Whitetail Cooling
Keep Meat Cool by Homemade Walk in Cooler with Coolbot
Why Wouldn't Coolbot Work For Me?
CoolBot has been tested on pretty much every air conditioner we could get our hands on, and they all work fine, but 80% of our customers use: LG (Home Depot sells them), Samsung (sold at Lowes) or Frigidaire. All are proven to work well with the CoolBot. LG and Samsung take about 5 minutes to configure to work with the CoolBot... The Frigidaire takes about 20 minutes to configure.
- Portable Air Conditioners: Now that so many hundreds of CoolBots are out there, we've had several people try to use "Portable Air Conditioners". These are units that are on wheels... they don't sitck out a window, they just sit on the floor and they use a flexible piece of pipe (looks like Dryer vent) that fits out even the smallest window. It seems like it should be a good idea, but MOSTLY people aren't happy with them. They are extremely inefficient at low temperatures because they are exhausting the cold room air out to the outside world and constantly sucking fresh HOT air into your cold room! If you are just trying to cool a SMALL room to 50 degrees, it's probably fine, so... cheese makers seem happy enough... but if you are trying to go lower than that, then you'll be pretty unhappy. Make sure to buy the highest btu-model you can find. Also, remember that these portable air conditioners tend to be more expensive to purchase initially AND theyuse far more electricity to operate, so... we don't really recommend them even when they do work!
- Room is too big/air conditioner is too small for the room size: CoolBot can't change the laws of physics. You can't expect a 5,000 BTU air conditioner to cool a 10' x 15' room. Plan on getting a 15,000 - 18,000 BTU air conditioner for rooms up to 10' x 10'. You'll be pleasantly surprised to see that it runs less than 25% of the time if you've insulated the room well, saving wear and tear on the A/C unit. You'll appreciate the extra peak cooling power as you fill your room with deer meat after a successful hunting season.
- Rooms that are not well insulated enough: Won't get cold enough. The industry standard for walk-in coolers is 4 inches of Styrofoam. If you have a fiberglass insulated room, add 1-2 layers of solid styrofoam insulation around the inside of the room. 2 layers, overlapped are best. Make sure to spray-foam every joint.
- There are air gaps into the room: As you make the room colder and colder, even very small gaps start to matter - it's like turning up the pressure on a garden hose. Fill visible holes with spray foam and you should be fine.
- Air conditioner is dysfunctional: CoolBot can't magically make a broken air conditioner work again. If you have an A/C unit that doesn't really put out much cool air, then CoolBot isn't going to change that. Think of the CoolBot as a “brain” that shows your air conditioner how to safely, effectively, and constantly utilize its cooling capacity in a different way than it could before, all without voiding the warranty!
- Air Conditioners with Metal Temperature Sensors: If you have an old air conditioner with a metal temperature sensor, CoolBot probably won't work for you. "Name brand" a/c units like LG, Samsung and Frigidaire all have plastic temp sensors no matter what power they are rated for. Same with all GE and Kenmore air conditioners over 10,000 BTU's. The "cheap" brands... including *all* of the GoldStar Air Conditioners use metal temperature sensors, and CoolBot doesn't fuction well or sometimes at all with them. Cheap air conditioners are also a lot less energy efficient, so even though you may pay a little more money up front, you'll save lots over the years that you'll be using the CoolBot.
There are other
problems with using a CoolBot, too. The fact that you are saving
over 60% on operating costs and 90% in up-front costs means there HAS
to be trade offs... You just have to decide if those are acceptable
for what you want to be using the CoolBot for.
Slowing Cooling: CoolBot cools the rooms and the meat you put into it, down to 50 degrees VERY quickly... but then it is slower getting down to 45 degrees...and even slower still getting down to 40... on down to 35. To be more specific, if you load your cooler up with 1000lbs of deer meat you'll see it drop down to 50 degrees FAST (like in 10 minutes)... but then it will take another 20 minutes to drop just 5 degrees more to45... then another 40 minutes to cool down to 40... and maybe another 2 hours to cool on down to 35.
Note:
When the outside temperatures drop below 40-45 degrees, MANY brands of
Air Conditioner temporarily stop functioning. It doesn't matter SO much
(40 degrees is cold enough) and obviously the cooler isn't going to
heat up more than the outside air temperature. Some A/C's just start
working again in the morning when the temperatures rise. For people
with Frigidaire, you actually have to unplug and then re-plug in the
a/c to get it to start cooling again (it goes into a sleep mode), so
that's one more thing toremember to do in the morning.
We're happy to speak to you in more detail about what we've learned from the hundreds of people now using the CoolBot. We realize the CoolBot system is NOT for everyone, but we think it's the best solution possible for MANY people that require a medium scale cold-storage option. MOST people use the CoolBot at 42 degrees, but many people need it cooler and it's been consistently tested down to 33 degrees with no trouble.
The CoolBot is not only inexpensive to set up, it will save you hundreds of dollars a year in operating costs, keeping your game meats cold, while helping to curb global warming!