fridge users please help

[C-Trial]

exnay on the icebox...

The icebox in my cruiser appears to be the lowest form of human invention since the first wheel was chipped from stone.

Out it will come (hopefully this weekend), but what to put into the gaping maw that remains? Talking to the C-D factory I was inclined just to opt for the door/shelf retrofit, that is until the factory dangled the power fridge. Now I have to get a question answered.

Young Justin at the factory had no idea whether the electric fridge they supply is AC/DC (I assume it is). The real question is one of power consumption while away from shore power. To my mind the C-Dory is a study in simplicity, not withstanding the toys we pack into their hulls. Opting for the fridge is a question of power consumption. My last boat had roughly 800# of house batteries in the port locker of her engine room, topped off whenever needed from a diesel genset.

I ain't gonna go to 12V hell with a C-D. Those of you who have fridges in your C-D, have you had to do some fancy footwork with your power to feed the beastie and would you go to the trouble again?[/u]

The simplicity of a cupboard/shelf retrofit and an icechest feels overpowering.

C-Trial

[Chuck S]

A quick glance at the BoatUS catalog on page 803 shows a small refrigerator (3.6cu ft) with a draw of 2.8 amps, well within the capability of even my Honda 50. The 1.7 cu ft model at the bottom of the page draws 2.5 amps. One of these will pull 25 amp hours overnight so you won't need your submarine battery pack for this. But either will drain a so-called 80 amp hour battery in a day.

-- Chuck

[C-Trial]

Chuck,

Lucky you who "get" this 12V stuff. So what I think yer sayin is, get a dedicated house battery and my twin Honda 40's will keep it charged if I run the engines plenty during the day but the amp draw over night will run the battery down? So its more a question of (1) how much am I going to run the engines by day and how often will I be hooking up to shore power at night?

Toldya I'm none too bright at this 12V stuff.

Or maybe what you said was, put my submarine battery bank in a dink behind my Cruiser and tow the battery bank with 2/0 wire. If the dink sinks, cut the 2/0 real quick before the dink drags my Cruiser under by her stern.

C-Trial

[B~C]

My factory icebox now resides in the attic. We purchased a quality icebox that can be loaded up in the house and toted out to the boat where it fits nicely in the icebox hole. A good icebox will keep things cold for close to a week and draws no amps.

[Wheeler Dealer]

B~C
Way to cut through the crap

Jon

[C-Hawk]

I have the fridge and use it when we go out to the islands. If I'm not going to be doing much cruising it will work good for 3 days. Any longer and I need to start up and cruise around for a few hours a day to maintain the batteries. The fridge is AC/DC- if it is plugged in to AC there is no draw from the battery, unplug it and it switches to DC. It will keep your steaks frozen till needed.

[B~C]

and that was the sweetened condensed version

[Chuck S]

Deep cycle batteries are rated in amp hours. One amp drawn from the battery in an hour is one amp hour. 2.5 amps drawn from the battery in 10 hours is 25 amp hours. Pretty straight math. Problem is battery amp hour ratings are highly overstated on the labels.

A rule of thumb I've used for 25 years when racing sailboats offshore at night is to find the Reserve Capacity of the battery and divide that by 2.4 to get useful amphours. My lil 16 Cruiser has a single group 24 battery with a RC of 140 minutes which computes to 58 useful amp hours (call it 60), not the 80 listed on the top of the battery. This battery would power that small refrigerator for about 23 hours before being severely deep discharged.

60 amp hours will take a day to replentish with a 10 amp charge rate because the charge tapers off as battery voltage comes up toward the charger's voltage. Figure on 10 hours in this case. The Honda 40/50 alternator only supplies 10 amps at max, so the actual on boat charging will take longer. This assumes a single small battery as noted above.

A larger Group 31 battery with an RC of 190 (80 useful amphours) will accept those 60 amp hours faster because it wasn't completely deep discharged and you can stop charging before the battey voltage and charger voltage match. This can be an entire chapter in a book, but the bottom line for quick recharge is to have excess battery capacity and not try to fully charge.

A fully charged group 31 battery should give you 32 hours of refrigerator time before you need to run the charger or alternator.

There is much sentiment against refrigerators on C-Dories because of the battery hassles, but with some management they can greatly increase your boating enjoyment. You have to be a refrigerator door ****, of course, to keep the cold air in them. A tub cooler doesn't spill all its cold air on the deck when you lift the lid, but an open front refrigerator does. Ever see an antique icebox, a real icebox which uses ice? They have several small doors to help keep the cold air inside.

