DIY refigeration: Pros & Cons?

[AnchorageGuy]

I too recommend Kollman's book and web site. He is extremely helpfull.




http://www.kollmann-marine.com/

[viking69]

I have installed the refrigreation reserch system into the inbuilt ice box on the boat. it is around 80l capacity and the unit can freeze up to 200l acording to the manufacturer. i do believe i need more insulation in the old ice box but it still works very well on 240 or 12v. I want to add another 50l section and have fridge and freezer. then i can do some power consumption monitoring and see how it goes on longe voyages

[Talbot]

power consumption is primarily a function of quality and quantity of insulation. 6" is good for the freezer

[northerncat]

does a material with an r value of 4.75 per inch sound alright
sean

[ssullivan]

Originally Posted by northerncat

does a material with an r value of 4.75 per inch sound alright
sean

Sean,

That's not a great R value per inch. Kollman suggests R values of "at least 7.1 per inch with an aged R value of 5.5 per inch."

Pick up the book. It will save you a lot of money. He has blueprints of how to build everything and step by step intructions.

When I did my icebox over, I was unable to get the R/inch he suggested, but I did get some insulation at Home Depot that was R6/inch. I just used more of it and lost space in my fridge. It worked well though.

[northerncat]

so how many inches did your fridge or freezer end up then
sean

[ssullivan]

We did R6/inch, but used 2" of that, getting a total of R/12, plus I built this inside an existing icebox, giving us more than R/12. That was the fridge. I used 3x R6/inch in the freezer. We had an enormous icebox. It had room enough for two cold plates, all that insulation, and still holds all the food we needed even to charter for a week. Now that we're not longer chartering, we have a lot of empty space.

Hope that helps.


PS: Make sure you get that book. There are a lot of places to make errors, and if you do it's a PITA to fix them once everything is already built. It'll pay for itself many times over, and it supports a guy who will answer any questions you have while you are building your fridge. For instance, you will want to wrap your insuation in plastic to ensure that no moisture gets in. He goes over all of this in great detail.

[viking69]

Anyone in Aus especially nth QLD area know a good place to get decent insulation at a reasonable price as i found bugger all available in Airlie

[northerncat]

i dont know anywhere either, im in cairns, i ended up getting mine from a mob called multipanel www.multipanel.com.au , they cut it to the dimensions i asked and i had it freighted up here, its pretty easy to work with im going with 3 layers of 30mm for the floor and 2 layers for the wall
sean