and I wanted opinions from you…
CO2 tank,inside the fridge or outside?
it depends on how much room you have to spare and how much work you want to put into it. If you don’t mind the
work and need the space, outside. If you have room to spare and don’t want to put another hole in the fridge inside.
Personally, I have mine outside. It lets me fit 4 cornies in there.
Thats what I’m thinking of too. So there isn’t any impact on the longevity of the CO2 in the tank outside vs inside?
None whatsoever. The gauge reads differently if it’s inside, but the actual amount of CO2 in the tank doesn’t change.
+1
except for the space issue. More space when it’s outside.
Like Denny said, it makes no difference - for beer purposes ;) The primary gauge reads the vapor pressure in the canister, which varies with temperature. But it really doesn’t make a difference if the primary gauge reads 900 psi (around 75F) or 500 psi (around 30F), since both are well above anything you’ll be putting on your beer. If you were trying to pressurize something to 700 psi then it would make a difference, but since kegs can only handle about 120 psi you don’t need to worry about it.
Is there any safety issues with a CO2 tank on the outside in a garage during the summer in the South? I’ve recently moved to Louisiana and was thinking of building a kegerator and in might be in the garage.
No safety issue as far as reasonable summer temps (my garage in FL gets quite hot). The big safety issue with CO2 tanks, at any temp, is for them to get knocked over and break the regulator. Worst case they turn into a big bottle rocket… scary! Putting a safety cage around the regulator is a good move.
One other thing that I have been pondering about my Keg-Fridge conversion…and it may apply here… How do the Fridge shelves tend to hold up to 5 gallon kegs?
I ask because at present, I have my kegs sitting on the bottom of the Fridge (not on shelves). However, with the compressor hump, I can only fit three kegs across. If I used the shelving system of the Fridge, however, I could sit the kegs on the shelves of the Fridge and I could fit 6 easily then… :o (and in my story a ray of light from heaven shines down upon my fridge… ;D)
My concern is that even though the shelves only span half way across (so I wind up with 4 brackets supporting the weight), with 6 kegs (or even three), that seems like a lot of leverage on the shelf supports! (Figure about 40 to 45Lb per keg… and suddenly I am expecting the shelves to hold a grown man!)
Anyone with experience on how much weight the shelves in Fridges tend to be able to hold?
are the racks you speak of metal wire or plexiglass? what material? I would presume the brackets are plenty strong to support the weight, then just throw a piece of plywood/composite wood down to keep the racks from cracking/bending/etc
I built a shelf with 2X4’s and plywood for this very reason.
Exactly, build your own shelf and support it on the bottom of the fridge. It works well.
I prefer to keep it outside to conserve the space. If you cant get a cage to protect it a chain anchored to the wall will work out just fine.Just anchor it to the wall on one end and then wrap it around the cylinder back to where its anchored. Either way, make sure that thing’s secured so you dont have a rocket going through one of your walls!!!
Anybody else get a visual from this description of BA knocking the valve off a CO2 tank to take out a bad guys tank? Probably just me… If that happened in my basement it would ricochet around for awhile. All poured concrete walls.
Back to being at least a little more serious, it is a good idea to secure the tank if it’s outside the fridge. Mine is outside but I built the whole kegorator on a platform with wheels so I could move it easily (if you’re picking out the casters without really thinking about load limits and such, decide which ones you want and then buy the next size up. It will save you buying them twice 
). I incorporated a tank mounting area into the platform.
Paul