Loading ...One of the things we noticed when we plugged in our new chest fridge was the amount of condensation we were getting inside the fridge and how useless the little drain hole in the bottom was. To be fair it IS supposed to be only for draining water when defrosting…
It got so bad that we were actually getting a little bit of rust forming at the seams inside the compartment! Needless to say this wasn’t a very healthy turn of events for either us (possible mold) or the fridge (rust).
I got to looking around the internet and turned to the home brew forums to see what the kegerator guys who led me to the Brewer’s Edge controller had done for their keg chest fridge’s when condensation happened. Many said you would have to wipe the inside down and eventually replace the appliance when rust ate through the coolant tubes, but others said they had good luck with a product called Damprid that sucked moisture out of the air. Exploring further it turned out that Damprid is merely calcium chloride which is used for road salts in some places and for chlorine free pool treatment as well and can be had at much lower prices in large quantities than you pay for the name brand products.
I went out to Home Depot and found a 1KG bag for $6 and made a holder out of two ice cream buckets inside each pother with holes in the bottom of the top one to let the brine that develops when the calcium chloride absorbs moisture drain into the lower bucket. Within a few days of putting it into the fridge the beads of moisture that coated the inside of the fridge were gone and all surfaces were bone dry!
It seems there are many lessons to learn from those inventive home brewers!
(cross-posted at greenspree.ca)
