of it for a walk in cooler. Primary use will be to hang meat raised here on the farm, as weather is often "iffy" for aging beef.


Found a commercial cooler door on Craig's List, and plan to build the inside out of 2" blue foam, then 1/2" cement board and tile the walls/floor with a floor drain, so I can hose the whole thing down if needed. Refrigeration will be a wall AC unit and a "Coolbot" for control

http://www.storeitcold.com/

[Old Vet]

I have build several from kits.Both refrigeration and freezer. The thing to remember is to get a big enough compressor and coil to cool them. The box was made out of two sides aluminum with foam insulation in between. The compressor run on Three faze not the kind you want. You can get some to run on 200 single faze the kind you want. On a 10 foot by 20 foot with a 7 foot sealing you will need a 8 ton compressor to keep it near 40 degrees. The more insulation you have the better. You will need to remember to make a way to get the electricity and the gas in to the cooling coils. The way I did this was to use a pipe and seal it both inside and out with spray foam. You will need a thermostat inside and a way to run the fan motors all the time and a way to defrost the coils each time the compressor runs. You will need to have a air conditioner man to hook it up for you and make sure it is ruining right. You can build it out of wood but make sure that the wood is rot resistance. The one that I built out of wood was built out of cypress with 8 inch walls with foam inside and you could see where the studs were during the summer because they would sweat.

[farmerbrian]

I havent built one myself but this farm website I founda while back with lots of good information has a page on there homemade walkin fridge:

http://snakeroot.net/farm/OurCooler.shtml

[WisJim]

A friend with a market garden and CSA made one and uses a window airconditioner as the cooling unit. It is on the north side of his house, and is insulated with styrofoam insulation. I think it is about 8' by 12' or bigger, and I don't remember all the details, but they have been using it for a few years now, to store fresh vegetables before taking them to customers. If you want one to cool meat also, it might need more cooling than just an A/C unit can provide.

[artificer]

Originally Posted by rose2005

To anyone that has already built one, or has one, are they expensive to run?

Rose

I haven't built one, but I've thought about it. Using the Coolbot recomendations of 21,000btu's for a 10'x12', and using a COP of 3, that means it would probably use around 2kws. At $0.10/kwhr it would cost $.20/hr, or $4.80/day at full time running.

If you use 10'x12'x8' for a size, and have 4" of foam insulation for R10, and 35degF inside, 90degF outside, it would take around 3250btu/hr. So once you cooled everthing down, didn't open the door, and were at steady state, it would only cost around $.75/day. These are really rough guesses, but should be in the ball park.

Old Vet: why does it take such a large compressor? I can see if you want to cool 1000lb of beef down to 35degF in an hour, but the theoretical heat flow for the 10'x20'x7' is only 1ton for 2" of insulation, and only 5,740btu/hr for 4", and thats at 110degF and 40degF. Just wondering...

Michael

[wy_white_wolf]

We built one when I was a teenager. Between 3 of us hunting and butchering 2 steers in the fall we just needed something. It was basicly a heavily insulated storage shed with modified window AC unit. A friend of Dads was an HVAC tech and he modified the window unit so it would cool to a lower temperature without freezing up on us. It was great because we could 1/4 an amimal and let it hang until we were ready to butcher it.

Not sure about how expensive it was to run. We only used it in the fall for meat and had to thoughly clean it or it smelled really bad when the temp warmed up in the spring.

[Old Vet]

Originally Posted by artificer

I haven't built one, but I've thought about it. Using the Coolbot recomendations of 21,000btu's for a 10'x12', and using a COP of 3, that means it would probably use around 2kws. At $0.10/kwhr it would cost $.20/hr, or $4.80/day at full time running.

If you use 10'x12'x8' for a size, and have 4" of foam insulation for R10, and 35degF inside, 90degF outside, it would take around 3250btu/hr. So once you cooled everthing down, didn't open the door, and were at steady state, it would only cost around $.75/day. These are really rough guesses, but should be in the ball park.

