How to make a freezer from a refrigerator

Often, when purchasing a new refrigerator, the old one still remains operational and continues to serve its owners in the far corner of the apartment or cottage as a backup option. If owners need additional space for deep-freezing food, such an exhibit sometimes becomes a contender for being converted into a large freezer.

Below we will talk about how to make a freezing unit from a regular refrigerator on your own.

The principle of operation of the freezer

Before you start designing a freezer, you should carefully study the principle of its operation.

A freezer operates similar to an air conditioner, which extracts heat from a small, insulated space. Heat is transferred from inside the device to the outside by a refrigerant, which is usually freon. It is in a closed circuit and passes from a liquid to a gaseous state with the absorption of heat, and back again with the release of thermal energy. INThe important components of the freezing device are: condenser, compressor, evaporator, thermostat, tubes forming the circuit, and, in fact, the internal space of the refrigerating chamber.

The heat exchange cycle proceeds according to the following algorithm.

1. The refrigerant, which is in a liquid state, begins to boil (evaporate) when it enters the evaporator at low pressure. This process occurs when a large amount of energy is absorbed - thus, the temperature in the chamber decreases.
2. After this, freon in a gaseous state is pumped by the compressor and enters the condenser. Under high pressure it liquefies. During this process, heat is released, which is removed by the device to the outside in a condenser, cooled by the ambient temperature.
3. After this, the liquid substance enters the capillary tubes and is fed back into the evaporator, where the pressure drops sharply. The cycle begins again.
4. If the temperature drops below the set level by a couple of degrees, the motor is temporarily turned off. When it rises 2-3 degrees higher, it starts again.

How to turn a refrigerator into a freezer

This option is the easiest when creating a freezer with your own hands.

First of all, you need to disassemble the freezer compartment and remove the evaporator. After this, you should insulate the interior space, which will become the new freezer. After this, you need to unfold the evaporator and fix it on the back wall of the freezer. The crucial point is the next step, where you must choose the right location to install the temperature sensor. Depending on the choice, the freezer will maintain the set temperature with varying accuracy.

After installing the sensor, you need to make sure that the resulting chamber is tight, check the refrigerant circuit and, if necessary, top up.

ATTENTION! To diagnose the refrigeration circuit and charge freon, you must use a specialized tool. To avoid circuit integrity, it is necessary to handle the capillary tubes with extreme caution, avoiding excessive kinks.

At the last stage, you should turn on the upgraded unit and test it in operation.

IMPORTANT! The efficiency of a self-converted freezer will be significantly worse than that of one created in an industrial environment, so its energy efficiency will be lower and its electricity consumption will be higher.

What other options are there for creating a freezer with your own hands?

Besides converting an old refrigerator, there are many options for building freezing units, requiring varying levels of skill, tools, and materials. Let's look at some of them.

Small room as a freezer

A wooden beam sheathing is installed around the perimeter of the room. After this, reflective material is laid. The cells formed by the sheathing are tightly filled with insulation, at least 10 cm thick. All cracks and joints must be sealed with aluminum tape. After this, the walls are covered with thin sheets of galvanized metal, and the resulting seams are reliably sealed. The cooling core of the freezer room can be a regular monoblock. The optimal location for installing the temperature sensor is selected, which is connected to the automatic control system. The final touch is to make a well-insulated door that fits tightly to the frame when closed.

Freezer made of sandwich panels

One of the budget solutions for creating a large-capacity freezing chamber can be a design based on sandwich panels. The principles of organizing work are the same as in the case of arranging a room, described in the previous paragraph. Sandwich panels are assembled into a structure of the required dimensions and configuration in accordance with the rules of their standard installation.

When creating such freezing rooms, you need to ensure that there are no thermal bridges - heat-conducting jumpers between the outer and inner cladding of the engineering structure.

To combat the formation of thermal bridges at the joints in the corners of the structure, special slots are made inside the corner elements at the points where they exit into the external environment.

Measures to combat thermal bridges also need to be carried out at the joints of refrigeration sections that maintain different temperature levels.

For a door, as when equipping a room with solid walls, a high-quality shutter and insulation should be provided. It is best to use a special polyurethane foam thermal door for this.

Other options for creating freezers

Below are other ideas that can form the basis for making homemade freezing systems:

• using the body of a shipping container as a freezer space;
• arrangement of a warehouse;
• for making a small chest freezer that cools the contents to a moderate temperature (-10 ⁰C), you can use Peltier elements;
• creating a cold condenser indoors that operates on the principle of a glacier, for example, using basements surrounded by a closed piping system with a refrigerant (for example, kerosene), which concentrates the cold in the winter season and maintains a low temperature level in the warm season.