This was recommended from someone thats built a few coolers.
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Awesome! I actually looked at similar as a tumble trimmer screen possibility! Thanks for the response. I’m going to go back through all the various plans I’ve seen and decide if I really want to do this to myself. (either project really) 
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I ordered some 12" x 13" dehydrator screen racks from Amz based on a post from another forum - save your money - they don’t fit worth a damn, and are going back. I got some stainless hardware cloth with 1/4" mesh to cover the stock racks with. Thinking about just using one rack at the top and hanging branches trimmed to just fit vertically. Cut branch to fit, poke the stem up thru the mesh, clamp on a small binder clip. Should be able to maximize space. About another week, 10 days until chop. I’ll post a pic.
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I went to the dollar store and got some placemats made out of food grade silicone. I just laid those on top of the existing shelves. They work well their food grade safe And cheap and easy to replace. Cheers !!!
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Checked on the wedding cake. The smell when i open the door is incredible. The buds are staying soo fragrant. Very happy so far, but the end result will be the final judgement.
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@douggyfresh420 Bueatiful !!! I am working trimming my last 2 plants of Blueberry Muffins. That should fill my dryer pretty well up. I’ll start my cycles tonight as well. Cheers !!!
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I forgot you are using a compressor based fridge. I’ve been eying my old small dorm style fridge which is compressor based. I had to use it a few days ago to store food in a emergency and remembered how much condensation formed on the cooling plate in the back. I see in your pic it appears you have some frost to.
Here’s a pic of mine after it was unplugged and all the frost turned into large drops of water, it has a drain hole at the bottom. I’d like to use it as a dryer, it’s a 3 or 4cf fridge…no freezer; It’s a old sanyo office / dorm fridge. Briefly catching up on this thread it seems like the dehu you installed isn’t doing that much rather than just cycling the fridge? I always wondered why a dehu was needed at all since the cool side of the fridge evap coil is going to form condensation which pulls out moisture from the air. Correct me if I’m wrong…but you’re just using it to warm the internal temp to force the compressor to run so you can form condensate and pull moisture out? I’d suppose this doesn’t allow you to keep the temp exactly where you want it since you have to engage cooling to pull moisture out?
Just curios…Which side forms the condensate on the dehu…the cool side or hot side since you apparently have the whole unit in there? I could see both sides since the air is cool not cold nor hot.
Anyways …If you’re just using it to produce heat to cycle the fridge I’m thinking of using a cheap incandescent light bulb like 100W or something. Wonder what a small cheap hair dryer would do since it’s instant heat and hot dry air.
Here’s the fridge I have.
What about removing the handle and mounting this at the bottom or something and having your controller cycle it?
Or use a incandescent light bulb.
Possible other options.
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wire a relay to the thermostat and take the thermostat out of the loop and control the relay with the inkbird or whatever you use. This way you’d not have to heat anything up at all…just close a relay to fire the compressor off.
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A piece of thermal tape wrapped around the thermostat…the tape heats up when electricity is applied and warms the thermostat. Small localized heating.
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Just remove the thermostat and wire the circuit together such that if the fridge has power the compressor is running. Then simply use a external controller to apply or retract power from the fridge itself. This is most likely the most simple and cost nothing other than the external controller.
Side question, what do you guys do when trying to get the moisture correct in the bud before moving them to groove bags. I bought a “General” moisture meter and I can test a bud and get different readings on the same bud. For example this bud was in a frost free fridge, inside a paper bag, for about a week and most of the bud reads 10 - 12% but you probe a few spots and it’s 15-18%. Can I put it in a bag since most of it’s acceptable and it will dry out or will a few spots like that mold? Also, I dried whole buds and didn’t chunk them into nugs…perhaps that more efficient. But, I’m in a spot …bag them now or over dry. They are starting to get that hay smell.
