Throwing my breaker with new equipment

[dmarc85]

I just got a three door commercial beverage cooler to use as a keg cooler, bottle storage and lager chamber, supercool. I got it running for a few minutes, but it keeps throwing the circuit breaker built into the outlet in my garage. Can't get it to run for more than a few minutes...what can I do to keep this running uninterrupted?



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[mattd2]

What size CB and what is the current draw of the unit? Also does the CB have GFCI protection?

 

[The10mmKid]

I'd say this needs to be on a dedicated 20A circuit.
That is the way we wire break rooms.

'da Kid

 

[The10mmKid]

Have you looked at the condenser coils? It may have multiple refrigerant units underneath. As the temp raises on the high side of the refrigerant circuit, pressure also raises and the compressor has to work harder.

'da Kid

 

[raouliii]

....... I got it running for a few minutes, but it keeps throwing the circuit breaker built into the outlet in my garage........

This implies that it's a gfci receptacle and it is tripping. If that's the case I would recommend inspecting the cooler's wiring for damaged insulation, poor ground connections or other abnormalities. Also try a a receptacle on a different circuit. As well as a dedicated circuit.

 

[dmarc85]

Thanks for the replies! CB and GFCI are literally Chinese to me tho. Sounds like I may need an expert to look at it.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[raouliii]

Circuit Breaker - an electrical device in the main or sub electrical panel associated with an electrical circuit (receptacles, lights, etc.)

Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter - an electrical device that interrupts a circuit when it senses a ground fault. It can be tested by pressing a test button integrated into the device. It would then be reset with its reset button. It can take the form of a circuit breaker in a panel or a receptacle (which is what I assumed you have). Code requires them in garages, kitchens and bathrooms circuits. GFCI receptacles can be wired to protect downstream, non-gfci receptacles.

Unless you have a friend that's an expert, you might consider a few of the ideas presented to you in this thread before you pay$$ an expert to take a look at it.

Though the photo is a bit murky, it appears to be a BeverageAir product. Likely the MMR72 or close to it. The MMR72 is spec'd at about a 10amp current draw. It shouldn't trip a circuit breaker by itself.


A few simpler questions, if you want to try to troubleshoot your problem:

Are there other large appliances in the garage that may be on the same electrical circuit?

Is the cooler plugged into a receptacle that has a test and reset button? If yes, then it is a GFCI receptacle. Is this what is tripping?

Assuming a GFCI receptacle:
Is anything else plugged into it? If yes, try unplugging the other item.
When the test button is pressed are there other receptacles in the garage that lose power? If yes, what's plugged into those receptacles?

 

[dmarc85]

Nice. The cooler is not plugged into a receptacle with the test/reset button, but I do have a keggerator on the same circuit in the garage. When the cooler loses power, so does the keggerator. When I press the reset button, they both come back on but only for a few minutes... This circuit is on a 15amp breaker (main switchboard).


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Rivenin]

theres your problem...
refrigeration really needs to be separate circuits because they draw quite a bit of power... take off your kegerator and see if it does the same thing... if it does try it on a dedicated 20amp and cross fingers... those true units take a bit of power due to their size

 

[jimbonnet]

I agree. That thing is a beast. It most likely needs 20a dedicated.

Cheers!

 

[dmarc85]

Curious, could the breaker just be swapped out for a 20A or does a whole new circuit need to be wired?




Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[dyqik]

That depends on the wire gauge it was wired with (the whole circuit needs to be checked back to the main board). 20A circuits need 12 gauge wire, while 15A circuits are OK with 14 gauge.

 

[raouliii]

Nice. The cooler is not plugged into a receptacle with the test/reset button, but I do have a keggerator on the same circuit in the garage. When the cooler loses power, so does the keggerator. When I press the reset button, they both come back on but only for a few minutes... This circuit is on a 15amp breaker (main switchboard)....

Have you tried unplugging the kegerator to see if the beverage cooler will run by itself? That would be an important test. If it won't run by itself on the circuit, there may be an issue with the cooler or gfci receptacle.

