Breezaire help

WINE TALK
1

One of my two Breezaire units is dripping inside of the cellar. The coils on the outside are clean. Any thoughts?

DALLAS MEMBERS - do you know of anybody locally that’ll come out on site and repair a Breezaire unit?

2

There is a plug on the bottom of the unit or on the back of some unit open it and drain the water you will need to find out why you unit is not evaporating but this will solve the symptom

3

There is typically a drain hole with a plug in the bottom of the unit, your drain may be plugged, causing the condensate pan to overflow and leak. Try clearing the drain.

4

What I’m seeing on the bottom of the unit is a vent towards the cellar side of the unit and 4 silver metal screw heads towards the outside (coils) of the unit. One of those 4 screws is where the drip is occurring. It almost looks like a small, rusted out hole right at that one screw.

I’m not seeing the drain plug.

5

check out figure 4

6

Figure 4 didn’t help. My guess is the drain plug is hidden by one of the racks (the unit sits very close to the top of the racks). I guess the unit will have to be pulled but unfortunately when I just tried to remove the mounting brackets I managed to slice my finger open on the metal grate cover.

Not my day.

7

This is the unit I have…WKCE2200

8

Several possible causes.

The condensate on these cabinet units is evaporated by either an electric heating coil or uses the hot gas from the compressor. Most likely either the electric coil isn’t working or the discharge temp isn’t high enough to evaporate the water most likely due to a lack of charge.

The Breezaires I have opened (mostly bigger units) have a design flaw in which the stamped steel cabinet doubles as the drain pan and you’ve simply rusted through the steel (seen many die this way). If this is the case you might be able to seal up the leak with some epoxy/silicone (must be totally dry).

How old is this unit? If older than 5 years I wouldn’t bother to have it repaired.

Given this is a small unit your best option for repair would be to ship it back to Breezaire, in my experience very few companies are willing to get involved repairing these and any repair would most likely be expensive relative to the cost of replacement.

If you choose to replace it I think the cellarpro units are much better built and well worth the premium.

9

Chris,

Thanks for those tips.

I cannot locate my original purchase documents yet (I didn’t go paperless until about 3-4 years ago) but I’m pretty sure this unit was purchased in October 2004. That would make it 7 going on 8 years old.

10

I shipped a Breezaire unit out to California for repair when the coil sprang a leak. Happened at about 12 years out. I debated just replacing it, but the repair plus shipping was less than half the cost of a new unit. The repaired unit has been going strong for the last 6 years.

11

You have an 18yo cooling unit [wow.gif]

By no fault of the manufacturers I highly doubt that any unit produced today could last that long.

12

Yeah I know. That’s why I have two of them. When one goes, the other will fill in until it’s replaced.

13

I just moved a 15+ year old Breezaire to the back part of the basement – still running like a champ but one starts to worry. Replaced with the equivalent new unit, which fits perfectly in the hole in the cellar wall. Should this one die, I’ll just wheel the old guy back out onto the stage, ala Muddy Waters. Then I might consider changing brands…

14

This is the unit I have…WKCE2200

There is no Drain plug on the WKC 1060/2200 cabinet units. I had the same issue with too much condensate then with the unit freezing then it gave out and would only lower the temp 12-15 degrees (inside the house). that being said, the unit was original build in 1992. So it lasted about 18 years. There is manufacture date on the back if you can get to it.

I priced having Breezeaire recondition it and it was about 2/3 the cost of a new one from beverage factory. I just got the new one. Haven’t figured out what to do with the old one yet.