paige_bell81•1d agoMost Upvoted

Spent $300 on a walk-in cooler thermostat upgrade and it was a total bust

Bought one of those fancy digital controllers for our walk-in cooler last month. Thought itd keep our cut flowers at perfect temp. Nope. Thing glitched out at 2am and cranked it down to 32 degrees. Lost about $200 worth of tropicals and some nice ranunculus. Went back to the old mechanical one. Anyone else had luck with digital vs manual thermostats?

4 comments

4 Comments

mila_murphy1d ago

Digital controllers and I have a complicated relationship (kinda like my history with cheap wine, we both know it's gonna end badly but I keep trying). Sorry about your ranunculus, that's a rough loss.

caleb_bell51d ago

Wait, did you check if the thing had a calibration setting or a temp swing adjustment? I read somewhere that a lot of those digital controllers come preset with a really tight temp range so they kick on and off constantly, which can cause them to glitch or overshoot way worse than the old mechanical ones. A buddy of mine runs a produce farm and he had the same issue with his walk-in, lost a bunch of lettuce one night because of it. He ended up having to adjust the differential setting on his controller to like 4 or 5 degrees instead of the default 1 degree before it stopped messing up. Might be worth looking at your manual to see if that was the problem, because the old mechanical ones are more forgiving since they have a built in delay. Still sucks about your flowers though, losing stock like that is brutal.

lilyt231d ago

Yeah the temp swing thing is real, I had a similar issue with a cooler at a community garden I used to help with. The digital controller was cycling like crazy every half degree and it ended up killing a bunch of seedlings because the temp would jump way past the set point right after defrost kicked in. We had to spread the differential out to about 4 degrees too, and then make sure the sensor was mounted in the actual air flow not tucked behind a shelf where it was reading a false local temp. Your buddy's lettuce story is a total nightmare but honestly that's the kind of thing that makes you swear off digital stuff for good unless you really tune it in first.

jennybailey1d ago

Isn't it possible your buddy just needed a better sensor placement instead of messing with the differential?