Building a Keg Fridge (Part 1)

So Matt and I have started building Keg Fridges to house our finished brews and for possibile lagering.
We decided to build them on our own and compare notes along the way to see how things are going and how we'd each solve the challenges presented by our respective fridges.

I've decided to give you a blow-by-blow account of the building of my fridge before writing a nice and neat package of instructions. It seems the basics of building a keg fridge are the same regardless of what kind of fridge you start with, but as always the devil is in the details.

I started with a used Koolatron KBC-88 Kool Compact Fridge (3.1 cu. ft, big enough for one Corny keg and a 5lbs CO2 canister). I purchased it off a university student for $40.
Pro: It's cheap, refrigerant lines do not run through the housing, it's easy to take apart. Cons: Fridge is cooled by the metal plate that forms the freezer, so you can't remove it. Thermostat is programmed to work off of freezer temperatures not "ambient" fridge temperatures.

The price of this fridge was the biggest deciding factor for the purchase. I didn't discover the cons till I started working with it.

In order to get the keg and CO2 canister to fit, I had to remove the beverage container insert on the inside of the fridge door. It was a pretty simple matter of removed the door hinge bolts from the bottom, and removed the insert screws from under the door seal.
 

Bracket Assembly for Door Hinge

 

 

Door Insert screws under door seal

Once I got the door off, seal removed, and beverage container off, I had to deal with the insulation on the inside of the door. The insulation seemed to be the sparyfoam kind, since it took the shape of the inside of the beverage insert. To get the keg to fit, this would need to be cut down as well. I managed this using a combination of exacto knife, box cutters and a saw. It would have been a lot easier if I had a hot wire to slice through it. I was trying to get the foam flush with the edge of the door.

Door seal removed. You can see the foam is raised from the edge of the door

To cover up the hack job I did on the foam, and to make things look tidier in general, I created a facing for the inside of the door using a piece of 1/8" thick hard board. I used the beverage insert to trace an outline on the hardboard as well as mark locations for the mounting screws.

Hard board with door seal mounted, prior to mounting on the fridge door.

Completed fridge door mounted on fridge

I discovered the screws the orginally mounted the door inset weren't long enough to secure the door seal/hard board assembly to the door. I ended up buying some longer ones.

Next came moving the freezer. Again, to get the keg to fit, I needed to rotate the freezer 90 degrees and remove the door. With some models of fridge, your fridge and freezer cooling lines run separately, which allow you to removed the freezer altogether. Unfortunately that's not the case with my fridge. The freezer is what provides the cooling for the entire fridge, so I have to keep it. Also, I can't be too rough with it. If I damage any of the cooling lines that run through this, then it's game over. (It should now be clear why I chose to go with a $40 fridge for my first attempt at this). Now I haven't figured out how to securely mount the freezer like this. Right now double sided tape is the front runner. Moving the freezer wasn't that hard. It was just a few screws that came out and then it just floats there in space.

Freezer rotated 90 degrees

As a bit of an artistic touch, I decided to paint the front of the fridge door with chalkboard paint.

 

 

Go Leafs Go!

I'll keep you posted on what happens with Part 2 when I install the tower!