Wine cooler Setup

[Constantine]

Greetings to all the great brothers on the forum! I have a question about modifying a non working wine cooler. It is a 28-30bottle cooler with dual zones, and is compressor based. Now it does turn on and cools a little bit, but over the four years I have had it have not bothered messing with it to try and get it working. What I have had an idea to do, is pull the compressor parts out of it to lighten it up, pull the divider for the dual zone out and then line it with Spanish cedar. My question is, how would One go about doing this? Or is there some type of guide to starting this project? I have tried finding a break down of a danby wine cooler, but there is little to no info on it. And even on the back of the cooler I can't even find any screws to get the back off to get to the compressor.

I know I have seen some of you mention doing something similar to this, or lining a cooler with cedar. I was just curious what your input on going about this would be!

 

[AdamJoshua]

Hey Constantine, I'm by no means an expert in this, but I do have a winador and did stay at a holiday inn express. You really don' t have to pull all the parts out, but to lighten it up it's fine as long as you make sure you seal everything up. You don't have to line it with cedar, the seals should be airtight and it is like putting you sticks in a ziplock bag, what most people do is either order shelves from Forrest (I have done this) or pick up some of the small cedar trays from cheap humidors dot com, they are 10 bucks each and they are cedar trays you can put right on the shelves that exist in your fridge, I bought a few of those before I got my custom shelves delivered and they actually worked really well.

Again you don't really have to line it with cedar, you just need some cedar shelves or trays and plenty of Beads or as some people use KL to regulate your humidity.

Here's a link to the trays I'm talking about:

http://www.cheaphumidors.com/p_TRAY.html

Hope this helps!

Adam

 

[DarrelMorris]

Adam is correct. There is no need to lose valuable space by lining it with cedar. Just use cedar shelves or drawers, or even empty cigar boxes. The important part is the seal, which is excellent on wine coolers. Depending on where you live, the temp control may be important too. Many people don't even plug their winadors in.

 

[AdamJoshua]

Agreed most people don't plug them in, unless you live some place with extreme heat. The downside would be since it's compressor based you'd have to watch for condensation, that' part I'm not 100% sure about but seems I recall reading that. Seems like in KY you wouldn't have to worry about the temp quite as much, specially if you have it in a cooler spot in the house, not in direct sunlight etc.,

 

[OB-Left]

Fixed below

Adam is correct. There is no need to lose valuable space by lining it with cedar. Just use cedar shelves or drawers, or even FULL cigar boxes. The important part is the seal, which is excellent on wine coolers. Depending on where you live, the temp control may be important too. Many people don't even plug their winadors in.

Look at freezer project in sig line. Forget the shelves and drawers fill the boxes of cigars...

 

[AdamJoshua]

It depends on if you just want box storage or if you want to turn it into more of something to have out on display for people to see.

 

[Constantine]

Thanks for the reply's! All great input, and maybe you Botl's are right I will skip the lining with cedar part. Right now I do have empty cigar boxes in it that take up the top shelf, But I think I am going to look into some shelves to manage space a little better. As for the heat, here in Kentucky it does get warm. Right now I have central cooling, So the heat should not be an issue at the moment.

I was under the impression you could not use compressor wine coolers, But with the info you provided Adam I will have to look into it more. The cooler itself blows air and turns on but it does not cool. I will have to really search around and find out how to get to the circuit board of the cooler and maybe It is just a fuse or thermostat thingamajig that went out, I actually got the cooler free off of craigslist a long time ago and it has served as my main humidor ever since.