Rick, No ice!!! What do you put in your Dark and Stormies??? My system has three vertical loading ice cube trays, with room for three more, if needed. No shortage of ice or cold beer on my boat.
Jake Jake Brodersen C&C 35 Mk-III Midnight Mistress Hampton VA -----Original Message----- From: CnC-List [mailto:cnc-list-boun...@cnc-list.com] On Behalf Of Rick Brass Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2013 11:24 AM To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com Subject: Re: Stus-List C&C 33 1985 Refrigeration Help I did a lot of research about refrigeration, and weighed a lot of alternatives before I selected and installed mine. One of my considerations was low power consumption for use while cruising full time. There are a lot of alternatives out there. Most use the same model of Danfoss compressor, and the power consumption seems to be in about the same range for the majority of systems. A water cooled system seems to have a slight advantage over the air cooled systems when the ambient temperature gets up in the summer. But at the cost of increased plumbing, complexity, and maintenance. Of the water cooled systems, I was drawn to the option of a "keel cooler" - a bronze plate on the outside of the hull that serves as a heat exchanger so you are not pumping raw water for cooling - and one setup that puts a heat exchanger into your sink drain hose just above the through hull fitting. One really neat system I was sold on installing, but did not use, was called a TropiCool 40. It used carbon dioxide for a refrigerant, and had to be installed such that the condensed coolant was gravity fed from the compressor to the evaporator inside the ice box. And a part of the power for the compressor was provide by a sort of Sterling exothermic engine that used the heat from the gas leaving the evaporator to generate power for the compressor. Neat system with very low power consumption. Complex technology, but packaged to be a plug and play installation once you set up the proper geometry between the evaporator and compressor. The key to a good installation, as Wally pointed out, is to insulate your existing icebox. That can be a pain, but is the only real way to get the power consumption to be reasonable and the beer cold. I have between 1 and 4 inches of foam around my ice box, depending on the available space. More on the open side of the box nearest the engine, and canned foam filling the void between the icebox and hull. I've thought about adding something like a space blanket to the surface facing the engine space to add to the insulation value. I ended up getting a Norcold icebox conversion kit. Norcold is most familiar for making small refrigerators for RVs and dorm rooms. They make a kit for installation in boat iceboxes that has an air cooled and automatically converts from 12v to 120v when you plug into shore power. The compressor/condenser is about 10x14x20, and is installed in the starboard lazarette just aft of my icebox. My installation uses the cowl vents left over from the days when my boat had an A4 to provide additional cooling air to the condenser coils. The Norcold has no freezer capability, but will keep the ice box at about 40 degrees below outside air temp. And BTW, one of the prime reasons for getting the Norcold system - in addition to a recommendation from a cruiser I knew - was that the cost of the kit was under $500 at the time I bought it. Hope this helps. Rick Brass Washington, NC _______________________________________________ This List is provided by the C&C Photo Album http://www.cncphotoalbum.com CnC-List@cnc-list.com