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@Taproot Yes, sir the frost builds up when you’re loading up the dryer becaus the door is open a lot. Having the door open for extended period of time kicks the unit on excessively. Keeping the door shut pretty much eliminates that. Once you get comfortable with the equipment, you pretty much stop opening the door. At least for a couple days easily. When you have disparity between large buds and small buds you want to sweat them. Put them in a turkey bag or similar For 12 to 24 hours. This will even out the moisture. Then you can continue curing the final moisture you want to remove. Cheers !!!
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It would be neat some of you guys that have both compressor and thermoelectric based dryers do a side by side comparison of the run and final product. I’d wager to say they are most likely very similar even with the thermoelectric being able to hold a tighter tolerant.
My conditions out here in the South are the same as yours…hot and dry in the summer and Cold and dry or cold and wet in the winter. I’m going to try my compressor based fridge to see if it works and I don’t think I’ll run a dehu.
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@Taproot I would be careful if you choose not to run a dehumidifier. Chances are your humidity will get too high. Remember the only reason to run the dehumidifier is to force the fridge to cycle. That puts fresh dry air through the fridge. We cycle quite often in the beginning as you can see in the graph above. My fear would be that the fridge would not cycle enough on it own to remove moisture fast enough. This wil risk mold. Remember our only concern is relative humidity slowing droping all the time. Cheers !!!
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The whole thing is a dehumidifier aka dryer right?
That’s why I was thinking of taking out the thermostat and wiring it where the compressor is always on, as long as the fridge has power the compressor is on.
Then I’d plug the whole fridge into a external controller that can read temp and humidity and take action based on user set points for either or just one variable.
The infinity 69 pro tracks both temp / humidity and VPD and can take programmable actions on these variables. What I’m saying is just wire the compressor to be always on then use a 69 pro to cycle the fridge on and off based on Temp or Humidity or even VPD.
You should be able to configure it such as if the Temp goes over 60F turn the fridge on, or if the humidity goes over 60% turn it on. This would cover the temp and humidity. I believe it has more flexibility where you can set ramps so you might be able to start at 73% humidity and have it lower itself down by 1% a day after a set time automatically.
I was thinking of using its VPD monitoring and use that alone to control the dryer. I mean basically I’m putting in my weed in a large dehumidifier (dryer) right? So why not just use VDP and have that turn on the Fridge (compressor) when needed to cool down the air and pull moisture out until it gets to target VPD? VPD is based on water content in the air I think so it’s a tighter regulation than using RH% correct?
Would this not work? I didn’t realize you guys were just using the dehu to heat air to trip the thermostat to on. seems like it’s not even needed since the whole unit is one big dehu.
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@Taproot This sounds correct. You are definitely further along into the fridge workings than most. I believe you are following the main principles. If you can control the fridge based on temp and/or humidity that should be successful. I like the idea as you could use less parts and maybe stream line the controls. You are definitely charting new territory. Cheers !!!
@Taproot i belive the VPD is a an option on most of the newer controllers. I couldn’t see too much of a drastic effect whether the controls are set to VPD or RH. I actually don’t think this process is as sensitive as some people do. I think you got a little bit of leeway and still make your way to the same result. Our biggest goal is trying to maintain a slow dry. Cheers !!!
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Thanks for the input. Here’s the controller I’m referring to for reference.
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I have a fridge that I use to dry/cure as described. It’s compressor based, so I set it to maximum cooling, then hook up the power to an inkbird and use that to keep the temp around 60F with a protection timer for the compressor and a small buffer so it turns on around 63F or so. Inside, a bunch of raised cooling racks for baking that the bud sits on. On the bottom I add a little tub of damprid that stays in until the humidity drops enough and I can slow down the moisture removal. I have a variable speed fan inside for circulation and to help move more air across the cold plate in the back. At the beginning I use a higher speed, and dial it back as the buds start to get drier. When things get close, I start doing the oven tests to see where the moisture is, and then it’s into grove bags which stay in the fridge at 60f.
