do you have a freezer?

[antoha]

hello -

i'm thinking about converting a very poorly insulated (45 year old) icebox on a sailboat to refrigeration. i've read a lot of threads on this forum about the process (so i know the first part will be to reinsulate and possibly rebuild the physical box), but given the abundance of refrigeration alternatives: do you need a freezer compartment? to rephrase: the folks who have freezers, what do you use them for? and folks who don't have a freezer but have refrigeration otherwise - how often do you wish you had a freezer? sort of trying a poll of people's opinions.

we don't live on the boat; we go for weekends in the summer, sometimes long weekends, sometimes we take a week to go around.

thank you!

[foggysail]

I have a Summit 8.5cuft apartment fridge that I installed after chucking an old useless Norcold. It not only has a freezer which Wifey uses but it also has self defrost and an interior light. Everyone has to make their own decision as to whether a freezer is an important asset in a fridge. We use our freezer, it is a welcome asset.

Foggy

[GaryMayo]

We have the old ice box built into the corner of the countertop. Abandoned. It has the guts of a fridge added to eliminate the need for ice. I have never tried plugging it in. The compressor is in my engine compartment. The goofy looking mess all gets yanked this fall. You pay the freight, I'll mail it to you.

Installed a tall dorm fridge with a freezer. Whole fridge will freeze stuff solid turned all the way down. I am contemplating what to place in the aquard corner spot of the old icebox? Thinking about a built in dog bed for our pair of Maltese's. Lol. They walk across the sink and counter top anyway on the way in and out of the companionway. Commercial pet beds are just exactly the right size. Under the pet bed could be pet items, combs, canned dog food, dog shampoo.

Having the pet bed built in, means the crew will not fall off the counter when heeling.

I vote go modern if you have shore power and a place to put the fridge.

[onestepcsy37]

if you're cruising just a few days, might be cheaper and easier to stick with ice or even dry ice. or get one of those engle portable fridges that plug into a cigarette lighter receptacle if you want to spend some money.

what kind of boat are we talking about?

[resilientg]

Yeah i have an old ice box that i converted into a fridge freezer.

The insulation could be better and long term i will rebuild it all as i want a larger freezer and a larger fridge, for my remote trips.

But, in saying that what i have works perfectly well if you keep it filled with something.

the compressor is a little small for the box that i put it in (around 80 liters) but with a small fan to help it circulate the air it works well and only uses a tiny amount of amps

It started out as an ice box with a shelf in it. I then got a portable fridge like your waeco / engel types, a 40 liter one to be exact with a danfoss bd35 compressor in it.

"WITH GREAT CARE AND PATIENCE", i removed all the plastic crap leaving just the compressor and the evaporator plate from this all in one piece.

then "WITH MORE GREAT CARE AND PATIENCE", i carefully straightened the plate, cut a slot in the side of my ice box and poked it in and then curved it to shape in situ inside the box.

So it was still in one piece and still worked, just needed to seal the slot, wire the extra fan of the compressor fan and give the beast some power.

To seal from the shelf to the top of the plate i just cut some perspex to shape and it acts as a cover over the freezer inside the fridge from the plate to the shelf.

So you can see through it, store fridge items on top of it, and it allows the freezer temp to be maintained better.

All in all, about three hours work, the portable fridge you can pick them up secondhand for $200-300, the little fan came out of a computer power supply.

If you need to insulate the box with out rebuilding it just to get going just glue some polystyrene in side.

It will make the box volume smaller, give you more freeze capacity from a smaller compressor, or you could paint inside the fridge with a ceramic vacuum sphere insulating additive, mixed into some paint, two of three layers will help a lot.

lastly make sure that the plate sits of the wall of the fridge by about 5-10 mm so that you can use the coldness from both sides of the plate.

Best of luck,

Matthew

[antoha]

the boat is a LeComte NorthEast 38, built in 1968, hull 162. the insulation is about 1" of smth old and brittle (judging by the observable outside space thickness and what i saw inside the lid). we go through about 6-8 bags of ice on a long weekend (2 nights, 3 days),and block ice isn't that available around here most of the time (Long Island Sound, in marinas; we don't have a car and hauling all that ice from more accommodating places is just too heavy). so this ice business adds up over the summer, which prompted me to think of alternatives. i definitely should at least re-insulate.

the box is about 6.5 cu ft at the moment (2x2x2, ant one side is the curve of the hull); i think when i put more insulation in, it will probably shrink down to about 4.3 cu ft.

thank you again!

[Celestialsailor]

Try the CF search option. We have posted a few thread on this topic. Especially using Aerogel as an insulator...good luck

[onestepcsy37]

wow! that's a beautiful old classic.

we originally had a 6 cuft fridge but, although we cruise for months at a time, found it too big. i bought a 4x8 polystyrene insulation board at lowe's and cut it up, to stuff in the bottom of the box. it's now about 3.5 cuft. i also installed an adler barbour fridge system with the evaporator shaped like a small freezer box. i'm guessing it uses about 40 amps a day.

rather than cut up the interior of that classic you might seriously consider an engle or waeco portable. no installation required but you would need to find a place to keep it in the boat - maybe a quarter berth?

[msulc]

We turned off our freezer in Grenada. It was just taking up too much power. We put a few ice trays in the cold part of our fridge (bottom and back) and they do freeze. That comes in handy for drinks occasionally. We do fine without a freezer, but ice and ice packs are the things we need occasionally. Freezing fresh caught fish would be nice as well.