Finally got the cabinet humi working like I want it to!

[Master Gates]

About a year and a half ago, I started building my cabinet humi. Took me about 6 months of weekends to finish the actual woodwork. Red oak, birch, and spanish cedar.

It held humidity perfectly, but my problem was always with the cooling system. At first I set out to use a peltier type system, so I bought the peltier cells, heatsinks, DC outputs, etc. I built my own peltier coolers and installed them in the humi, but they just could not keep up with cooling 35 cubic feet.

After a few attempts, I finally aandoned the peltier setup and put in compressors from two of those mini fridges. These worked well as far as cooling went, and used less electricity than the peltier setup I previously had. These get so cold that ice will form on the coils, then when they shut off, there is the problem of water dripping. To solve this problem, I built an acrylic box to go around the cooling coils. I installed two 120mm fans on the box to circulate the cold air out. This way, the coils dont get so icy, and any drippings are caught in the plastic box. The box drains to a moist-n-aire towards the bottom of the cabinet. All seems to be working quite well now!

I have a lot of leftover stuff from my trials - peltier cells, DC power supplies, digital thermostat, fans, heatsinks, etc. If anyone might be interested in making a cooling setup for a smaller application, ive got all the stuff, Id be willing to trade it away....

THeres some pics of the humi when the peltier system was installed. Ill have to take some new ones with the new cooling system