My experience with AC/Refrigeration units is that if you start with a good one, it’s good for life. If you start with a bad one you have a bad one for life.
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I know I’m jinxing myself, but have a WhisperKool 6000 that is approaching 25 years old.
We just added a cellar ‘annex’ and the HVAC guy mentioned a new unit for the main cellar could be upgraded to higher cooling efficiency and lower power use and we changed. The old one still worked, but it was part of a bigger change.
I am 15 years in and going strong. It’s a split system, which I am personally a bit fan of.
I replaced my Breezaire 2200 at 25 years just a few months ago when it started freezing up. This is everyone’s favorite brand to dismiss but with that experience I bought the current model like it.
Found this via search, was first curious on what the lifespan has been for others given I may have hit my first reall issue. Never thought of it before, most don’t I guess until you need to.
Mine is a 10 year old Whispercool Split System. Only had to deal with one issue in that time frame, minor-ish.
Today though, the compressor shorted; like I tried it with three different circuits to my breaker box, all popped; one a dedicated with no other load. That’s the unit at that point. We had a massive like-raining-sideways storm when it went down, wind, lots of lightening; something went south there. Either moisture got somewhere it should not have or something blew out in the unit. Which the latter is not out of the possibility given my Internet blew out too and its nearby, power supply got fried. But that normally would not cause a continual short, orfor it to turn on for a few minutes before shorting; it would just flake and not turn on like the modem. Hoping that the heat dries it out whatever is damp and I’ll do something more preventative for the future to give more cover.
Mean time, my cellar is attached to my tasting room which has its own Mitsubishi in-wall split (fine). Running that on just dehumidify continuous brings the temp in the overall basement to sub 60 or so. That gives me runway to see what the deal is.
Not sure if anyone else battled their compressor going down like that or at all. I’m in the south, it gets a work out in the summer, still a basement thought.
I’ll be calling guy in a few days if its still like this.
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I just installed a new WineMaster C25X in my cellar, 11 years after I bought the first one. Had to have it repaired approx 5 years ago as some part within the unit died. Pretty happy with this solution.
My CellarPro coil failed at just about the same period of time. Waiting for the part. Not happy.
My wine is mostly stored passively downstairs. Upstairs, I have a 42 bottle Marvel. It was a gift from friends who were moving ~7 years ago, I would guess they had it for at least that long, probably longer. So 15 - 20 years. lt doesn’t have a setting, I’m guessing it keeps the wine at about 50 degrees. All I’ve ever done is put wine in and take wine out. Fingers crossed I didn’t jinx it just now!
Dan Kravitz
My dependable partners in pleasure have both lasted decades.
Don"t you know it is bad luck to be superstitious.
Looking forward to hearing the rest of your experience.
I like to shoot the breeze with our HVAC guy and he says the most common fault is capacitor failure, so it might be a quick and easy fix!
Best wishes. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Thanks Anton, it all did work out for the best actually. I opened the cellar door with the dehumidifier running at a low fan settings and that brought the temp down and held steady, the bottle temp (via probe) rose a bit but never to anything I was concerned about then started dropping. For me, its a reasonable and effective redundancy w/o having to go buy another whole unit that may or may not have similar issues in a storm like that and rarely if ever run.The Mitsubishi does have cool settings but I fond dehumidify does the trick pretty easily without the entire basement feeling like an ice box.
Wireless Tags… the humidity fell like an anvil, temps relatively stayed cool. Was 98 degress outside at some points. Not too shabby…
Bottle temps shifts were negligable…
The next day, got home from work right around dusk, cleaned the coils, and then punched the breaker back on. Kicked right on without issues. It was just the nature of what blew through, it looked like a noreaster outside for an hour. I thought of some tactics to better shield that area without compromising air flow.
So, it all worked out. Hoping I get the 15 - 20 years out of it that others are.
You have a bad one for a couple of years and then toss it!
I’m going on 3 years with my current window unit+coolbot. $100/year.
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MN basement since 2005.
4.5 billion years. I have a passive cellar with 100-year-old, 13 inch thick concrete walls.
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CellarPro in Le Cache just failed after 14 years - replacement in transit
My 4.5 year old Wine Guardian just died. Apparently a coolant leak, have the HVAC guy working on it now. Not exactly the lifespan I hoped for expected.
Which model CellarPro do you guys have? I"m doing a cellar build shortly and CellarPro was recommended to me (along with Whisperkool), but after hearing this, now I’m a bit suspect.
Mine is a 4200 vsi