Running two refrigeration units on one circuit could very well be the problem. The new cooler is rated at about 10amps and that's the value that would be used to size a circuit for it. However, the current draw can be double or triple that during compressor startup. That inrush current along with the kegerator drawing its fully rated current can certainly tax that circuit. However, AFAIK, a GFCI receptacle does not provide overcurrent protection, so I'm not clear on why an assumed overcurrent situation would be tripping the GFCI receptacle's ground fault circuit. After a little reading, it appears that GFCI receptacles have been known to trip when high current motors, like a compressor, initially start up because there is an initial inrush of current that charges the magnetic field and the GFCI circuit sees this as a current imbalance and trips.

Curious, could the breaker just be swapped out for a 20A or does a whole new circuit need to be wired?...

That depends on the wire gauge it was wired with (the whole circuit needs to be checked back to the main board). 20A circuits need 12 gauge wire, while 15A circuits are OK with 14 gauge.

I agree.

If it's already wired with 12AWG wire, the circuit breaker can be upgraded to a 20A. However, that will likely not solve the GFCI tripping problem downstream. If you upgrade the circuit breaker to 20A, the GFCI could then be upgraded to 20A if it is not one already. The design of the 20A GFCI receptacle may be more robust than a 15A GFCI receptacle and less susceptable to nuisance trips. A GFCI receptacle has the ability to protect downstream receptacles and that would be how the normal receptacle being used for the cooler is wired.

BTW, a 15A receptacle has two vertical slots while a 20A receptacle has one vertical slot and a T slot.

FWIW, I just had two TRUE beverage coolers stop running because of an internal failure in a GFCI receptacle. The receptacle will not reset and will need to be replaced. No harm to the coolers but four kegs of beer and my entire yeast repository rose to the mid 80s before anyone noticed.

 

[dmarc85]

So it looks like taking the keggerator off the circuit solved the issue, but now I have a new issue; the cooler won't get cold. I let it run for an hour and the temp rose from 68 to 80F. I don't have a lot of information. About this unit other than the fact that it was not in use before I picked it up. Thoughts? Low on refridgerant?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[raouliii]

So it looks like taking the keggerator off the circuit solved the issue, but now I have a new issue; the cooler won't get cold. I let it run for an hour and the temp rose from 68 to 80F. I don't have a lot of information. About this unit other than the fact that it was not in use before I picked it up. Thoughts? Low on refridgerant?...

Did it test good before you bought it and now it's not working? Is the compressor turning on?

From your first post:

I just got a three door commercial beverage cooler to use as a keg cooler, bottle storage and lager chamber, supercool......

Did this not mean that it cooled?

 

[dmarc85]

Supercool as in super awesome I didn't test it before I brought it home, cuz I got it free. I don't know how to tell if the compressor is turning on, but I will say that the thing humms and the fan blows, lights turn on and it looks fairly new. Is there a way that a refridgeration noob like me can diagnose the problem?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[mattd2]

Supercool as in super awesome I didn't test it before I brought it home, cuz I got it free. I don't know how to tell if the compressor is turning on, but I will say that the thing humms and the fan blows, lights turn on and it looks fairly new. Is there a way that a refridgeration noob like me can diagnose the problem?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Compressor humms but not getting cold sounds like a refrigerant leak, you may just have found out why you got such a awesome cooler for free

 

[dmarc85]

I suspect that the refridgerent was drained...recharges expensive??


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[raouliii]

Refrigerant doesn't get used up in a functional system. Adding refrigerant to a system with a leak will do no good without repairing it.

A few things to check: There is at least one internal evaporator fan that should run all the time. Underneath the unit, a condenser fan should run when the compressor runs. The condenser coil should be clean.

 

[Maxkling]

Just because its humming doesn't mean its working... If the capacitor is bad it will hum until it trips the thermal overload. Is the compressor hot as hell to the touch? Does it cycle on and off? If its been drained or completely out of refrigerant and it has a low pressure cut off switch, the compressor shouldn't cycle on at all...

