Our house came with a standup freezer in the garage that we don't use. It looks like an old school fridge - 3-4 wide, 5-6 feet tall, one door for the whole front opens on the side. Not a chest freezer.
Could this be easily/cheaply be converted to a refrigerator?
All fridges are just freezers with a way to control the amount of air getting into the separate compartment, ie. the fridge part. Sub zero fridges have separate systems though.
Have you tried just turning it way down to see the highest temp it will hold is?
There might be a way to fool the temp sensor or replace it to run less.
I might snag a free busted fridge off the interwebs and scavenge the temp sensor and thermostat. I did that for a commercial fridge that the stat died, but in that case I was going from a fridge TO a fridge, but I can't imagine it's any different.
The only downside I could imagine is that you might have a really bad frost issue, because you're basically causing a really big cooling system to not work as hard. Just like with short-cycling an A/C unit, you might have humidity issues and more frost.
Thanks! These are good suggestions...
Trade for a refrigerator?
I know it's possible. People mod the chest freezers into huge kegerators and call them "keezers." I bet the controller they use for that would work to turn your freezer into a fridge. A search for "keezer controller" turned up a ton of guides on how to do it.
Had to chill all the beverages for a weekend cookout. Fired it up and used a remote thermometer in a glass of water. Ran it to 34F, turned it off until it rose to 42F, then on again to 34F again. Everything was nicely chilled! (And I remembered to unplug it when done.)
This may be good enough for now, especially since I'm not sure if we want an extra freezer, fridge, or neither. Thanks again for the excellent suggestions.
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