Easily Refillable Charcoal Filter For Liebherr Barrique WKB 4612 Wine Fridge
Description
Do you own a Liebherr Barrique WKB4612 wine fridge? (Or similar series) Do you want to save a LOT money on those replacement charcoal filters while reducing waste? Want to be able to EASILY refill the filter over and over with new charcoal? Me too! That's why I made this :-) A LITTLE BACK STORY: I use my wine fridge as an affinage (ageing) space for my home made cheeses. It has a charcoal filter that allows the fridge to "breathe" without allowing corks/labels (or cheese in my case) to take on weird smells, and get rid of certain fermentation-related gases. In short, it's handy for wine mavens, but it's even MORE handy for cheese makers. The smells are stronger, and parmesan can take years to age properly.... that's a long time to accumulate (and generate) smells that might be... "less than ideal". :~) However, I "bought my filters in bulk" as a package deal with my shiny new fridge back in 2019... however in at the time of writing in early 2025... that stash ran out. So I went to order some more and... Wait what? $90+ Australian dollars, delivered... for ONE?! So I cracked my old one open to see what I was really buying. It was quite difficult to open, and I actually lost the lid in a high speed blur across the room... but all that was in the filter... were 3mm pellets of activated charcoal, and a couple of sheets of synthetic-yet-breathable fabric to stop any charcoal from slipping through the holes on either end. I weighed out the pellets, and it was about 20g.... Let me make this clear... at the official filter's price... that's $4.50 (Australian) per GRAM of charcoal. A gram about 3% of an ounce... so in total a full filter of tis size holds about 60% of an ounce... for those using imperial units. No matter what the unit you use... that's not much. wrapped in a plastic shell that only involves 32g of filament (about an ounce, with organic supports) so this thing can be made dirt-cheaply, open the little threaded lid on it, and just pour some new charcoal in. To contrast this price. I can buy 1kg of 3mm wide activated charcoal pellets online for $39.95 Australian delivered... that's roughly 50 refills... which at $90 each... would cost $4500 (that's more than my fridge costs!). That's about 25 years of filters.... since Liebherr recommends replacing it every 6 months to a year. So for about $45 total (and some time prototyping) here we are. Long-term freedom from the ridiculous price of proprietary charcoal filters! Just print, fill and install. Rinse, lather, and repeat (metaphorically speaking)
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