DIY Cool Bot Walk In Cooler - EPIC Cooler for Vegetables

uh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] hello everybody it's danny back from deep south homestead guys we've been telling y'all we got a project coming up a pretty good project and this has been the first phase of it right here we just had a slab poured underneath our shop system here this is where we used to park the tractor in the ranger and all that kind of stuff under here well we decided to use it for something else right now we've got a drain put in the middle of the floor what we're going to be doing guys is we're going to be putting a walk-in cooler underneath here i got this from a guy uh it was a used one we're going to be reconstructing it and putting it underneath here so that we have a place to hang animals when we butcher them to store vegetables at we've got a uh cool bot system they're going to be installing in the back wall of it to to keep it cool down like we want so guys this has been one of our projects that we've been working on for a pretty good while now we have actually began to start putting the cooler together and it was an old used one it was a walk-in freezer units what it was uh the guy sent the uh old track system with it it's all busted up you know it's all made out of plastic and stuff this one's made to sit on top of concrete they had it glued down on top of it and everything and i went online this is actually called a screed this stuff the price of it is ungodly you know so i sit down and done some thinking i said i can't i can't pay you know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a system just to set this old cooler on it's just not worth it to me you know so i said i can build this i had wood laying around and stuff like that some treated wood so i built a treated wood track system here i just like this one i made it just like it um it's in like three pieces there uh it's all put together i painted it before i put it down there's not really any water gonna be on it to amount to anything so because this is a cooler this is not a freezing unit and this one's kind of bad around the bottom here because they let it you know water got into everything and being a freezer unit it's sweated and done all that kind of stuff and the bottom is kind of bad so i'm going to be getting a roll of coil stock it's a galvanized coil stock probably get 26 gauge like you put on roofs and i'm going to be ripping that stuff down and i'm going to come in here and i'm going to put it right around the bottom of this thing in here and we'll let it run all the way down and go over my board down to the bottom down there so that um and i'm gonna come back and i'm gonna put a coating over the top of it then we're gonna paint the whole inside this thing white now i chose a bad panel to go here in the back this is where the freezing unit used to hang up here in the back they had these air conditioning lines coming through it i bought a new air conditioner with a cool bot system i'm going to be coming in here cutting a big hole out right here anyway for that air conditioner to go in so i decided to use this panel right here uh original panel in there because i'll be cutting those holes out and that way i won't have to worry about having a hole in it there but not knowing anything there is absolutely no instructions for this thing there's nothing so and i'm having to feel my way along because you don't know which piece of i don't know what was the bottom panel i don't know what was the top panel the only thing that has saved me in this is this one corner piece right here still had a sticker in it that said top up there that is the only way i knew [Music] how to start this thing off i laid this thing out i measured every piece by piece by piece figuring out how many pieces came with it figuring out all the dimensions and everything and i finally figured out how many panels go where and how they go together and with this one having the top marked on it and there was one other one right here somebody with a pencil wrote bottom on this one right here so that those two has helped me figure out how this thing goes together because it only has locks on one side of it and once you start out with the top right the neck i mean every piece has to fit a certain way because it's only got locks on one side of it that has been a blessing um i did not know the exact lengths so i had to leave it just running wild out here the next piece to go on here will be a corner piece i'll go get my measurements i'll measure over and i'll take my saw and go ahead and cut my 45 degree angle on that and once i get that measurement i will also know the measurement for that end down there but i still have to put a whole another one of these panels right here right beside this here before i even know the length of this side so it's just a work in progress and another thing is when i put this screed track down right here i put a foam stripping underneath it like you put under walls on houses when you build them to keep any air drafts out any bugs out because it's kind of thick and when you uh hammer drilled concrete screws in here every 16 inches around it and tightened it down and when i done that what it done was it allowed that foam stuff to squeeze down tight and that prevents any air leaks under the bottom prevents any insects from coming in once this thing is completely done and we're going to come in we're going to paint the floor in here and then once we paint the floor we're going to caulk all these seams around this thing we're going to when we get through with it y'all know me it may look like crap right now but if the lord's willing and i my health holds out it's gonna look like a brand new one when i finish with it i mean i've got to buy some some door handle parts and some things like that but guys 15 to 22 000 depending