Building a Meat Locker for Deer Season

You call a construction of 8' x 6' x 7.5' door entry with insulating walls portable!!??

Could you clarify what you mean by portable??

John.

I want to be able to take this with me when I leave my current residence. I can use jacks and dollies and stabilzing bars on the bottom to move it. I'm not too worried about that part.

Make it totally of 4 inch thick pink foam. Floor, walls and ceiling. Make them fit tightly and use spray foam to seal air tight. Think like a foam baloon.

You must then add internal and external frames that have no conducting path through the foam

Cover the floor walls and ceiling with 3/8" chipboard cut to fit and use internal 2x2 wooden or 1x1 angle metal to screw them into, that means the 2x2 are visible inside the room. Using screws you can undo them later and take down to build in another place. externally do the same. This will give you a low cost insulated room.

You then need to cool it with a heat pump from in to out. To maintain 36-40 F above zero is easy. You may be able to use a window air conditioner to do this at low cost as long as you prevent outside air from coming in via the machines vetn function and you will also have to get a 36-40 F thermostat. better is a refrigeration unit = more $$

Refridgeration unit is easy. Get a used fridg. and gut out the compressor and coil from inside the box,and controls. Have an appliance repairman (on his own time) cut and resplice the lines from outside to inside then recharge.

Do you want to hang and "age" your deer prior to cutting or are you interested is short term storage of cut and packaged meat? Do you intend to open the door frequently? Will you be using the locker only in deer season or year round as an additional refrigerator? Have you considered a vinyl strip curtain just inside the door to prevent the cold air from falling out as soon as you open the door? Are you considering a commercial walk-in cooler door? You can use the concrete floor as the floor in this unit as long as you are only refrigerating to 33 to 41 degrees and you must seal the wall to floor joint. If you want to go into freezing, you will have to build an insulated floor. BTW, most commercial walk-in coolers are installed on bare concrete floors. I would recommend 2 X 4 wood studs on 12" centers between 2 X 6 top and bottom plates. You stager the 2 X 4's so that every other one touches the inside wall, ditto for the outside wall. Design the top according to the weight you may want to support from it. Use fiberglass insulation in the walls and ceiling. When you install the FRP inside walls, be sure to seal the sections and mounting holes completely with RTV. You must have a good vapor barrier. The outside walls could be anything, flake-board comes to mind. As long as you don't need freezing temperatures, a window type air conditioner could be used as your refrigeration system. "You will have to make sure the unit you select is capable of achieving a coil temperature of just above freezing. Most units are of the capillary tube design which does not allow you to easily lower the coil temperature. If you can block the filter and freeze the coil, you are good to go. You will need to make sure it is sealed to its mounting hole and that the fresh air intake is sealed. You will have to disable the unit's internal thermostat and install a refrigeration thermostat with a remote bulb located about eye-level on the same wall as the air conditioner. The air conditioner should mounted as high as possible and its circulation fan should be running at all times. I'm thinking about 12,000 BTU for the air conditioner depending on the questions I asked you above. My post is not designed to be instructions on how to build it, only some considerations and ideas to form a basis for further planning in accord with your intended use.

If this were my project...

1) I would buy a Rubber Maid tool shed. 2) I would line my shed with at least 3" thick styrofoam. Caulk with urethane foam. 3) Put plywood over my styrofoam floor. 4) Put some meat hooks through the ceiling with appropriate exterior roof attachments. 5) Install the guts of a refrigerator.

6) Now the hard part- get the deer.

Bob

Around here there are people who build portable storage sheds out of a sandwich material. I forget the name of the product. I have seen it made of prepainted steel or aluminium with styrofoam in the middle. There are product like this made with OSB, but that would be much heavier. If you look behind most resturants they will have walkin refrigerators and freezers made out of this stuff. here a link to the one near home http://www.tricountypanels.com/ try searching for insulated metal panels PA

Construction is usually 2x4's on 24" centers. The panels are 22 1/2" wide on the inside and 25" wide on the outside and are very rigid. Once they are inplace you will neeed to seal between the panels and the studs with an expanding foam. This stuff will work well for the roof also.

Styrofoam or polystyrene is the cheapest and lightest insulator you will find that is suitable for this project.

This cooler is for hanging and aging meat. I will do the butchering in there too so it should be somewhat larger than the rubbermaid although that is an excellent thought and fits the portable requirements to a tee. I may need to hang more than one deer in there as well. I will only be using this during hunting season.

I can probably get a used refrigerator (or 2) for free. I was wondering if one system would be enough to cool the space mentioned in my first post? I could connect 2 systems in tandem and operate off one thermostat if needed, right???

I just want to know... when do we show up for a venison dinner?

God says -

"The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting: but the substance of a diligent man is precious." Proverbs 12:27

If the Lord is willing I will be serving up venison dinners sometime after September 29.

Thank you all for some invaluable insight into my project! I will be sure and let you know how it comes out.

Howard

I must agree with the wooden framing and insulation ... however i would use aluminum or stainless inside .. lil more expensive but will not harbour bacteria in the off season. Well maybe ... but you can sterilize it. Wood will give the bacteria someplace to grow and would absorb any random blood splatter. You might also try a shower enclosure or polypropylene sheeting. I am not an hvac guy by any means but if using window units I would use 2 smaller units rather then one big one. Seems they would work less as a team. But like I said ......

Hello everyone, im not so much a deer hunter. im more a avid Moose hunter and live on a farm , so was looking for info on building a meat locker, when i cam across this form. anyway im presently in the midst of building a 10'w X 15'd X 8'h meatlocker. the floor is on concrete, the walls are 2x4 @20" spread with 1/2" plywood. Over the Plywood i will be using 4" pink fyber foam insulating boards. This will be the same for the roof aswell. I also will be using 1/4" drop sheets 2' from the door to stop or help controll wasted cold air loss on entery or departure. 2 cooling units from Euro Frigo will be running paralled and temp should be maintained @ 25 to 30 F. Well hope this might give some info or ideas and good luck with your deer. just got my opening moose field dressed @ 879lbs.

Cheers John

P.S. Treat everyone you meet like family and see what happens...

879 lbs??? How did you get it out of the woods?

What is 1/4 drop sheet and where do you get it. I assume it is like a secondary "door" to keep the cold in when the door isd open much like in a beer cooler in the store.

The 1///4 drop sheet is just a wide sheet from ceiling to floor. Better is a strip door, these are overlapping sheets of vinyl that hang from ceiling to floor, about 6" wide, that keep wet and moist out and cool in. You walk through and they redrape to cover.

There are many makers of these and you can just buy vinyl and make them as long as it is a vinyl that does not get brittle enough to break in your cold room.

http://www.crgco.com/vinylstrip.htm

Hy i just found this sight i also am looking to build a meat locker for deer,elk,bear and any other wild game all this information has been really helpful thanks for the info one other question can it be dismantled and stored for the next season since i am only gonna be using it for a short time ?