Miniature cold room

[Treeman]

I have always wanted a cold room, would it not be nice for hunting, making beer, salamis and even cold dried biltong.
R30 000 for a cold room, if! You know people call favours and take some corner cutting, but that is not the problem, space !!!!

Where the hell do a put another room ? I have literally built or occupied every usable inch that does not block access from front to back or block house doors.

The problem is, I am dead when I get home from a hunt on Sunday, as I get older I am finding myself more and more past tired tired, I do not care anymore tired, I want to sleep. I always end up in a panic later about animals needing skinning and finding a butcher that will take animals on a Sunday or holiday, but I can not have a cold room.

Now I was in a cold room the other day, and it struck me, what is a cold room ? A big fridge ? A freezer that is too big to freeze, a freezer with a fan or a fridge with a fan.
Mmmmmmmm?? - why are cold rooms so big? Do you have to have a big room to have a cold room?
All these questions ? Obsessive compulsive me - google, phone calls, more phone calls and chats.
I determined after a chat with my old butcher who gave it up for the timber import trade, that the old standard for a cold room in a butchery was 4 deg Celsius, but a few years back it was raised to 7 Cel. Energy saving and gain versus energy used etc.
All this thinking made me tired, all this tired late night reading led me back to my time out place - the local pub. There right before me was the answer - thank you Castle Lite, maybe a shit beer, buy it solved one problem for me while having a proper beer and a tequila. There before me was a one buck cooler room - it struck me as some one (some lessor male I assume) whined "castle Lite please" - as the doors opened, the fans stopped, two big arsed fan blowing the shit outa wind chill factor xxx.

So I started looking for a bar display fridge, any one, I would fit my own fans and perhaps supercharge the cooling system - dunno, maybe a nitros oxide kit ot fridge turbo kind of thing.
Fuck me gently with a jack hammer mate, those fridges are expensive, moer R12 000 with shitty maybe, maybe not working reconditioned Nigerian back street ones going for R6000. I needed another tequila night I recond - ya know to think about this.(only reason I drink - honestly)
I then started searching for a big old fridge, ordinary big old household upright fridge - dam, they actually small, but the old one, remember them the big old ones? The round edges, off white enamel fridges that kids climbed into and died ? The ones you find on stoeps and under carports all over Africa. I put a add on all the platforms, my status my face book every where, zero zilch, all those old fridges are gone, or big time antique value. - like fkt.
Guess I would go out and have a beer or 3 and think this over - perhaps I would have a tequila - just for a change ya know, like to help relax the thought process.

If it can hang in a upright fridge door opening towards you, why not in an chest freezer on racks across top, will just have to cut animal into 2 or 4 parts when I get home, better than nothing ? Problem is the freezing part, how do I get the freezer not to freeze ? I know nothing about refrigeration, cooling.
More research and learning time, less the beer and tequila for this phase.
One problem left now, same again, where to get a freezer that works cheap enough to be able to destroy it without crying about it if I screw up.
Life can be complicated if you choose to live it fully.
Now not so long ago I had water tanks fitted and the water guy was a nice guy, if you a nice guy everyone is a nice guy, well mostly, sometimes.  ( Making Friends Guide 101 For Idiots - tip one reads, "Do not be a doos").
So 3 hrs later it came about his son is 12 and just wants to hunt, he will pay, he just wants some one to teach his boy to hunt........................and shoot, ...................in 1 week end. Long story short, taught kid to shoot Friday afternoon, got him comfortable Friday night with lights and targets in the bush. Saturday he shot some more and it was obvious that he could hit a orange size circle any time everytime. The boy got his animal that afternoon.
His Dad said he owes me one - that one it turns out became a 550 lt Defy freezer that had a leaking door gasket and was just taking up space in the garage. Fetch it and you can have it Treeman, thanks for teaching my boy.

My study's and chats were baring fruit, I learnt that you could put like a temperature control thing on the freezer, and that you could buy little 100x100 mm 220 volt blowers. My mate that does DSTV and CCV stuff knew of a temperature thingee that was on a building site being raised and another mate who gets generous when drinking tequila could get a fan. Rudy knows a guy who does gas and knows enough about electricity to connect the right wires in right places.

Righteee o then.

So this is where I am at with my Chest Cooler Room for one Kudu or Two Warthog, Impala

Made this video for now, the frame will be built for the racks tomorrow, will test whole thing before galvanising the frame. The frame will be made of 25 x 3 mm angle iron with moveable cross bars for hanging and chromed oven trays 8 inch' off floor across floor. I will figure a way still to get cross flow strongly along floor for when a whole smaller animal or halved bigger animal goes in to it. I had it running at 5.5 cel for a day and then at 4 Cel for another. I am now trying to find out if the fan will lower the temperature inside or just move air around and stop hot spots. Will the fan cause or reduce freezing ?
I  will likely buy a two part epoxy coating to redo inside of freezer.
20230906_202039_001 by Cody  Allen, on Flickr

[Treeman]

The video it seems was saved to Cody's Flicker account again, not going to change it, he uses my PC for the most things, his is 18 years old and full, slow, can not add more memory etc.

[oafpatroll]

Nice project idea. If you found a similar sized derelict freezer you could section this one and add some height from the new one to make it more spacious. Hell, you could do it with sheet metal pop riveted to the existing case and filled with pouring foam for insulation and to bod it all back together and provide a rigid internal structure.