on where i bought it at i'll work with an old one like this just for something to hang our animals in every so often when we butcher them or to keep our vegetables in and keep them cool until we get a chance to process them and do things like that i'll i'll worry around with it and do this and save 15 to 22 000 it's worth that to me all right guys we've we just put down our uh this same thing you put on a house when you build a house on a concrete slab you put this down under your bottom plates it's kind of like a vapor seal i mean as the wood tightens down against it it prevents air insects all that kind of stuff going underneath it and i thought it would just be a good thing to put underneath the uh the screen on this here cooler okay this is the last piece we have to go here this is the last piece of screen now i've got to actually custom cut all this in here where the door fits in here and on both sides and i won't know where to cut it until i actually put it in and install the corner pieces and install the next piece there'll be a corner piece and then a 12 inch piece to go here and then the door casing will sit into it and i will have to do some i'm gonna have to use my uh orbital saw to be able to get in here and do some little minute cutting and stuff like this and then i'll come back and touch it up with paint but right now uh we're gonna get this try to get this installed and uh it's kind of wet right now because i just got through painting it but i'm gonna go ahead and probably go ahead and lay it down there and get it in place because what we're doing is we're leg selling all the corners on it everything here where i mean i'm piling the lex cell in that so that when we put this thing together it's going to be literally airtight everywhere and we've actually come back you know we talked about um and previously we talked about coming in here and putting 26 gauge galvanized metal around the bottom of this well since then i've done some research and i've come up with another different plan i actually went to town and talked to them about it and they they believe it's going to work so what we're going to do is we're going to come in here with a power washer and i'm going to power wash all the inside this off in here and i'm going to scrub it down good and clean and we're going to come back with frp board and put in here it's what you see in all your commercial bathrooms and restaurants and stuff like that i've put it in commercial buildings and it just didn't dawn on me when i started doing this i was like wow i said i could probably put that in here so i'm go i got the glue and everything we're gonna come back put glue on all this i'm gonna stick the frp panels in here and we're gonna make this thing bright white and clean on the inside i won't have to worry with trying to put screws in and put stuff in and all that it just glues on here guys it can be bleached it can be cleaned and i know it's going to cover up all my cam lock holes and all that kind of stuff i don't really care because i don't plan on taking it down um so that's what our new plan is we're going to be doing that [Music] get this [Music] i gotta make sure it fits that's before i put my stuff under it looks like that one's gonna work looks like this one's going to work so we're good to go at least it's square okay well we have a door we've got to do some work on it's got to have another latch i have another one of these uh hydraulic things up here i go i got to build a threshold to go under the bottom i will build one that's got a ramp up on it so i can ramp stuff up over in it but that's it somebody has makeshifted this thing on there which don't belong there uh and this rubbing right here when i close it so um but you have no roof i have no roof on it yet but that's on purpose because i'm going to power wash all this in here and get it as clean as i can get it and then i'm going to go in here and spray foam every little place i can find the spray foam and then i'm going to come back with the frp board and the glue and i didn't want to be inside a close-in container with all that glue so i'm going to leave the top off of it while i'm putting in the glue probably put a fan in here with me and go ahead and put all the frp board on it once i get it cleaned up then we will focus on the outside we'll power wash the outside i've already purchased the paint to go on the outside of it so we're going to lex out all the seams make sure everything is sealed up perfectly good and then we're gonna paint the outside of it then we're gonna power wash the tops paint them bring them in here put them on it and hopefully we'll be ready to cut a hole in that back wall back on for our new ac we got to go in it and our new cool bot system then i got to run the electricity to it i got to get a light to go in here so we so you're not through oh no no no no but to me once that top is done to me the top is the hardest part uh i gotta i'm gonna use my sheetrock lift thing to put the top on with we're going to see how that works because unless we have some muscle huh unless we have some muscles unless we got somebody who wants to come over here there's a bunch of men that want to come over here and help pick that top up and just set it up on we need a barn raisin yeah i got to take down some lights it's up in here and all but right now this light i mean it really works out perfect because when i come in here now with a power washer and to work i can flip this light on and it lights up a matter of fact i may go turn you and see what it looks like well hello everybody danny back working on the cooler again guys it's coming along really nice we've uh putting our second coat of white on it we had to take a bunch of stuff off of it we got new handles and all orders for it we're trying to get it ready to put the top on we have the tops