Most of us at the office have a personal mini-fridge of some sort. I have a compressor type Haier and I gave my Mom's Avanti to a co-worker. He didn't take very good care of it, and after about 3 months, he left the door open over a week-end, thus burning up the unit. Long story short, he eventually told me it didn't cool anymore. So, it sat unused for the past two years and was just waiting for someone to carry it out to the dumpster when, I came across a few threads here about Vinotemps, Winedors and such.
Remembering that it was a Thermoelectric, I started looking into the theory of how they cool. Simple - almost to the point that it defies logic. At least mine anyway! I eventually removed the back, began studying the nomenclature and started unscrewing parts;
The glued-on schematic drawing was of no real help, but it soon became apparent that two external fans pulled air away from a large heatsink, and a smaller internal fan pulled air from a smaller cold-sink mounted a 1-inch thick aluminum block, with a 1/4 inch ceramic-plated square with wires running from it mounted in-between. With a little trouble shooting, it appeared the Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC) had a bad spot on it; commonly resulting from over-heating, which I found with a little help from a YouTube video. I jumped the defective prongs and the plates heated up on one side and cooled on the other!
I hunted down a replacement TEC (fleabay). The installation/function is much like mounting a cpu to a heatsink/fan in a computer. With any luck, in a few weeks I'll have a functional, albeit small, Avanti humidor that narrowly missed being sent to a landfill.
Thanks to all the threads and posts on BOTL, I plan to add a few Spanish cedar shelves (the inside has a series of grooves for shelves), 65% beads, and I will probably add a 7-Day digital programmable timer to cycle on and off for short periods, since the air is shut off in our building after 6PM weekdays and all day on Sat/Sun. If all goes well, this is going to stay at the office, so I'll add a lock to keep grubby fingers out of my "stash away from home!"
Remembering that it was a Thermoelectric, I started looking into the theory of how they cool. Simple - almost to the point that it defies logic. At least mine anyway! I eventually removed the back, began studying the nomenclature and started unscrewing parts;
The glued-on schematic drawing was of no real help, but it soon became apparent that two external fans pulled air away from a large heatsink, and a smaller internal fan pulled air from a smaller cold-sink mounted a 1-inch thick aluminum block, with a 1/4 inch ceramic-plated square with wires running from it mounted in-between. With a little trouble shooting, it appeared the Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC) had a bad spot on it; commonly resulting from over-heating, which I found with a little help from a YouTube video. I jumped the defective prongs and the plates heated up on one side and cooled on the other!
I hunted down a replacement TEC (fleabay). The installation/function is much like mounting a cpu to a heatsink/fan in a computer. With any luck, in a few weeks I'll have a functional, albeit small, Avanti humidor that narrowly missed being sent to a landfill.
Thanks to all the threads and posts on BOTL, I plan to add a few Spanish cedar shelves (the inside has a series of grooves for shelves), 65% beads, and I will probably add a 7-Day digital programmable timer to cycle on and off for short periods, since the air is shut off in our building after 6PM weekdays and all day on Sat/Sun. If all goes well, this is going to stay at the office, so I'll add a lock to keep grubby fingers out of my "stash away from home!"
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