Arrival

The wine fridge arrived today, as promised! I went with the NewAir AW-280E, mostly because of looks and price. Stainless steel doors might look good if the unit was going into a kitchen, but not if I'm trying to integrate it in with other furniture. The all black case was the best option for me.

It's important to go with a thermoelectric model since humidity is such a key factor in a humidor. The popular models for wineador conversion are:

NewAir AW-280E ($239)
Koldfront TWR282S ($379)
Vinotemp VT-28TEDS ($387)

Here it is: unpacked and in, what will ultimately be, it's final location.

Now onto the seasoning; but first thing's first. I need to get rid of the plastic smell of the interior. I put a small bowl of baking soda inside to hopefully soak up a lot of the smell. I also added a small bowl of distilled water to start the humidification process.

I figured, as long as I was playing around, I might as well check out the fan situation. It turns out that I can fit the power cord out through the door hinge just fine. The rubber seal around the door should still keep the fridge fairly air tight. And I like this option, for the moment, over drilling a large hole in the back and having to reseal it with aquarium sealant. I should also mention that I will be leaving the drain hole open while I clear the smell, but then I will be covering it with a piece of electrical tape. Everything I have read has said the drain hole is not needed for a wineador conversion.

I also programmed the fan timer and got that working.

It wasn't difficult to program this timer at all. I have the fans set up to run for 30 minutes every 2 hours. They were supposed to kick on at 8am and, sure enough, they did. Again, this is a Utilitech digital indoor timer and can be found here.

So that's about it for the day. The next 2 things to arrive should be the humidity beads and the temporary cedar trays - hopefully in the next day or two.