over there we've got them already coated with um some good cool seal on top of them they're sitting there waiting to get ready to uh be put up here that's gonna be a chore we've got one coat around on this side around here already what i've done was i put one coat on and when you put your first coat on you'll see every little place in it that needs fixing after that especially with white all the screw holes somebody i don't know what they were putting in this thing with screws all over it but i got screw holes everywhere so i put the first coat of white on then i came back uh acrylic latex caulked all the holes and now that it's dried i'm going back putting the second coat of white on it you ready for a cool bot yeah uh well i gotta take and i gotta dig out this foam here back in here and put a two by in that and a two by in this here cause i gotta go to screw that uh unit down to it um unless i can come up with another way i really don't want to have to do that but if i can figure out how to fasten that thing with some brackets underneath here and up here then i won't do that because i've got the uh i've got a bracket that goes on the outside i ordered extra with it as a support because it's such a heavy unit um i really would like to just leave it like it is and just you know maybe i'll have to file these edges down where i cut it and smooth it all up and then we'll mount the plug-in system here you know and get all that taken care of and we gotta get a roof on it gotta get a roof on it yep but i need some airflow in here so when i get that roof on here i got some airflow in here because i gotta come in here with all that heavy glue and put on these walls in here to put that stuff on here and i don't want to be in no tight place breathing that stuff so i want to be able to have the door open have this open put a fan there boiling through here so that um it'll you know we get it done brand new door handle new plates new system here for the for the light switch to go inside i got to put the little buttons in here i'm just kind of waiting because i want to make sure everything worked perfect with the gasket and all that before i actually put them in there in case i had to take the handle back off but i got this is going to come up for the light switch the wire is going to go up there and run inside the cooler for the light we've got new lights for in the cooler and everything so it's uh you got new gasket got one ordered it hasn't come in yet you got a roof yep locked down locked together we'll be good to go i guess that's maybe that's it right there and then you got to do some painting yeah got to go back and uh touch up on the top yeah sliding it down through here it got kind of dirty most of it wipes off a lot of white salt but i'll just have to do some touch-up work we have a roof and now we are getting wiring yes we're getting our electrical done it's uh it's a little tight working up here but we're going to get it done um it's looking good yeah got one more little coat of paint to put on everything um you know cover up all the caulking where we cost everything and uh then i'm gonna start hooking up the electrical and uh run some power out here we'll hook the light up with me we'll have it all done so so [Music] well guys it's another hot blustery summery day out here in the deep south but we're still making progress on the walk-in cooler now since the last time you saw it we've done a lot of upgrades to it we finished painting it on the outside we pretty much got all that taken care of all the caulking done in the painting i came in installed the electrical on it i ran the electrical from any shop out to here we now have this part of it run on the outside and it runs to the inside i bought uh covers from where the old stuff used to be on here at to cover that up i foamed it full in the back cut the wires off in there foam that full so there'd be no air leakage we bought a new closure cylinder system to go on top of the door got that installed man that's a blessing right there to have then i ordered a whole new handle system here you can either use a key like to like open it like this um i have it in my pocket i mean i might can get it out i don't know but um we have our use a pull pin system this is the keys that come with it now i can reach up here if i don't want anybody getting in there and it's locked i can take the pin out i mean it's it's locked or i can open it and it comes undone the cylinder at the top has got it pulled down hard or if you don't want to worry with the keys like us in and out all the time you can just use this pin here it's not going anywhere with that pin there so we're going to take the pin out and when you open it the little cylinder see how it falls down and when it closes it hits like right there it automatically closes the door unit so we don't have to worry about that now let's go inside let's see what we got done inside well to start with i built a threshold system here so we can roll stuff in and out of here um these are just plain thresh holes it comes on the bottom of a three foot door i have two of them in my shop from years of construction i built the center piece we're going to be painting that uh make it waterproof and i installed the stain of the aluminum threshold over there and the aluminum threshold over here now one thing about this knob system if you get locked in the cooler it's designed where if you're in here you can turn this knob right here and unscrew this and this unscrews out of this piece out here and you pull a rod out of here and the whole door system will come loose and come off so you don't have to worry about that and also up there i installed our lighting system we now have lights in the cooler this is a cooler light that's made to go in the cooler so we don't have to worry about any kind of problems in that way and i ran