Couldn’t really find a suitable category to post this under so i hope the community can help.
I picked up a second hand Liebherr wine cooler (Wtes 1753) on Sunday and temp seems to be fluctuating rapidly in cycles.
When first moving it onto the dolly it leaked a little. I transported it on its back (my only option) but tilted. And when home, I let it sit for 3hours before turning on.
With no bottles inside I’ve been running for 24hrs and it moves from 12c to 7c within 20mins and the humidity from 16% to 40% in the same time. It does this in cycles.
All readings are from an digital temp/humidity gauge with new batteries.
The coolers temp display shows no fluctuation and stays at 14c (the desired temp I set)
I have a second hand Liebherr Wkb 1812. It is currently pretty full, and whilst it does cycle, not to that range.
I don’t have the latest readings, but readings from earlier this month show temperatures ranging from 21.2-22.0c with humidty moving betwween 40.6% and 58.5% without having the humidity fan on.
These readings are from a SensorPush located in the cabinet.
Those changes do seem excessive. First thing I’d do is check with a conventional thermometer that it’s not a problem with the digital one (new batteries or no). In particular I’d have thought the cabinet would struggle to match the humidity changes suggested by your device in the space of 20 minutes. 15% to 40% would, I’d have thought, take rather more than 20 mins.
Thanks Alex. With these temp changes does your unit show the change on the digital panel? i.e does your unit ever show 22c or 21c? Whats confusing me is my display is staying at 14c.
That was my reasoning for the change of batteries - but yeah, i’ll try a more conventional thermometer as its a bit extreme. Was thinking it might be oil from the compressor getting into the cooling lines, but the symptoms for this is no cooling at all (which is not the issue)
I should probably check what the latest reading is, as haven’t updated it on my phone recently and that is actually unusually high. Looking back, it usually sits between 12.5 and 13. (22 would be an unusually high temperature to store wine!)
To answer your question, though, no there is no variation on the display. I think the unit temperature is set to 12 and the display holds steady at 12.
I would second checking it with a conventional thermometer. Also watch where it’s placed in the cabinet. If next to the heating/cooling unit that might be expected. I know that my Climadiff, in cold conditions, will switch the heating function on quite often and the stated temperature will go up to 21c then drop quickly to the range where it stays for an hour or so then repeat cycle.
I have had to Liebherr wine cabinets and never had any issues. Always sat bang on 11 degrees and I have my own digital thermometer in there also to check. Very little variation when I check
I haven’t noticed any such variations in a full cabinet, I have measured the temp with a digital thermometer, but not specifically looked for variations.
I wouldn’t worry about those variations you do see in a 20 min cycle. You are measuring the air temperature. The temperature of wine in a bottle will be a lot more stable. If you put a bottle of wine at 12C into a fridge at 7C - mimicking an instantaneous change of air temperature from 12 to 7C - the wine would take 30 mins to cool by 1C.
Those temperature and humidity reading look strange to me @Alex88.
If the water content in the air is constant (as it should be if your fan was off), when the temperature decreases the relative humidity should go up, but in your graphs it goes down. Or is there something I am missing, here?
Thanks Marc. Definitely going to place a conventional thermometer away from any fans/heating/cooling elements. Also will put a few bottles in there to see if it helps stability.
@Alex88 good to know. I can’t imagine the display would change within one degree c
@Rich29 also good to know. Do you check with any external temp gauges?
@SteveSlatcher good point. Definitely thought about how it would have a less of an effect regarding thermal mass.
The fridge is off for now just in case any oil needed to resettle, but when I turn it back on I’ll make sure it has a good few bottles in with a conventional thermometer placed in, and go from there
That should have read “not as RAPIDLY”. But (naively) that would then give your wine more time for the temperature to catch up with the air temperature fluctuations. In practice though it is not as simple as that, as it will also affect how the air moves through the fridge. Anyway, the temperature fluctuations in air and wine will be different!
No of course. As you say, as there’s more mass it was take longer to heat/cool
One more question- how noisy should the cabinet be? Mine is pretty much “on” (compressor running pulling in air etc) all the time. Only was it quite a few times. Is this normal?
Well, thanks @AdamB for starting this thread, as it turns out I must have lent on the front of the wine fridge over the weekend and put the temperature up to 20! I might not have noticed this for another couple of days otherwise. Fortunately this has now been rectified and it is back to 12 (or coming down to 12 - reading 13.8 this morning).
@SteveSlatcher I would imagine there is some sort of adjustment being made to humidity as well as temperature by the unit even without the additional fan going. If you switch the fan on then the relative humidity jumps up to between 70% and 95%, but follows a similar pattern. Here is a graph over an hour to show a bit more granularity:
As far as I know, the only way to increase the water (vapour) content in the fridge to let warmer air in from the outside - by turning the fan on or opening the door.
BTW I note that in your first screen shot the general trends for temp and humidity go the right directions. My guess is the shorter term variations are some sort of instrumentation artifact.
Probably this topic has been covered off but here’s the temperature and humidity readings from my WKb 4212 from about 2am.
I opened the door at 9.50 or so but otherwise pretty consistent. Worth noting maybe that it’s pretty full, set to 18* and this is taken from near the top
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