Help me Choose Please! Refrigerator

[Aussie Monty]

Greetings,

My 1896 Adams 45 came with an old eutectic fridge freezer system - engine driven compressor. It needs repairs...indeed fault to be found as will not hold hold gas..apparently. See Photo.

I have two good size built-in fridge and freezer boxes...so just need to add or fix systems.

Do I discard and buy a 12v system - as I will have wind and solar maintaining systems...and get with the 21st century?

..or do I stick with what appears to be (yet proven) a good solid system?

Help! I do not want to throw out the baby with the bath water!...



Monty

[s/v Jedi]

Into the bin with the lot ! Get a nice Danfoss based DC unit with evaporator. If you have two separate boxes, you can choose to have a spill-over system, passing cold air from the freezer to the fridge, or installing two Danfoss compressor units. Depends on the size of the boxes and how it is setup now.

I like the Frigoboat units but most Danfoss based models are okay. If you want to sail into the tropics I would choose for Frigoboat with keel-coolers (which I have) and if not to the tropics I would go for air-cooled condensers instead.

ciao!
Nick.

[onestepcsy37]

had a similar problem when i bought my boat eight years ago. engine drive holding plate fridge freezer with shore power backup. it was a crosby - some call it the rolls royce of fridges - but it wasn't workiing. after a lot of research i tore the whole thing out and installed a twelve volt air cooled system. it's worked flawlessly for seven years.

i bought the adler barbour system. it took me a weekend to install it because i had to build a shelf and ductwork but the actual fridge installation was a piece of cake. and i have the option of charging my batteries a whole bunch of ways. i'm using
solar myself but a friend uses solar and wind.

my big problem with engine drive is that you have to run the engine, which means you can't leave the boat for more than a day. and who wants to run the engine when you're anchored in some beautiful tropical paradise for a few weeks....

[Aussie Monty]

Thanks....BTW the Adams isn't 1896!!!... It's 1986. Apologies to any historians out there!.

[FlyingCloud1937]

Originally Posted by Aussie Monty

Thanks....BTW the Adams isn't 1896!!!... It's 1986. Apologies to any historians out there!.

If the eutectic is repairable then I vote to repair, then add the 12v system. you'll have redundancy, as well as a more efficient system. By way that the 12 volt is a booster and a back up when the engine is not run.

My system operates that way, so when I reach anchor, I only depend on the 12 v sys for boost, and and if I stay at the same anchorage for more then a couple of days.

But I'm a stink pot so I have to motor to get where I'm going.

Lloyd

[Andina]

AGREE with Lloyd. If you can get a eutectic system working correctly it will save nightmares of electrical problems. "COLD" stored in a eutectic is MUCH more efficient than COLD stored in a battery, perhaps 1,000% more efficient.

CHECK the insulation. It is no good fixing the cooling if it is not well insulated. Our boat had the old "white granule" type insulation which had become saturated with condensation water. I had to tear the whole contents out and put in the new type of insulation with sealed cells.

You need to discover where you are losing gas. Get yourself a freon snooper. I used the old fashioned type with a propane heated detector. They are not very expensive and just as sensitive as the fancy electronic ones.

When you discover the leak, replace or repair the culprit. Kollman Marine are (used to be?) a great source for component parts.

After I rebuilt our freezer/refrigerator with oversized sealed 220 volt compressors (to minimize generator running time) and extra eutectic plates, I could leve the baot for 3 days and on return the freezer would still be below 32 and the refrigerator below 40. Daily re-freezing the eutectic took less than an hour each moring or a couple of hours after being off for 3 days. There is NO WAY you can economically get this amount of refrigeration from a cycling battery system.

[Highland Fling]

Get a Seafrost 12V BDXP system we have one and are about to fit another to replace our Seafrost Engine driven system. All good so far apart from the A/H's used. BUT 600W of solar will run the two systems easily and we will be energy rich - ATM we run one system installed by ourselves on 200W of solar

[Hartleycruiser]

Aussie Monty

If you are looking at a 12volt system have a look at ozefridge .I installed one on our last boat it has been running in the tropics (Darwin /Indo ) for 8 years .They use eutectic tanks/plate.The system can be water or air cooled mine ran only air cooling .The yacht only has sola (sits on a swing moring )and the fridge is always cold and read to go when we are .They are very helpfull .Did the install myself .Home


Greg

[Marinheiro]

The most likely cause of the gas loss is via the compressor shaft seal, especially if the yacht has been idle for some time. Subject to previous advice re ensuring the insulation is good condition I note Richard Kollman advocates retaining the engine drive system and supplementing it with 12V. Some good guys close to you include
Moorebank Marine/Liverpool Refrigeration - Low Voltage Refrigerators and Freezers
Freezetec - Marine and Recreational Equipment and Services
and if you decide to go all new, check out Mal Bett's ICEER range - Betts Boat Electrics in Brisbane (no web site) - excellent "drop in" units

[gspeak]

I second the Ozefridge suggestion having just replaced a motor driven frigoboat with the ozefridge just a couple of weeks ago. Excellent quality & great service ... Plus it's Aus made. Some really nifty features to conserve power also.

Dave