it all in electrical conduit so we don't have any problems with that and on the back side back here i installed a double receptacle system here because we have not only do we have the uh the unit in here it's gonna be running uh we're gonna have a cool bot system that's gonna have to be plugged in and then if i'm in here i'm gonna do something else with power i actually have extra power to run things with now we have the ac hole pre-cut here before we put the frp board on the walls in here so that when we get through now all i got to do is come up here and slide the air conditioner cage back in here i did get all the sealant repainted in here that's all taken care of now i've got to paint the floor we've got a drain system in the floor here so if we haven't have to wash anything it will go down and go out the drain and we'll put a good concrete paint in here we've got a couple of more pieces to go right over here in the corners and i'll be completely clear with the frp board guys we also just got a new gasket system in we just put a new gasket on the door here oh because the old one was no good so we ordered a new one to go in here and we've got another new one to go right here i've got to get it installed i just haven't got that far along yet but we're making progress guys well everybody we finally have arrived we all have our cool bot system set up we have our 15 000. i think i said 12 000 earlier but it's actually a 15 000 btu air conditioning unit it's computerized um we don't have it on right now because i'm waiting for the caulking around the unit to actually dry it's all completely airtight in here i mean it is sealed every way imaginable around this thing i cut it so close that whenever i caulked it it looks like it's just part of the wall literally i had to do a lot of modification on the unit but now the cool bot was really a simple system to hook up now we haven't actually run it to make sure that it works but the temperature right now is 73 degrees in here uh i did everything that it said to do exactly the way it said to do it and we're gonna see if uh if it works out once the caulking dries on it i have no reason to believe that it won't because a while ago one then i turned just the unit on before i had the cool bot in here and it got like 60 degrees in here in just a few minutes so that's as low as that unit will go at 60 degrees so we're going to use a cool bot to take it on down once the caulking has time to set up a little bit more okay guys the unit comes with a remote control system here and what i like about this is i can stand out here and i can actually turn the unit on now this unit is the kind of unit that if the power goes off it's supposed to turn itself on automatically when the power comes back on so that's one reason i wanted this particular unit now i have the fan speed set on the highest setting f3 is as high as it'll go the uh everything else is preset on the cool bot i have it set down to 34 degrees we're fixing to shut this door and see in a little while just how cold it actually gets in here all right guys all right guys it has been exactly one hour i just heard the unit kick off now it could be that it's got a safety thing on it it's run so much it just turns off i don't know i had it set on 34. we're gonna see that's in the high 80s outside here so the outside the cooler is not not real cold or anything like that so here we go y'all gonna see it when i see it oh there's a suction on that door it's at 42. oh it's cool in here turn the light on here just a minute we'll close the door behind this fall feels good down here in the deep south unit 60 is as low as the unit goes it has a safety switch on it then so it's 42 degrees in here oh i just opened the door it just went to 43. um it feels good in here though it's a little cool it's a little cool it feels good um i'm wondering if that's a safety thing built into it we'll come back in a few minutes and check but in an hour it's brought it down from 70 something to 40 to 44. this is a big cooler yeah so i think i'm pleased i think it's going to work out pretty good and it's hollow it's got that echo in here but um and we're going to get a different kind of light because this light we've got up here it's kind of got a yellowish look to it we're going to get one that's got a daylight look to it i think that'll brighten it up a little bit brighter in here too well now that you've seen the progress that we made and the journey on it let's go inside and let's see how it's functioning now i've replaced everything new on it here so um rather than use a key right now we it's made so i can just put a pull pin in it and we're going to use that for right now so guys here we go from 80 something degree temperature outside hopefully we're in the mid to low 40s in here come on in here close this door behind us look at that 42 degrees that's what we have it set on okay now in the uh freezer cooler unit right now we only have a couple of things one is our potatoes here now the really the prime temperature for potatoes is 45 to 50 degrees but on the other side over here we have some of our onions that had done dried we go through them daily and get the ones out that's dry and bring them in here now actually the prime temperature for onions is somewhere between 32 i know that sounds crazy but between 32 and 38 degrees uh where the unit just kicked on because we opened the door well we're choosing 42 because these onions are not going to uh they're not going to be in here that long because we're constantly getting them ready and using them uh preserving them they'll be gone before long so we're going to keep the temperature at about 42 degrees right now we have a stainless steel rolling cart in here for right now in case we need to put something else in here we can and we can move it around it rolls right in here and