Old Vet: why does it take such a large compressor? I can see if you want to cool 1000lb of beef down to 35degF in an hour, but the theoretical heat flow for the 10'x20'x7' is only 1ton for 2" of insulation, and only 5,740btu/hr for 4", and thats at 110degF and 40degF. Just wondering...

Michael

The ones that I built was for the state to store trees and seeds in. They were outside in Arkansas and had to keep the temperature down even during the hot summer. You could get buy with 1 ton unless you were going in and out a couple of times per day in Ohio but not in Arkansas. You can build one with a window air conditioner for all I care. But In the Summertime with the temp outside of near 100 you will not be able to keep anything cold for very long. The ones that I built will keep everything cold for as long as there is electricity and the doors are not propped open. Find out what most manufactures say is the smallest compressor to do the job and go 1 size larger. It will not cost much more and will do the job without having too much trouble. Saving money by getting a smaller compressor may even cost you more money than getting one just 1 size larger because it will run less.

[Oldcountryboy]

The Coolbot is the device I was talking about in my above post. I couldn't remember the name. But I've got plans on getting one as my wife and I are thinking about going back into the deer processing business.

www.storeitcold.com

A good place to start.

[Joshie]

A friend of ours had one in an old Victorian house. They put a compressor outside but the evaporator was inside. Just asked my hubby about it as he worked on it a couple of times. He said that they had a big meat locker type of door and that it was insulated very, very well.

[uncle Will in In.]

We almost had a walk in fridge a few years ago. My son had his head in it every time he went in the kitchen. LOL

[agmantoo]

Slugmar
I do not have exactly what you described that you want but I am of the opinion that what I have could be modified to meet your needs. I have a large freezer that I can convert back and forth between freezer and refrigerator. I bought this freezer for $35. I use it in the refrigerator mode to dry age venison. As a refrigerator it has the capacity to hold 34F with infrequent on cycles. I think that I could make the unit do what you want with some modifications. These changes would be to build a heavily insulated room with the freezer (this is a double door upright as used in a convenience store) having the double door and front as part of the wall of the room. Mounted in this way the bulk of the unit would be outside the cooling room with all the heat and compressor mechanism isolated. When you needed a large cooled storage area you could open both doors( the doors also lift off) to the insulated room. When you needed less area you could use the unit with the doors closed/on for your cooling needs, be they cooling or freezing. This varying conditioned area would lower the operating cost while being versatile. I also rigged one of the freezers for a friend who is a taxidermist to hold work awaiting processing. He says he really likes the ability to flex back and forth between cool and freeze. If you were to do a room as described above I think you would be limited to the whole room and unit functioning as a cooler but the unit itself would revert to freezing readily.

[Natural Beauty Farm]

Check out restaurant auctions in your area or used supply houses. I bought a cooler for $250 and a freezer for $400, each were 15 x 15. All we had to do was dismantle the sections. Came apart real easily. Hardest part was moving the huge compressors.

[FarmerRob]

Originally Posted by TnAndy

I'm getting ready to build one.....adding a 12x20 room on the back of my house garage for a 'canning/meat processing' kitchen, and will use 6x8 of it for a walk in cooler. Primary use will be to hang meat raised here on the farm, as weather is often "iffy" for aging beef.


Found a commercial cooler door on Craig's List, and plan to build the inside out of 2" blue foam, then 1/2" cement board and tile the walls/floor with a floor drain, so I can hose the whole thing down if needed. Refrigeration will be a wall AC unit and a "Coolbot" for control

http://www.storeitcold.com/

That Coolbot is cool indeed. Just wondering what you are going to use on the outside of your cooler. Also will you just use 2x4 framework or will that cause too much insulation gap?

I have looked at the cost of new units from US Cooler etc and winced at the cost. But your approach could be done for a very affordable amount.

[liquorlawman]

strawbale is how my neighbor built his. Said once he got the temp where he wanted it the cost was about 1/3rd of what his old milk truck box cost to keep cold and it was buried on all sides even except the door end.