BillFitzmaurice.info

Howdy all!

Just a thought. Since I am custom building an entertainment center to house all my gear, there will be room on the sides of said unit. The Mrs. is okay with a small fridge to hold beverages etcso as to not have to run downstairs to get them . the unit will be approx. 12x2x2 with 2 52cfm intake fans on the aides and 2 52cfm exhaust fans on the top. If iwere to put a mini fridge on either side and drill holes Iin each to have the fans draw air from inside those, do you think it would work?

I am not an engineer and Google was not my friend when looking. Any thoughts?

Is this also housing the TV, receiver, amps, speakers, ect.? If so, I don't think having the mini fridges close by is a good idea. Plus this sounds like it's gonna be a monster. More info needed.

I can hear all the bottles in the mini fridge rattling from here.

If you had fans trying to draw air from the fridge, nothing would happen as there is nowhere for the air to enter the fridge to replace the stuff being sucked out - like sucking on a glass bottle.

If you were to add some more holes in the fridge to allow this to work, then don't forget that the fridge is just a heat pump (and a not very efficient one at that). The motor on the back would be put into overdrive and never stop whilst the system is running and drawing air. Not only would this be noisy, but you'd also introduce lots of heat from the back of the fridge and into the area around your electronics IF you could isolate the back of the fridge from the rest of the system (vent to outside?), then it would work and would effectively be a mini AC

How about making a bigger cabinet and get a 'real' AC unit - vent the AC into the cabinet and store your beers in there along with your audio kit Then you have the advantage that if the AC dies, the beers would keep the cabinet cold for a while.

I'll shut up now

Fans and movies are annoying. If you need to vent the cabinet for thermal management I'd drill the holes like you said and be done with it, no fans. Leave the buoyancy of hot air (chimney effect) to naturally vent the hot air out the top and cool air will natually come in the bottom vents to replace it. No fans, no noise.

I just reread your post. If you are planning on drawing cold air from inside the fridge then no that wont work. Fridges have no where near the heat removal capacity to cool the air continuously. All you will end up doing is making your beer warm . Open your fridge door for a couple hours even a crack and you'll see how little cooling your fridge is capable of.

CoronaOperator wrote:I just reread your post. If you are planning on drawing cold air from inside the fridge then no that wont work. Fridges have no where near the heat removal capacity to cool the air continuously. All you will end up doing is making your beer warm . Open your fridge door for a couple hours even a crack and you'll see how little cooling your fridge is capable of.

A former boss of mine was into computer overclocking. He had me weld up an aluminum liner to fit down inside a small chest freezer. The CPU cooling block was plumbed to a pump which circulated coolant through a copper coil sitting in the freezer liner (which was filled with water). The CPU put out enough heat that the freezer never froze the water...It worked for a couple months, then the freezer burned out from running continuously, and the CPU overheated and fried...It was back to a simple radiator design for the next rebuild.

I guess that pretty much answers that question
Thanks for the input all!

Back to the old drawing board.--Marvin the Martian