Why do cooling units fail during heat waves?

This seriously couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Internal cabinet temp this morming of 70°. Coils clear of dust. New CellarPro unit ordered with next day shipping but who knows when it will actually ship? Need some creative ideas for lowering the temp. Dry ice? Weather to remain above 90° here until Friday.

I’ve tired to do the dry ice once, get more than you think you’ll need is my only advice.

I figured that much. Thanks.

Dry ice was what I did. Was an active basement cellar so we had a few degrees of freedom.

Good luck

Do you have a room that is air conditioned and isolated (spare bedroom). If the room is 75 or so the wine will be fine for as long as the repair takes.

I know it will be a pain getting all the bottles in the room either in boxes or individually but its a good temporary solution.

Tom
PS: I’m not that far from you, if you need help let me know.

About 500 bottles, no boxes, no a/c other than Mother Nature. It’s out in the shop. I have fans blowing cool air in from outside this AM and then closing it up for the day. I’ll get some dry ice at National today and maybe again tomorrow based on how fast it disappears. Just need to make it to the weekend. Lows will hit 51° with highs only in the 70s for next week. Thanks for the offer, very generous of you, but I’m pretty much stuck until the replacement arrives.

Got it. Just leaving to hike Shiloh Ranch Mountain, moving 500 bottles would have been a breeze compared to that

Tom

Because this is what they were designed to do. It seems they are engineered up to the point of maximum performance, but not beyond it.

We were driving to Pagani the other day and there was a guy bicycling on Hwy near Kenwood. Was 104° out. Probably just climbed over Mt Veeder.

Agree with dry ice.

Also, bundle your cooler. Spare insulation around it, sheet insulation, etc. Or, consider using wet blankets with a fan aimed at the unit. Dry ice in, wrapping or wet blankets with a fan outside.

You’d be surprised how fanned wet blankets can help! (But they dry very quickly, so ongoing ‘watering!’)

Good luck!

I wondered if you would be better off with ice (water) or dry ice, so looked up the numbers:

Heat of sublimation for dry ice is 571kJ/kg
Heat of fusion (freeze/thaw) of water is 333kJ/kg. Then to warm up that kg of water to about 70 takes another 84kJ, for a total of 417kJ/kg

Translation: if you can get dry ice easily, it is the more efficient coolant, also probably easier to deal with since you can break it up in pieces and just distribute it around your cooler. Gas will dissipate, and you won’t need to worry about condensation on frozen water bottles.

You could use a combination of both, just keep replenishing as necessary. Hopefully your cooler is insulated well enough that you only need to do this once or twice a day. Personally, I wouldn’t start worrying until the wine bottles reach upper 70s.

Here’s the challenge, though: BTU and kJ are roughly equivalent. So a 1000BTU cooling unit running 20% of the time (probably runs more than that sitting in a 90+ garage) is the equivalent of 200kJ of energy extraction per hour. Let’s say you need to battle the heat for 12 hours each day, that’s 2400kJ (maybe more if my 20% estimate is low), or about 4kg (9 lbs) dry ice per day.

Wow, lots of good info guys. Thanks for doing the math Alan. Picking up the dry ice before I head home.

Sounds like you’re set, so this is just needless adding to the thread (isn’t that why we’re here?) or for future searchers.

I had the same happen a few summers ago and wanted to keep a cabinet (500 bott) cool until I could pick up the replacement unit 2 days later. Without access to dry ice, I cleared the top racks on each side, put down sheet pans & rotated some larger blue freezer pacs we had from our camping days. Took the edge off and the cabinet didn’t get above 65.

Since you seem to have things well in hand, I’ll address your original question.
Because it’s hot.


(Seriously trying to send you lots of good vibes–we’ve been there too).

Cleared the top shelf as much as I could and dropped 20lb of dry ice up there. Probably do the same thing again tomorrow if needed.

Got an email from CellarPro. My unit shipped out today and I’ll have it tomorrow. Get this, it shipped out of Petaluma. 25 minute drive from home. Next day shipping by ground but I paid $141 for next day delivery. I know, small price in the long run considering what is at stake. That’s one thing I hate about online shopping. Nobody discloses their location. I could have had this up and running today and cheaper!

BTW, the dry ice is working. Temp dropped 7 degrees since 4pm, now 8pm.

Be very careful with the Dry Ice-Carbon Dioxide, You need Oxygen !

My cellar went a couple of weeks ago & I bought a portable A/C unit for use until replacement refrigeration unit arrived.!

Dry ice is the solid form of carbon dioxide. … Suffocation hazard: a large volume of carbon dioxide gas emitted in a confined space, or other unventilated area (e.g. cold room) may create an oxygen deficient atmosphere. Contact hazard: dry ice is a cryogenic material that causes severe frostbite upon contact with skin.

Wikipedia has an outstanding explanation of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy’s_law

I just the read the entire article.

No matter what early every spring I do a full service on my cooling unit. It spins like a top. I learned the hard way. I went for a long while and the darn thin seemed to break down every other summer when I was out of town. With my new regimen, I never have a problem.