You’re tearing something apart no matter what, and drywall is probably the least bad thing to tear up.
Thanks for all the links, Mike. I just viewed a couple video’s on spray foam and am feeling more confident about applying it. Looks like closed cell foam reduces/eliminates the opportunity for moisture/mold. Also, vapor barrier is not recommended with close cell as the barrier itself can have gaps that trap moisture.
I assume you’re doing active cooling? What are you using with your coolbot?
Yup - I ordered the 8000btu LG that CoolBot sells on their site, but through Amazon Warehouse deals for $170: https://www.amazon.com/LG-LW8016ER-Window-Mounted-Conditioner-Control/dp/B01D3FOD0Q
My room will only be 4’x5’x10’ (I have 12’ ceilings in the garage), so 8000btus is about double of what I need.
Ah, ok, I saw those and was thinking about them as well. My room is a little larger, 4.5’ x 7.3’ x 11.6’ and was looking at a 6000btu.
At $170, I may buy two and keep one in the box for emergencies… Perhaps I’m incorrect, but it would seem there is only upside to using an oversized AC.
Curious on how the CoolBot has been working for you, and whether you’ve actually ever observed the evaporator fins freezing at cellar temperatures, ie 55 degrees.
I ask because I’m going to putting a 5’ wide x 9’ deep x 10’ high cellar into a new house build later this year (the walls are all interior) and believe that I should be able to go with an LG mini split system and just not even use a CoolBot at all by simply replacing the original room air thermistor in the LG (its the sensor that provides a different resistance at a given temperature) with a different thermistor.
The original thermistor reads 10,000 ohm at 77F. If this is replaced with one that reads 6,800 ohm at 77F, it ends up remapping thermostat settings of 65.5F to 73F to actually being 50.7F to 57.9F (I’ll be posting a complete temp to resistance table in a full separate writeup I will make later for this “project”). Without the CoolBot, I’ll still run the risk of the fins freezing, but I suspect that it actually will not occur OR if I “walk” the temperature down to the 55 to 57 range “manually” that once I’m there, the fins would not ice up maintaining that temperature (i.e. the periodic cycling of the A/C will not run long enough to cause any icing). And given that the new thermistor was a $6 purchase for quantity 10 on eBay, this is an inexpensive test that if it fails I can just go buy a CoolBot.
Coolbot has been working great for me on a GE 5800 BTU window unit. No icing, no issues with temperature fluctuations (if it’s cutting off because of fin freezing, it’s not doing so for a long enough time to let the temperature increase).
BTW, isn’t a minisplit overkill for that size cellar?
Good to hear the CoolBot is working well as I envision that as my backup plan.
Sure, the minisplit is an overkill, but it’s actually the most cost effective. As I said, this is an interior room so a “thru the window” unit isn’t going to work. Nor is a self-contained unit as I don’t want to be exhausting into any adjacent space (a main hall, the MBR, or the LR/Great Room). So, I’m left with a minisplit. The LG 9000 BTU can be bought for $950 (and then add on HVAC installation charges), and with the inverter technology it’s extremely efficient as it throttles back to a much lower BTU output so it shouldn’t short cycle.
Sorry - I’ve been on the road for work and missed this.
I’m happy with the temperature regulation of the CB - I’m swinging between 55 and 55.5 according to my WirelessTag system. My only gripe: the window AC’s are designed to kick the fan on every 3 minutes or so when in Eco Mode to get a better thermostat reading. The compressor only kicks in once an hour or so. The fan interval seems unnecessarily frequent and there’s no way to change it. When I do my next cellar build, I’ll try to track down a unit that can be adjusted for less activity - or is preprogrammed that way.
I’ve also looked at that mini-split system - I would think that could be set to cycle less frequently.
I just leave mine running all the time to keep the air circulating. The fan interval is for just that reason (even in a regular room) to help ensure that parts of the room away from the unit aren’t getting too warm.