Bypass Chest Freezer Thermostat or Not?

[Possum55]

Hi Guys,

So, my plan is to do the chest freezer fermentation chamber build (to hold 2 carboys) in my garage where seasonal temperatures will fluctuate substantially here in North Carolina. In that respect, I will need heating and cooling capacity.

I have researched Homebrew Talk quite a bit but still have not found a general consensus of whether to bypass the internal thermostat or not.

In addition, would a Inkbird temperature controller be all that I would need for simplicity's sake?

Thanks for all your help beer brewing peeps.

Cheers,

Possum

 

[shoo]

Hello fellow NC homebrewer! I can't say if there is consensus or not on this subject, but I can say that bypassing the thermostat works great in my kegerator, which is made from a freezer, using one of the cheap inkbird temperature controllers from amazon (only $13 if I remember correctly). The benefit of doing it this way is that the light in the freezer still works when I open the door, which is handy. The only real negative is that you have to know what wire to bypass, and have to be comfortable splicing some wires together.

Edit: Since it's a chest freezer, it probably doesn't have a light, so that may not matter for you.

 

[ifnotuthenwho]

I haven't had a reason to bypass my internal thermostat. I have it set to the coldest setting, so if the external temperature controller turns on the electricity to the freezer, the compressor will run. And when the freezer reaches the desired temperature, the external controller will turn off the electricity to the freezer.

 

[jturman35]

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I hardwired both of mine because it made more sense to me to have one plugin. You are simply replacing the factory thermostat with the Inkbird. This controller works great for a fermentation chamber and also keezer!View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1505240193.399499.jpg

 

[day_trippr]

No reason to bypass a chest freezer thermostat, it's always going to be "on" and thus easily controlled via the line cord.

The only reason I can think of where this isn't a truism is if there's some digitally controlled freezer out there that isn't smart enough to maintain settings through a power failure.
That would totally suck so I doubt it's a thing...

Cheers!

[edit] As long as the freezer isn't massive enough to exceed a 10A micro-relay point set pretty much any dual-stage controller will work fine, including the popular ITC-308...

 

[Possum55]

Thanks for all the valuable info guys. You all gave me the answers I needed. Again, thanks.

 

[cyberbackpacker]

I had to hardwire my controls in my freezer because it had a digital therm/controller. The stock digital unit failed on me after a very short time, so I bypassed it and hard-wired it in-- I should have done that from the beginning!