Use a standard air-conditioning unit to chill a walk-in cooler.
Most people are happy with their home's refrigerator, but perhaps you want more storage than a standard refrigerator can provide. Restaurants, when confronted with such a dilemma, use a walk-in cooler. You can create one for your home. This can be helpful if you store a lot of perishable food. For instance, you may have a very large family, live in a multifamily housing cooperative with a shared kitchen, or run a home-based business requiring refrigeration of a large amount of perishable foods.
Instructions
1. Define the space where your walk-in cooler will be located. It must be an enclosed room so that cold air cannot escape.
2. Attach 2-inch thick sheets of rigid insulation foam to the walls and ceiling of the room. Attach the foam with adhesive caulk or extra-long button-cap roofing nails. To install the foam with caulk, apply beads or dabs of caulk along the wall at 6-inch intervals. Press the foam over the caulk. To install the foam with button-cap roofing nails, hammer each nail through the foam and into the wall. Space the nails about 1 foot apart, in a grid-like formation. The large plastic cap on the nail helps distribute the holding power of the nail across a flimsy surface, such as the foam.
3. Seal all joints and all nail penetrations with aluminized insulation tape.
4. Attach a piece of rigid insulation foam to the door interior, in the same way you attached this foam to the wall.
5. Install foam rubber roll insulation, about 3/8-inch wide, around the door jamb to keep the entire door covered and create an airtight seal. Remove the backing on the insulation, exposing its adhesive. Affix the insulation around the door jamb.
6. Cut a hole through your insulation over the window in the space where you want to keep the air conditioning unit. The hole should be the same shape as the air conditioning unit that you will use to cool the room. Use a utility knife to make the cut. This hole should be cut as high as possible, since cool air falls. Your height limitation will be the height of the window. The top of the unit cannot exceed the upper sill of the window.
7. Place the air conditioning unit in the hole. The unit will include a window-mounting kit provided by the manufacturer. Attach the unit following the manufacturer's directions.
8. Seal the edges around the air conditioning unit with aluminized insulation tape.
9. Adjust the air conditioning unit settings to a temperature between 40 degrees and 45 degrees, or to any cool temperature of your liking.
Tips Warnings
You can buy aluminized insulation tape at hardware stores.
Retrofitting a room to become a walk-in cooler will be a major change. Undoing it can cause damage to your walls, doors and windows.
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