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From: (no name) (no email)
Date: Sat Aug 14 1999 - 20:50:44 EDT
In a message dated 8/6/99 7:51:17 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
writes:
<< Here's what I decided to do for a refrigerator. I bought a chest type
freezer for $179 at Circuit City. I got a freezer because they have twice
the insulation of reefers. On my last post, I indicated that I was going to
change the thermostat so that it could maintain above freezing temp. but
I've changed my mind and made it simpler. Rather than remove and replace
the current thermo, I am going to attach a new thermo to an AC outlet
fixture. That way, if I want to operate the unite as a freezer, I simply
plug the freezer into a regular AC outlet. If I want to operate it as a
reefer, I'll plug it first into this new outlet that has a thermo control on
it and then plug that control device into a real AC outlet. This makes the
wiring much easier....do it all on the bench and just carry to the freezer,
plug the freezer into it and plug it into AC and I have a reefer.
This unit only uses 90 watts of energy. I'll feed it with an inverter.
With the extra insulation, it should keep things cold for extended periods
of time w/o power.....hopefully. I report on that later.
Glen Evans
Building a 32' in the backyard in Arlington, Va.
>>
Glen,
I have one of those freezers, I got it at Circuit City, and I bought it for
the same reasons.
It pulls 12 amps from the (12 v) batteries when running, and the paperwork
that came with it suggested it would be running about 50% of the time. That
is 12 times 12 or 144 amp hours, which would double our normal consumption.
This is for average conditions, more if ambient temp is higher.
The box is not high efficiency. The hot condenser is on the inside of the
outside skin of the box, about as close to the cold evaporator as possible.
It would have been much better to hang it on the outside like most
refrigerators.
My idea was to put zip locks of water in the bottom of the box, freeze it to
ice, and use the box as a reefer, running it only when we ran the generator,
which we do almost every day for at least three hours. We have been
traveling 8 days out of the past 15 and plug the freezer into the inverter
where it is powered by the alternator on the main engine when underway. It
stays frozen when we do this. I could hook it up so that it would be on only
if the generator or main engine were on but it would take some time to hook
up and there is so much else to do. I might do it anyway, just to see.
Anyway, the ziplocks leaked. We then bought water in plastic bottles. They
cracked when frozen. Now the box has about three inches of frozen water in
the bottom.
We have been keeping frozen meat in the bottom of the freezer. Beer in
bottles have sometimes lifted their caps when frozen and some of the soft
drinks in cans burst.
The idea is sound and is used by "holdover plates". Maybe it could be made
to work with more tweaking. We have not been paying a lot of attention to
it, we have lots of other things to do.
What has been your experience?
Norm
S/V Bandersnatch
Anchored Norfolk VA
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