Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Ideas for a homemade walk in cooler

Okay guys, tired of having to hustle on my game processing and looking for a way to hang some critters for a week or so before cutting. Googled and found a few ideas for homemade walk in coolers, but curious if any forum members have built one and if they could post pics?

My dream...hope you get answers to share.

This looks pretty easy for some one with just a little bit of carpentry and A/C knowledge. If not, bbq and beer does get friends over.

That coolbot unit is mentioned frequently for this purpose. Would need to reinforce roof joists to handle 100 pound quarters but that video has some good ideas. Any other ideas welcome.

not hard to find a used commercial one. They are fairly inexpensive.
You might have to disassemble and put it back together, but that pretty straightforward.

In the used market, don't foget to check with junkyards or used equipment sales for an old delivery truck, refer unit, or such with an insulated box. Maybe even one that you could drop on site and insulate like they did in the video.

Good luck with your project.

Find an old refrigerated truck and take box off. It worked great for us.

Going to be moving in a year or so and thinking that this option may not be bad. If I have a steel building at the new place, could drop one of these in a corner and just plug it in a week before season. Don't need a huge one but this might work well.

I read up on this a while ago, and the basic construction while not difficult,is not as straight forward as it seems.

You need a vapor barrier in the walls, but I don't recall whether it should be towards the inside or outside surface. Get it wrong and you can get a build up of condensation inside the walls that leads to other problems down the road..

For our small Roe deer, I use a tall commercial fridge with a fan..Below is a pic of my original unit that cost me some like $70 delivered off ebaybut I now have a slightly larger unit which again I got for next to nothing..



A lot of hunters over here use various old soft drinks fridges..These pics appeared on a British site and show how one guy converted such a fridge..Obviously, you get more room if you use a double door unit.

This, it is the best deal going if you are in an area that has junker truck sales. You can also just use a refer unit and build your own box out of good wood and insulation.

Its easy. Take an old pie case and convert it... Holds a couple of boned out elk for a few weeks.

Wyo, Do you rig up a rack system so air can circulate easily? Nice small footprint on that solution.

Crappy pic but the racks are sitting to the side. I can install up to six racks on a rail system. It will hold full bone in quarters off of one elk on two different levels.

At one point this fall it had one elk and two whitetails in it. Was getting crowded but it works fine. Small enough I can roll it into a corner when not in use.

i have a whole stack of metal covered foam panels that they use to build walkin coolers. i just never got around to putting one together yet.i think they are 8in thick.