The refrigerator should not have a 100% duty cycle, so it only draws power when running. For planning I'd want a dedicated Group 31 battery for the refrigerator (32 hours cycle time) and a good 3 stage shorepower charger to keep it happy.

-- Chuck

[Da Nag]

Aside from the electrical issues with the fridge - I can't imagine living without the extra space made available when you go with the door/shelf option. But then, perhaps I'm just a pack rat...

There's plenty of room in the cockpit for a small cooler - some small ones will even fit between the tanks, and with those new super-cool models, your ice will last around 5 days.

[Pat Anderson]

OK, brands and models of the "super-cool" coolers, please! We have trouble making ice last two days, and ours is only a year old and it is an Igloo "Max 5 Cold"...Five days would be wonderful, but I would be satisfied with a solid three days.

On the ice box space, we put a Bomar hatch door on the opening (actually David did it) and have stacked plastic bins. Works great.

[B~C]

www.trailerboats.com has a review of iceboxes

[MichaelOnTheClaraMae]

At Three Rivers Marine, standard installation on a CD25 includes two batteries dedicated solely to the factory fridge. There are two more on board on a switch for house/cranking (I have a single BF130). My fridge has run with no problem for as long as 4 days without recharging or plugging in. I am not sure off the top of my head what model/rating the batteries are, however, I know they are not deep cycle and all four are the same.

[C-Trial]

Hi Clara Mae,

I'm still chewing on fridge versus more storage outta the space. I kinda lean toward fridge. Would you happen to know how many amps the alternator on your Honda 130 generates? My twin Honda 40s only put out 10 amps. Recharging 4 batteries might be a real chore for the little 40's. I have one of the super-quiet Honda gas generators (EC 2000) I suppose I could stow away. But hauling 45# of genset and 20# of extra gas plus the general lack of space for either isn't appealing. I knew I should have gotten the inboard C-Dory model (CD-22 I) so that I could have a full swimboard across the transom for hauling ice chests.

C-Trial

[TyBoo]

At one time, we wanted to put a fridge in the TyBoo22, but Dusty and Les talked me out of it. The TyBoo25 has a Norcold DC-0051, and we really like it. We have only had a few chances to use it, but it has been no problem. We ran it overnight a couple of times, and had it on while trailering for half a day or so. Ours is a DC only, but when I plug into shore power, the boat's battery charger comes on. I also have a AC to DC converter that can be manually switched, but I haven't needed to use it.

Here is the Norcold fridge web page, and the specs are listed. Note the mounting dimensions. If I remember correctly from when we considered fitting one into our CD22, the helm seat would have had to raise to put the fridge under it because of the space (depth) lost by the slope of the hull. Fishtales' had his mounted under the front dinette seat, and is happy with that arrangement.

We have three batteries, but one is dedicated to the kicker. The other two are switchable between main and house. They are big marine cranking batteries, and I use an automatic combiner between them that is on most of the time. Our Honda 130 has a 40 amp alternator, so it doesn't take too long to bring the charge level back up. The specs list the current draw as 2.5-1.3 amps. Keep in mind, though, that if you keep the door shut, the compressor runs less than 50% of the time.

You probably won't need to run the fridge more than 24 hours without a recharge, and that should leave plenty in the battery to start a Honda outboard. For peace of mind, you could also carry a Optima or gel cell battery as a third spare. That's what we have for our Honda 15 Kicker, but it is actually more for a back-up jump start if ever needed. I am so sure that it will never be needed that it isn't even wired to the system for the main batteries. But it's there!

Your decision to junk the original icebox is a good one, so trust that your decision on the fridge will be equally wise. You won't regret getting one, but your life will be simpler without it. Either way - you win. I think the only reason Dusty did not want the fridge in the TyBoo22 is that he knew he was going to end up with the boat, and he don't drink beer while underway.

[Jammin]

We installed a Isotherm Cruise 50 ASU under the helm seat on Jammin. It was purchased through Defender.

The Isotherm senses excess power (12.7v+) and takes the holding plate down to -14F. When the power drops below 12.7 the fridge goes into economy mode and maintains +21F.

Our house bank is two 105 amp hour AGM batteries. In Mexico in May we needed to run the Honda 130 for about 60 minutes a day at anchor.

I am happy with this unit.