When you epoxy the inside I'd suggest sanding and adding expoxy putty fillets to all the corners and any other sharp edges to ensure good coating depth and reduce cracking.

This project reminds me of one i helped a mate with. He had a setup for beer taps but the dedicated fridges for the kegs were insanely expensive. We jimmied up a solution using a fridge/freezer that had an adjustable temp range. We hole sawed ports for the pipes to go through the casing and added bulkhead fittings with quick connects on each side. Insulated the external pipes with two layers of foam pipe lagging and had at it. Worked like a bomb and all in, including buying the second hand unit it was less than 20% of the price of a second hand commercial keg cooler.   

[Treeman]

Nice project idea. If you found a similar sized derelict freezer you could section this one and add some height from the new one to make it more spacious. Hell, you could do it with sheet metal pop riveted to the existing case and filled with pouring foam for insulation and to bod it all back together and provide a rigid internal structure.

When you epoxy the inside I'd suggest sanding and adding expoxy putty fillets to all the corners and any other sharp edges to ensure good coating depth and reduce cracking.

This project reminds me of one i helped a mate with. He had a setup for beer taps but the dedicated fridges for the kegs were insanely expensive. We jimmied up a solution using a fridge/freezer that had an adjustable temp range. We hole sawed ports for the pipes to go through the casing and added bulkhead fittings with quick connects on each side. Insulated the external pipes with two layers of foam pipe lagging and had at it. Worked like a bomb and all in, including buying the second hand unit it was less than 20% of the price of a second hand commercial keg cooler.   

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Tell me more about pour in foam, sounds expensive ?
You got me thinking, never heard of it, I only know the can type and it costs a fortune if u need more than a gap fill.

[Treeman]

Read up on it now, wow!, if I had known, I would have gone that route. I would just have built a corrugated iron double sheet closet with a fridge door, like a bedroom cupboard and filled the gap with that foam. Taken some cold plates and condenser from a freezer and made same thing I have but bigger.

I will stick with what I got for now, better than where I am without anything, but you got me going now.

[oafpatroll]

Read up on it now, wow!, if I had known, I would have gone that route. I would just have built a corrugated iron double sheet closet with a fridge door, like a bedroom cupboard and filled the gap with that foam. Taken some cold plates and condenser from a freezer and made same thing I have but bigger.

I will stick with what I got for now, better than where I am without anything, but you got me going now.

If you built it like a cupboard up against a wall with a frame you could probably make the inside walls out PVC sheets of pvc sheets or similar which you could heat bend flanges into and then bond to make the inside completely seamless. The outside ones could then be made of some or other cheap material like bottom grade plywood. If you braced the inside and outside surfaces you could then fill the cavity with pouring foam with the top of the walls vented without too much risk of blowing the walls out. The outside could then be finished with whatever you wanted and could probably even be made to look like an actual cupboard if you cared to.

A simpler alternative to the pouring foam would be to build the box directly out of extruded polystyrene foam (XPS) glued together with PU glue or similar. A couple of layers of the stuff is stiff and self supporting, you can build up flanges for door seals and such by layering, it sands easily to shape and you can epoxy and glass right over it. Reckon that if your current thing works you could build something like this and then take the guts out of it when you were finished and just transfer it over.

A mate of mine built some really big cooler boxes for his boat using this method. They were very heavy duty though being fully glass/epoxy encased as they were removable and needed to take serious weight.           

[Ds J]

Tip: cover the meat in a mixture of olive oil and sweet wine whilst in the cooler. Ot keeps the meat from making a crusty, dried out outer side.

[Treeman]

Tip: cover the meat in a mixture of olive oil and sweet wine whilst in the cooler. Ot keeps the meat from making a crusty, dried out outer side.

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Wondered about something like that, did occur to me.
My inside frame rail comes tomorrow.

[Treeman]

Came back from a hunt on Sunday, the usual deader than dead people dead tired. I am honestly starting to feel not 24 and bullet proof.
Skinned the pigs and broke them down, then instead of driving of to a butcher who is not to impressed by my Sunday call, or even worse, not being able to find a willing Sunday butcher.

I hung the product in my magic box.

Well, it was all or nothing, closed it up Sunday 11;00 at 24 Celcius outside and walked off. Monday after work I opened it to see if it stank or not. Internal temp was at 0.5 Cel and meat was good. The really nice part is that the meat had firmed up tremendously, it was almost like industrial meat firm and dry, could cut it easily into steaks or blocks etc, no squelshy messy meat.
 cooler by David Frank Allen, on Flickr

It works, it really works.

[Ds J]

Have you tried covering the meat in oil? It keeps the meat from drying out.

[oafpatroll]

Well done. That's a result of note!

[Treeman]

Have you tried covering the meat in oil? It keeps the meat from drying out.

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No, I know of the application, but will only do so when ageing meat. The drying of the meat over a day or two is great, itsa so much nicer to work with the firm meat than the wet mess.
In Australia they cling wrap the meat and leave lowest point open for drainage.

[Treeman]

I intend to start learning dry ageing this Dec and also the craft of making hams and cured meats. I may just need another cold room before January 

[BBCT]

Good job there Treeman!

[Treeman]

Mon -Tues - Wed, my first brining meat is on day 3. One w/hog sow leg, deboned and in progress.