I've been talking to Greg about the temp control on these things.
There's a spring stop right after the highest setting, then you force past that spring to make the knob "boing" and shut off.
It takes some practice to get the fridge set, and then I just leave it alone. I always kept mine at 72*.
On the evaporator frosting...
The whole back of this thing is an evaporator. Right now because Greg has nothing (or next to nothing) in there, the thermal mass is not sufficient to keep the air warm enough for it to short-cycle like we want it to.
In short, we want the giant mass of cigars to warm the air as fast as the evaporator cools it.
The evaporator may frost later, anyways. Doesn't matter. It's perfectly fine.
Eventually the compressor will shut off, the frost will thaw, and the fans will dry the condensate, sending it back to the air and the beads. Then it'll repeat, the cycles being more and more even as time goes on.
Greg's situation that he's showing you right now is actually really cool.
Most guys do the same thing, and it's easy to understand why. They expect a system to work when only part of the parts are in place, but it doesn't. And it does weird things.
It's because there are a lot of invisible numbers and temperatures, and physical properties at play. Lots of parts in the machine, and they all need to be in place, then have time to coalesce and work in harmony.
Now, if the front window were missing, nobody would give a second thought as to why things weren't working. Most guys wouldn't even try to make it work without a window except maybe Gainey and Murphy and Jerebek, but they Polanders. You'll have that.
Greg can't get predictable results right now because we're still missing lots of parts.
I'm not making foolish of him at all, really. We did this thread so guys can understand, and he's the PERFECT guy to do it with.
He's been super easy to work with, and reacted to the build exactly the way most brothers do. That's allowing me to answer all the questions I forget.
So, once Greg gets all the parts and pieces in place (cigars, boxes, trays, beads), stops opening the door 100 times a day, and lets the winador stabilize, he'll find that it just plain works.
Like magic.
Hopefully he'll journal all those fun days while it's coming together.
The only other thing I can mention is that lots of times guys use a Johnson Temperature control. That's fine.
I suggest this model because I personally know it's not necessary. Guys can save 60 or 70 bucks, get it set, and it never, ever changes.
I also like for there to be no extra moving parts and to keep the retrofit very, very simple.
There are tons of these setups out there. Nobody has EVER had a problem one.
Gainey will probably fix that.
We do have the control option to fall back on, so it's out there.
We'll see what happens. I think Gary is just stubborn enough to get that temp set perfect.
