Performance of Dome 24 wine cooler. Could ours be faulty?

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:41 pm

Hi everyone, I'm a newb. I've already enjoyed the conversations in this forum and would be grateful for input.

We've had a Dome 24 bottle cooler for 2 weeks now.

We ran the fridge for a few days before entrusting some wine to it, and found that the fridge would pull the temp down by about 10Ã‚Â°C max below the ambient temperature.

Claims for the cooler suggest that at 25Ã‚Â°C the Dome can hold the temp down to 9Ã‚Â°C, or a reduction of 16Ã‚Â°C.

We rang the distributor to query performance, and were told cooling performance should definitely improve when full and air volume reduced, possibly dropping up to 20Ã‚Â°C.

Our fridge has been trusted with 14 bottles now. The room we keep it in which doesn't get direct sunlight, allows for good airflow. There's plenty of room around the cooler.

Warmer temperatures recently have seen the ambient temp swing from 27Ã‚Â°C to 30Ã‚Â°C and temperature in the fridge from 17Ã‚Â°C - 18.9Ã‚Â°C which is making me a little nervous.

For people running this cooler, does this seem consistent with your own experience?

When we first turned the cooler on, there was quite an acrid smell. :shock:

Could our unit be faulty?

thanks in advance for any help!

mkcoleman · Post by **mkcoleman** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:57 pm

Theadbear,

I have had a Dome 24 bottle fridge for approx 7 months now and it has not moved from 13C (It has 24 bottles in it). It is in an underground garage (level with the outside road). temperatures inside the garage at the weekend were upto 28C and still the fridge was stable at 13C.

Silly question, but have you adjusted the temperature dial at the top right hand corner of the fridge? I think it states high if you turn it anti-clockwise and low if you turn it clockwise. If you keep it in the middle it will be around the 12-14C, but can get colder than that.

Hope this helps

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:07 pm

Hi mkcoleman

Thanks for your help.

No, that was not a silly question. :lol:

As far as I can tell, it's set to low - the coolest setting.

I had turned the temp dial all the way clockwise hoping that meant low. (It's a little confusing as the amount of rotation in the dial doesn't directly correspond with the High/Low marking on the fridge.)

It sounds as though we may have a problem. Have you found the unit to drop in performance when not fully loaded?

Much appreciated,

Threadbear.

mkcoleman · Post by **mkcoleman** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 8:16 am

Started off with around 10 bottles in there, again stayed at 13C no probs .. me thinks there could be a problem!

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:18 am

Thanks again for your reply.

You've been very helpful. I'll get onto their "customer service" line and see what they can do...

Cheers,

Threadbear

n4sir · Post by **n4sir** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:30 am

Looks like you just got deleted Threadbear...

Guys, it looks when you join you must supply a legit email address and reply to a confirmation mail within 24 hours, or else this happens.

Threadbear & Carp - please try again and keep the above in mind so we can keep you as valuable members this time. This is a friendly forum, and all are welcome except for spammers (which is why this security measure is in place, to keep the volume of crap that was previously being posted down).

Cheers,
Ian

cellared_daze · Post by **cellared_daze** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:33 pm

Hey, mkcoleman

This is my third attempt to remain registered as a user (after having being deleted as Threadbear twice).

Thought I'd add an update on the Dome 24 saga...

We exchanged our cooler for a new one yesterday morning. Despite initial optimism, the best it could do overnight on the Lowest setting was to bring the temp down almost 12C below the ambient temp of 26.5C to 14.6C, meaning the performance is the same as the one we returned.

You mentioned you'd had your cooler for about 7 months. Is it a black one? The Dome(s) we purchased are silver with a couple of other cosmetic updates. I hope there haven't been any other changes made to the coolers other than superficial ones.

Again thanks for your past responses.

Red Bigot · Post by **Red Bigot** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:57 pm

cellared_daze wrote:This is my third attempt to remain registered as a user (after having being deleted as Threadbear twice).

What's that definition of insanity? (Repeating the same action and expecting a different result) ;-)

Gavin is pretty ruthless when he's in a rush. This one (nice play on words) should escape his bulk delete sweep though. :-)

mkcoleman · Post by **mkcoleman** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:19 am

Cellared_Daze,

Yep mine was the black Dome fridge, which I got from Target when it was on at 1/2 price ($150). That does sound very odd, as I said I keep the dial right smack bang in the middle and it hasn't budged from 13C.

Have you tried it it one extreme (all the way to the left) and then a few days later all the way to the right?? .. Just in case an Irish man made the fridge? (No offence to the Irish :wink:

)

cellared_daze · Post by **cellared_daze** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:31 am

Thanks again for your reply... mkcoleman

I think trying High is worth a go. We set the temp knob midway overnight and the temp in the fridge went up half a degree. hmmm

We're probably being overly cautious about temperature fluctuation, so haven't tried the radical :wink:

approach of setting the fridge on High as the fans turn off as soon as the dial touches that mark.
:shock:

Will give it a go overnight. Beyond that I guess we just live with it or grit our teeth and go for the cheapest Vintec.

cellared_daze · Post by **cellared_daze** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 10:06 pm

Final post on Dome 24 saga :wink:

When I got home it was just under 30C in our flat. The cooler was sitting on 16.8C. I whipped the door open and flipped the knob to high.

I could hear the fan turn down.

30 minutes later the air temp in the cooler had risen to 18C and I could hear that the fan was still low. Not wanting risk the wine temp rising to that level I switched back to the Low setting. An hour later and the cooler's come down to 17C. It looks like this is as good as it's going to get for us.

Maybe it's there's some other environemental factor influencing temp. I imagine that your garage is more stable, or may fluctuate less abruptly. But neither of our coolers have come close to pulling the temp down to 13C even when placed in the middle of a well ventilated room with the ambient temp around 25-27. Could there be some variation in performance of the new model I wonder. We're still better off than having our wine exposed to such tempertatures.

Thanks again mkcoleman, for all your help.

See you elsewhere in the forum.