It's time to chill

P

PNW_Wesley

New member
After reading many excellent C-Brat threads about keeping food cool/frozen for extended cruises, I decided to splurge on an Iceco VL45 fridge/freezer.

This will allow us to freeze "blue ice" for swapping into the cooler, and also take frozen food, and make ice cubes in small silicone trays.

My goal for the electrical system was a safe and reliable system with minimal changes to the existing boat wiring. I chose to not use an automatic battery combiner scheme because I wanted more control over the system. All of the house loads are fed from the control panel.

A Renogy 100ah AGM battery and Vmax 20-amp charger are installed under the port seat, and the control panel is mounted in the port seat storage bin. A BMV-712 lets me monitor the system. I can also use my Ipad to read the BMV data.

An Acopower 120 watt foldable solar panel system can be deployed while on the hook.

I performed system integration in my office with all of the components prior to installing the system in the boat.

The freezer sits behind the pilot’s seat, on a foam base from the shipping crate. The foam helps to isolate the freezer from shock while towing. The freezer is secured via 2 straps and a turnbuckle. It ain’t goin’ nowhere.

I completed the installation last week, and took Zenith for a system test cruise yesterday. Everything worked as planned.

Now it’s time to chill.

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Brewkid":12l61822 said:
Nice looking setup! Ari found some nice panels that could be mounted permanent
Click to expand...

Greg has a great setup. He has made lots of useful mods to his 19.

I chose the "movable" panels for several reasons.

I can lay the panels in a location which gives the best performance at the moment, pointing at the sun and minimizing shadows from the radar dome or other structures.

If I would like to add wattage, I can just plug in another suitcase set via MC4 connectors.

Karen and I also do tent camping, so these panels will be used on those trips.

I have put solar on several travel trailers in the past. My largest system had 480 watts on the roof, 300 amp hours of deep cycle batteries, and a 2kw pure sine wave inverter. We would often dry camp for weeks at a time.
 
The house battery and charger are under the port seat.

The weight of the battery, charger, cabling, and control panel on the port side is about 74 pounds. The freezer and mounting scheme is about 44 pounds on the starboard side, so 30 pounds in the freezer will balance the boat nicely.

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