Wine Cooler Humidor

Adcurium

I was complaining to a friend a few weeks ago about how tiring it was to try to maintain the several humidors I have at my office, my house, etc. He suggested a wine cooler, and emailed me a link to a business that makes cedar drawers for your setup. So I'm thinking of tacking this in steps: First, I would get a fridge online, plug it in here at the office then empty my humidor. Then at some other point, worry about getting cedar drawers. Anyone use such a setup?

xmacro

Yeah, I use it, but I made my own drawers. Just measure how big the wine racks are (note: be careful about this, a lot of racks are wider at the front, narrow at the back, so measure everything, including how tall the sliders are so you know how thick the wood needs to be), go to a lumber store, pick out a plank or two of Spanish Cedar, and they'll cut it to any dimensions you want. I just measured how big the racks would have to be, decided on the thickness I wanted, and the lumber store did the rest. All I had to do was hammer the things together

I plugged the drain hole, but humidity spiked, so I unplugged it and everything's golden so far - don't even need a humidifier, since the water from the cooler does the humidifying just fine (in fact, my humidifier was causing my RH to spike - had to take it out due to mold). Ever since then, I have heartfelt beads on every shelf and my RH is rock steady at 68%, temp at 65F

A good tip I got was to attach an air filter to the back of the wine cooler, where the fans draw the air in. Reason being to filter out particulates which, over the course of years, can ruin the motors and require them to be replaced; an air filter is a cheap way to cut down on this. Every few months I just untape it from the back and move it over so a new spot on the air filter is over top the vents - since the only part of the air filter that gets dirty is the part directly over the filter, I can make an air filter last for over 6 months just by moving it around when it starts getting dirty in an area

I've had my 28 bottle wineador for about two years now and it still works fine. Stores somewhere around 800 or 1,000 cigars

Adcurium

Thanks Xmarco. What kind of airfilter do you use? And what brand of wine coller do you have?

xmacro

I just picked up some filter from WalMart, whatever filter had the biggest number on it and said it could filter out the most stuff. Probably cost $15 or $20, but I don't care since the things lasts for a long time

As for wine cooler, I picked up a Wine Enthusiast brand during their summer sale, $300 shipped ($300 for the unit + free shipping, which was otherwise about $100).