Thermoelectric wine cooler drying and curing - DIY

gooshpoo said:

they sure do !

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Zip tying the shelves takes a while. I ended up doing stainless mesh and going with the contours. Does the dehumidifier go on top of the bottom shelf? Also I want to figure out the best spot to so the humidity sensor. I ended up looming the cables and puttying the hole and adding a button connector to hold the cable from being able to be tugged. Then I heat shrunk the end of the loom so air couldn't go thru it.

Also used a lint roller to get all that Styrofoam out. Hook was spot on with it being statically charged and hard to clean up. I plan on running it in a bit to test it out and it's going to take me some time to fashion up these wire shelves. I took and split a peice of 1/4" vinyl tubing and lined the edges of the chicken wire with it so it won't stab me.

I did the same as other im putting it in the bottom left and putting it on a shelf, the sensor im going to hang off one of the shelfs so its about in the middle of the area. its looking good homie!

Looking good! I put the dehumidifier on the bottom left, and cut a section of the bottom shelf so the dehumidifier sits directly on the bottom with the pointed fins in the back drainage channel. The metal fins on the dehumidifier direct the water so from the channel it flows out to the drain pan underneath the cooler.

Hook Daddy said:

Looking good! I put the dehumidifier on the bottom left, and cut a section of the bottom shelf so the dehumidifier sits directly on the bottom with the pointed fins in the back drainage channel. The metal fins on the dehumidifier direct the water so from the channel it flows out to the drain pan underneath the cooler.

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Nice dude I was wondering if I just happened to get a bigger dehu but it looks just like the ones you all have. I just set it all up and things are looking good now I just need to cut the final shelf. I ended up going with a square shelf instead of wavy to maximize drying area. It did look cool being wavy though but it was so many damn zip ties

My front left leg under the door hinge was shattered and I'm looking into getting a replacement now

I have the fan of the dehumidifier pointing toward the door and the fins toward the back. I’m not sure that it would make a big difference though.

Hook Daddy said:

I have the fan of the dehumidifier pointing toward the door and the fins toward the back. I’m not sure that it would make a big difference though.

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Yeah that's probably better, I'll spin it around and test which way works more efficient. Thanks so much for sharing this build man my brother in law is harvesting soon so he's gonna try it out and we're gonna trade it back and forth between harvests

Nizza said:

Yeah that's probably better, I'll spin it around and test which way works more efficient. Thanks so much for sharing this build man my brother in law is harvesting soon so he's gonna try it out and we're gonna trade it back and forth between harvests

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Let us know the outcome.

I just loaded mine up with Dosidos and Bubba Kush. Here’s a couple buds before trimming up.



Here’s a shelf getting ready to go in all loaded up.



This round is super sticky and smells great, I can’t wait.

gooshpoo said:

Im also working on mine today, putting the bbq grill screen on the shelves atm. they are perfect size you can cut them into almost like little traysView attachment 5348183

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Man, I wish I would have done this. I trimmed mine to fit. Next one!!

Just finished mine up decided to use a spare ac infinity controller 69 i had. yay for wifi controls . decided not to post pics because well its the same as the rest haha.

They just need to lower the price and they will sell a bunch of them. The same thing used to happen all the time with new lights. They were all super overpriced. But, the technology was new at that time. This is just a humidity controlled fridge, so it shouldn't be too long before someone makes something that will be more reasonably priced. I think I'll wait it out and just keep doing it old school style for awhile longer. After all this time, I've got my drying on point. I'll just trim it, jar it up and when I'm sure it's stable in the jar, I will transfer it to a Grove bag, heat seal it and then let it mummify!

Has anyone noticed that the terps are kinda encapsulated in the buds now? After grinding the smells amplifies 10x compared to before grinding. I'm about to finally sample my latest harvest after a few weeks of drying.

closetweedhead said:

Has anyone noticed that the terps are kinda encapsulated in the buds now? After grinding the smells amplifies 10x compared to before grinding. I'm about to finally sample my latest harvest after a few weeks of drying.

