Makeshift freezer glycol system

[grico]

Hey guys,

I am looking into building a makeshift glycol system. I have 4 refrigerators in my garage, i just keep seeming to collect them. Right now only 2 are running, one is sitting there, and one is a NFG big snapple fridge. ..maybe i should trade one of them out for a chest freezer. hmmmm. anyways.

So here is my thought:

Throw some kind of container into the freezer section of one of the refers.
Fill it with a Glycol/Water mixture.
Find a pump that can go in the freezer, or use one on the outside.
Pump the mixture through the wall of the freezer, and then into the snapple fridge.
Inside the snapple fridge put a transmission cooler and a couple of PC fans.
Send lines back into freezer container.

While i know that the snapple fridge has poor insulation. I am think that i could at least use it as a temp controlled fermentation fridge. This would be mainly to save money, as i dont want to just keep plugging in more refers.

Does anybody have a thought for pumps? Would a regular old aquarium pump survive the cold? Should i put a little pump to recirc in the container, and then put an outside pump on the temp control to run the glycol out?

Option F: Am i just crazy, and jsut fix the damn snapple fridge?

[dhempy]

No comment on being crazy ... I love to tinker ...

Just be careful where you "go through the side" .. typically there are coolant lines embedded in the sides of fridges / freezers ... a door or in the case of a chest freezer, a collar, is your best bet.

Derrin has some experience with glycol and pumps ... maybe that was lost in "the crash" but I bet he could tell you what pumps he used on his fermenters.

Dan

[jward]

I don't think you will have trouble with the pumps and the cold as long you don't freeze them as in accidentally let it get so cold the glycol mixture goes solid.

If you plan to chill wort with this you will probably want relatively lots of the chilling liquid as most freezer/fridges have small compressors and will not keep up. You will want the larger heat sink provided by a greater volume. Just keeping up with the yeast will be much easier.

[grico]

Ya gotta play with the sides vs. the door ideas.

Just don't know if a little aquarium pump would do the job? Thought that a pond pump would heat up too much.