all this is a blessing for us here at deep south homestead to be able to have this and to be able to use it for our benefits here now when sweet potato season comes around we'll be able to put our sweet potatoes in here and store them in a cool temperature because we that's the big problem we have here is the heat and humidity makes it impossible for us to store anything long-term so we'll be keeping that stuff in here in boxes so that um we can preserve it as long as we can well and i know this question is going to be asked how in the world could we afford this well technically this unit was given to us uh a long time ago and i couldn't go pick it up so i told my neighbor about it and he actually wanted it so he went and picked it up and [Music] he had it for several years and didn't use it so i actually got it back from him and we put it together and i think right now if i include the concrete slab that we had poured the labor in that uh the air conditioner the cool bot all the electrical stuff all the parts we bought to go on it here the new door locks and stuff like this the frp board on the inside and everything i i think i'm around three thousand dollars into it which is not a bad price considering i priced a brand new one the size of this one and we're talking somewhere around twenty thousand dollars so i felt like three thousand we you know it took two weeks of work i'm not adding any labor into that but i think that the lord blessed in that a lot because it's really going to work out good for us um the ac is a 110 unit it's a 15 000 btu it has a computerized system in it that if the power shuts off for any reason and when a power comes back on it automatically turns back on um it's according to the company now the coolbot company and all because this comes as a package deal the cool bot the unit and all came as a package the average expenses is about two dollars a day to run it now i'll be able to tell after my first power bill if that's actually accurate or not but right now the way food is getting one and i've really talked about it and we really can't put a price tag on the value that food is going to be let's go enjoy some cool it's like 100 degrees out here [Music] good morning miss wanda all right guys we're inside the cooler in here now uh all we have stacked up in here right now is we have all of our onions in here this is look this is fantastic i mean our onions are like in perfect condition i mean we put this nsf uh metal rack system up in here it's made to go in coolers and it's made from medical supplies and cooler supplies things like that we got some stainless steel baskets like this we got more of them coming to put our produce in our onions are like perfect i mean this is what we've been waiting for until we get a chance this this buys this time to get them put up now we have our potatoes over here this is how we're saving our potatoes these things are like little blocks of ice they are holding up so well guys this is what we've been missing here at deep south homestead we have all of our pecans in here so that they'll last a lot longer till we get them all shelled out and then up here i designed and built so when winter time comes around or wherever we decide we want to butcher a cab a pig or we kill a deer anything like that i got all these meat hooks on this system up here we can hang it up here and let it stay in the cooler and i installed all of you uh all of you lighting up here i bought a new cooler light to go in here it's all wired in to the outside out here now i do have a drain in the floor so that in the event we ever want to wash it out um we can do that guys i tried to take into consideration everything that i needed in here now we're going to be bringing in a stainless steel table a little bit later on to put in here so that in the future if we don't have any vegetables in here or anything like winter time if we go to butcher an animal and we need to start throwing some cuts of meat in here right quick we can bring them in here and throw it on the stainless steel table and it will do just fine uh this thing will crank down it'll go all the way to freezing now we don't want it to be freezing but we probably will take it down to 34 to 35 degrees with the meat or something like that i've already tested it and it'll do it uh one thing i want to mention about this because this unit is so large for this size cooler i went by coolbot's instructions it said turn the van on high and set it all i did everything he said but it wouldn't cool down no cooler than 45 degrees and i left it out here for a couple of days and then i got kind of discouraged and i said wait a minute i woke up in the middle of the night had a thought i said you know there's a thing called chill factor and this thing was blowing so hard so i came out here and i took the fan off behind moved it down one of one notch and now it works perfect so just think about that if you ever set one of these up and your unit is large like this one um if the wind's blowing too hard it won't cool like it's supposed to you've got to get the wind air ratio mixed just right because of the chill factor which is what's starting to happen to wander night we're starting to get cold in here so we fix that to close this video up thank you guys for deep south homestead and guys another dream come true at deep south homestead

Channel: Deep South Homestead

Views: 97,974

Keywords: Deep South Homestead, homesteading, homestead life, walk-in cooler, walk-in cooler installation instructions, walk-in cooler installation, walk-in cooler kit, walk-in cooler wall material, walk-in cooler temperature control, walk-in cooler door replacement, walk in cooler not cooling, coolbot, diy Cooler install, install walk in cooler

Id: 0tvyg6VEfks

Length: 38min 0sec (2280 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2022