 

[dmarc85]

The compress is not doing anything. It looks like some important hardware has been removed...

This is what looks like the housing for a circuit board of some kind of control unit. The block there has unconnected wires on 3 of the 4 terminals. Ideas??


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

Having never seen one of these before, I cannot speak to what may or may not have been plugged in to those bare wires. What I can say is that I would promptly unplug it from the wall until you get a buddy with a multimeter over to figure out if any of those wires are hot. This looks like a recipe for disaster, with bare wires and metal housings in close proximity...

 

[dmarc85]

Had a repairman review the pics, apparently it's missing a significant piece of hardware there. This cooler's gonna be a big closet for quite a while I'm thinking.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Takuie]

The pic is a little fuzzy but looks to me like all you need is a contactor for the compressor. Those run 20-70 bucks generally. Without looking at a schematic, I would just be guessing.

 

[dmarc85]

So I got under there with a lamp and noticed a start capacitor and a run capacitor were disconnected and just sitting in the bottom of the box. I followed the wiring diagram and got them all reconnected properly. My circuit breaker has stopped tripping when I run the unit now, but I'm still not getting any cooling.

Suggestion? Would it help if I posted pictures?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[dmarc85]

Here's a few pics

Wiring diagram

Capacitors hooked up


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[dmarc85]

Hey, look! No temp controller No wonder the compressor won't turn on...

I picked up an aftermarket controller at a restaurant equipment store and I'll be installing it tonight. Hopefully we will have cold air flowing


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[dmarc85]

Temp controller installed. Temp is dropping...



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

Nicely done! If it gets down to temperatures you just proved that a little tenacity and hard work is worth a ton of money!

 

[dmarc85]

Nicely done! If it gets down to temperatures you just proved that a little tenacity and hard work is worth a ton of money!

It's sitting at 38F right now All together I paid $67. Haha.



Anyone in Hillsboro wanna buy my old keggerator???


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

Can you figure out how the cooling coils are run? IE, do they run the full length of the entire chiller, or are they primarily on one side or the other? I'd be great if the latter, then you could build an insulated wall internally and maybe put a fan in that wall and a heater in the chamber. Then use a 2-zone temp controller to heat / cool the area and you've got yourself a 2-zone chiller. You could use the temp-controlled zone as a fermentation chamber, and the rest of it for storage and laggering.

 

[dmarc85]

Yes, actually I plan to do some research on this. I believe the coils are mostly on the left side since the right side is always 2-3 degrees warmer. 2-zones is an awesome idea


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[raouliii]

FWIW, these commercial units are usually designed for ease of repair and component access. They have few, if any, components embedded in the walls. They have compressor modules (compressor, condenser, fan) located in the lower compartment and evaporator coils mounted in the upper compartment (behind the lighted sign). The evaporator fans (maybe three for this unit) continuously blow across the evaporator coil with the cool air blowing down the rear of the interior. The refrigerant lines are usually located behind a panel that runs from bottom to top on the rear interior wall. The wiring harness also runs from bottom to top behind a panel. The factory thermostat is usually of a constant cut-in type where the sensing bulb senses the temperature of the evaporator coil and not air temperature. This is done for reliability and defrost purposes.

I'm not sure how one would create zones with this type of system. I guess it might involve physically dividing the interior as well as dividing the airflow through the evaporator, if it's not already done. And controlling individual evaporator fans using an air temperature thermostat to control the higher temperature compartment(s). The drawback to this may be the tendency for portions of the evaporator to build up ice when the compressor is running for the cold compartment but the evaporator fan is not running for the warmer compartment.

 

[dyqik]

If it does work like you describe, I'd think you could box in the outlet (and inlet maybe) for the air from the evaporators and route it to one side of the fridge only, then do the Son of Fermentation Chamber style fan on the wall to control the warm side. Might be a little ugly, but it should use the full evaporator and prevent icing.