Ideas for the future, I want to get the fan on a circuit with a low power peltier device which I would attach to the cold plate on the cold side. The idea is that the cold plate would be kept cold by the peltier when a sensor detects the humidity is too high. The fan would also be activated, or sped up maybe, when the humidity is high. Eventually the compressor will be triggered to come back on when the temperature rises enough… and on goes the cycle. The last few dry/cures in there went well enough I haven’t really gone forward with the new ideas, but one day I’ll get off my ass lol
Edit: just dug up a picture of the CDLCxSkywalker going in for the dry & cure. The finished bud was some Strawberry Nuggets also dried/cured the same way.
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Talk more about the protection timer…are you referring to a setting on your controller or a manual device? I think you’re referring to allowing the compressor to get back to a normal temp before turning it back on to avoid damage?
If you’re just using the cold side and don’t want the heat are you going to mount the hot side though the fridge so it doesn’t dump internally?
So you just go by temp, throw the buds in there and set to 60F and let it rip? Do you even monitor humidity? Curious what those numbers look like in the beginning and middle and end, did you log these numbers? It seems like you don’t need a dehu.
Your use of damprid has me wondering of just adding some of those reusable two way humidity beads designed to keep the humidity at 58% - 62% would help me? I would take the beads and dehydrate them to pull the water out then put them in the fridge (dryer) from the start like you do. They should help get things down quicker as they absorb water vapor and fill back up, then hopefully they can help maintain a tighter RH since they are two way.
Looks like a fridge full of small pineapples. Love it!
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@Taproot you goota tag @grow so he can see the question. I’m curious to follow along aswell! Cheers !!!
The protection timer is built into the temp controller. It just prevents the compressor from cycling on and off too often. As long as you don’t stick the fridge somewhere that’s very hot, or have the range set too tight (where the fridge turns on the second the temp hits 61F inside for example) the timer isn’t really used but it’s good just in case.
I did track the numbers the first few times I did it this way… I also ran a small dehumidifier inside on the very first cycle, one of the peltier based ones, but that just triggered the fridge to turn on and off a ton due to emitting heat. The chart from that run was just a ton of ups and downs for both temperature and RH. It did work, but ended up going faster than I wanted, with more wear and tear on the fridge than I wanted. The next run I took out the dehu and relied only on the cold plate and the damp rid to remove humidity. That worked fine with some little tweaks to the fan speed and position. I think the most important thing about drying like this is moving a lot of air over the cold plate inside the fridge. That lets you take advantage of the fact that the cold plate stays cold for a bit even when the fridge is off, and moving more humid air over the plate removes more moisture from the fridge. Win-win. For me it solves a space issue of hanging whole plants, and also a cooling issue… I don’t have a space I can keep cool and control humidity while hanging whole plants. So with this, I can do a wet trim, set the buds up on the cookie sheets so air can still get all around them, and then let them stay cool while the moisture gets sucked out by the condensation and damp rid.
I did buy this fridge second hand for a steal, $20, but had to put in some elbow grease cleaning the outside and inside, and disinfecting it to make sure I wasn’t inheriting anything I didn’t want… lots of cleaning spray, peroxide, and alcohol later and it was good to go 
Just saw your idea for the two way beads- interesting idea! If you can link em I’d love to read about products like that, especially if I could make another upgrade to the process. The grove bags were a nice addition to the process, but the zippers on two bags both came unglued after a few opens, so either I have gorilla hands or they’re just not supposed to be opened and closed a ton… 
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@grow @Taproot this is very interesting. Do you happen to have any graphs from the runs after you did the modifications to run on the fridge without the dehumidifier. I knew when I built mine, I would upgrade controls, etc. It was a good base starting point and easy to modify as we keep coming up with new ideas. I’m trying to make sure I completely understood the upgrade you’re talking about. I might have to do a little homework to completely grasp How you were wiring this. And how long did you stretch out your best cycle for on dry time ? Cheers !!!