Ok, I grant you, a blog post on fridges may not be the most exciting subject, but i’m pretty pleased with the results of my handy work…. As you know, one of our goals is to have Nautilus run completely “off grid”, without the need for shore power or to run the engines. We are planning on adding more solar and putting in a larger battery bank (more on that later). However, we also need the stuff we have on the boat to be running as efficiently as possible.
One of the things that really bugs me is that the fridges seem to be running most of the time, eating up the watts and draining the batteries. Now marine fridges don’t have the best reputation for efficiency and are pretty poor compared to what you’re used to at home… However ours has turned into an ice monster that is intent on eating anything that we care to put in it! (watch out, the butter is next!)
So what was the plan to tame the fridge? Well, after a bit of Googling around, I found there is a digital thermostat that you can retrofit to these bad boys that gives you much more control that the arcane manual thermostat that the fridge comes with. I managed to order a couple of these through amazon.de (thanks BREXIT and VAT rules). However, they had to come from China, so it’s taken a few weeks to arrive.
It was then a fun job of pulling out the fridge, working out the wiring and and checking that I could wire up everything correctly.
After a couple of hours work, i’m very happy with the results, It’s all working and I can accurately set the temperature and it’s stopping the compressor running all the time. That should stop the fridge icing up continually and save us power drain on the batteries.
The next challenge was working out where to mount the new thermostat. I want it to be accessible, but the LCD display could become annoying at night, so I want to be covered when we’re not using it. I originally thought about mounting it in a cupboard in one of the hulls, but there were were too many bulkheads in the way. Instead I realised I could run the cable to the other side of the boat and tuck the thermostat in with some of the other electronics. That then meant a trip to the electronic store to go and buy some 6-core cable.
You have to be a bit of a contortionist to be able to pull through wires as the spaces are really bloody awkward and you get an arm full of fibreglass fibres, but the results are very satisfying when you get it completed.
And that’s it – “Job Done” – super happy with how this has turned out – the fridge has been running overnight and it chilled down and has been holding a sensible temperature. I’ll keep watching usage to ensure that’s it all running properly. I even managed to get the sensor neatly installed into the back of the fridge as there was a hole in the body of the fridge that hadn’t been filled in properly that I could run the cable through…. Next job, do the same for the drinks fridge!!
2 responses
A job well done 👏
Good job on the fridge.
Hope its settled down and remained stable.
Great pics.
Cheers,
Q