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Yes the smell is good straight out of the cooler, but once you throw a bud in the grinder the smell really comes out. I’ve had quite a few people comment on how great the buds smell and taste, which I guess is the whole point. I’m drying a harvest now, most in the coolers but I have some hang drying at 60/60 to do a taste comparison in a couple weeks.

Where do the volatile substances go as they off-gas inside the cooler? Are they filtered out with some kind of charcoal deal? Or, does running one of these in a basement end up smelling up the entire house? And does this also happen every time the door is opened?

tstick said:

Where do the volatile substances go as they off-gas inside the cooler? Are they filtered out with some kind of charcoal deal? Or, does running one of these in a basement end up smelling up the entire house? And does this also happen every time the door is opened?

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The is very little to no smell as the cooler is running with the door closed, even in the same room. There is some smell obviously when you open the door, but nothing like having a full harvest hang drying in a room. If I hang dry in my house the whole house smells like weed. In the coolers I can’t smell a thing until opening them.

Would this machine allow me to harvest just the upper colas, first, and then keep the rest of the lower portion of the plant growing? If so, then this would greatly cut down on larf by allowing the otherwise underripe buds more time to catch up and ripen.

I've always harvested the entire plant and hung it to dry....which almost always left me with parts of the plant being under ripe. But if this allows me to dry/cure plants from the top down, then I might be able to see a real advantage.

I very rarely harvest all at once, almost always grabbing the ripest colas first, and letting the rest finish.

Sydios said:

since we cannot see a dehumidifier in the cannatrol, I’m thinking they have 2 peltier coolers with One hot side and one cold side on the inside of the cooler. By using the two you can control temp and dehumidify like we are doing. Let me know if you agree.

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I’ve been noodling over this too while obtaining the necessary pieces to assemble my wine fridge dryer.

Link to video originally posted in the uk420 thread.

Here’s what I’m seeing in the Cannatrol.
1. There are 2 power supplies. One is definitely to power the peltier cooler. Not sure what the second power supply is doing, but could be running a separate heater or might be dedicated to running the control board & fancy led display.
2. The heat sink used over the Peltier cooler in the back is a massive copper pipe aluminum fin fanless heat sink that looks like it was made for a gaming PC. Most TEC wine coolers have a small heat sink and similar size fan to what’s on the inside of the wine cooler.
3. On the inside of the Cannatrol, there is a fan about an inch or two off the bottom mounted so it either blows straight up or straight down. From what I’ve gathered this seems to be a modification in newer models. Someone on another forum said it was an exhaust fan, but I believe it’s more for air circulation. Seems like an actual exhaust fan would destroy the closed and managed vapor pressure environment they’re using.

Through reading about peltier coolers and TECs in general, I’ve learned that it’s possible to flip the polarity on the TEC chip which then makes the cold side hot and the hot side cold. However, it’s very unlikely the Cannatrol is doing that due to thermal delay and the fact that if you overload the Cannatrol the heatsink of the cold side will ice up and they tell customers to unplug the Cannatrol for 15 minutes then remove some flower to resolve the icing. With that said, I believe they have an oversized TEC that they’re using for both cooling and dehumidification. Since I don’t see a fan on the heat sink on the rear, I suspect they may be allowing the passive thermal radiation to partially act as a small heat source.

edit: I’m high. There’s definitely a fan on the heatsink in the video.

Hi everyone, how do you guys deal with a full fridge and 85+ humidity?
I know 2-4 oz won’t be a problem but what about 12-16 oz?
Do you set the dehumidifier at 69f or do you just drop 1-2% every day?

Thanks in advance

Caribbean Hippie said:

Hi everyone, how do you guys deal with a full fridge and 85+ humidity?
I know 2-4 oz won’t be a problem but what about 12-16 oz?
Do you set the dehumidifier at 69f or do you just drop 1-2% every day?

Thanks in advance

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Hang dry for a day or 2 or 3 to start the drying. Then load the fridge and start high with the dehumidifier. Work it down as it allows.

TCH said:

Hang dry for a day or 2 or 3 to start the drying. Then load the fridge and start high with the dehumidifier. Work it down as it allows.

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Thank you.