chilling with no fridge

[William_H]

Cooling

Famous in West Australian history is the Coolgardie safe. Coolgardie is an old gold mining town hot and dry as hades. The safe is a cupboard sized box whose walls are made of hession. (any cloth would do) On top is a shallow (or deep) steel tray containing water. It has holes in it to meter out water to keep the hession cloth wet. Similarly at the bottom is a tray containing water with the hession able to wick up the water or col;lect excess water frrom above. The whole thing is supsended in the wind. Evaporation obviously keeps the cupboard contents cool. They are more often sen in museums now though. olewill

 

[oldsaltoz]

Link to safe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe

 

[pugwash60]

All these 'evaporating water' ideas are fine but they only cool to the dew point temperature, if anyone is in the UK trying this it's bonkers, the sea is a fairly constant 8-12 degrees so much cooler than the dew point on a warm day and its much easier to immers the beer / wine in the sea.

 

[guernseyman]

On my Jouster (no reasonable offer refused) I keep food under the seat just in front of the dinette. It's mostly below water level, and the cool hull does a good job of preserving food, though not as good as the Victoria coolbox. Were I keeping the Jouster I would insulate the sides and roof of that locker well and let the bottom keep it cool.

Agreed. I keep my regular french lager beer in such a locker and it is acceptably cool to drink.

 

[Slow_boat]

I, too, have been thinking about fitting a fridge on a Sadler 29 and have pretty much decided against. To expensive, complicated and would mean lots of solar panels and a wind generator, which means somewhere to put the and the whole lot would be over a thousand quid.

This season we found that small (1/2 ltr, I think) water bottles frozen pack well around anything that needss to be really cold in the cool box, other stuff like milk and meat on top.

As has been stated, most things don't need to be kept in a fridge. Buy cured bacon, eggs keep and cook better out of the fridge, uht longlife milk, if you have to have milk at all, lives alongside the beer (beer, stuff that has flavour, not lager which is just cold wet and fizzy and has to be cold to be pallatable) in the bilge, bread and fruit and veg keep in cardboard boxes under the berths. We reckon on carrying enough fresh and tinned food for a week at a time. After all, we're not crossing oceans and even when we move to long term cruising expect to be able to shop once a week at least.

In fact, I found a bunch of grapes that had been in the dark under a berth for a month in the summer and though mould had started to appear on a few, they were still firm and looked, apart from the mould, fresh.

Just make sure it's dark and dry and don't put bananas near anything.

BTW, how come I can buy a full sized domestic fridge freezer for £250 but even a kit for the boat is £350?

 

[pugwash60]

Why is it a Fridge with a d.
When refrigerator has no d.

 

[TiggerToo]

Why is it a Fridge with a d.
When refrigerator has no d.

because Fridge is a contraction of Frigidaire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigidaire

 

[Bobobolinsky]

As Don Casey wrote in "This Old Boat", a fridge is something that you should only consider putting in if you are a liveaboard, or IF you find you simply cannot get enough ice often enough. They are a great load on your batteries, require running the engine to recharge them, or lots of solar or wind. OTOH, he says they are indispensable if you liveboard.

Don Casey wrote that in edition one,when he revised it, it came out in capitals "Cold beer in August" and went onto describe how to build a fridge.

 

[vyv_cox]

I, too, have been thinking about fitting a fridge on a Sadler 29 and have pretty much decided against. To expensive, complicated and would mean lots of solar panels and a wind generator, which means somewhere to put the and the whole lot would be over a thousand quid.

This season we found that small (1/2 ltr, I think) water bottles frozen pack well around anything that needss to be really cold in the cool box, other stuff like milk and meat on top.

As has been stated, most things don't need to be kept in a fridge. Buy cured bacon, eggs keep and cook better out of the fridge, uht longlife milk, if you have to have milk at all, lives alongside the beer (beer, stuff that has flavour, not lager which is just cold wet and fizzy and has to be cold to be pallatable) in the bilge, bread and fruit and veg keep in cardboard boxes under the berths. We reckon on carrying enough fresh and tinned food for a week at a time. After all, we're not crossing oceans and even when we move to long term cruising expect to be able to shop once a week at least.

In fact, I found a bunch of grapes that had been in the dark under a berth for a month in the summer and though mould had started to appear on a few, they were still firm and looked, apart from the mould, fresh.

Just make sure it's dark and dry and don't put bananas near anything.

BTW, how come I can buy a full sized domestic fridge freezer for £250 but even a kit for the boat is £350?

Don't underestimate how warm it is when you cruise in the Med. We never bothered with a fridge in UK and Holland but it's a very different story when the temperature in the galley is in the mid-30s and the seawater temperature in the mid 20s. It's not impossible to manage without one, in fact we know someone in Greece who took his out, but you have to work very hard to do so. The life of meat and dairy products will be two days maximum. Tinned meat in Italy and Greece is a rare commodity. It isn't always possible to buy ice and frozen water bottles and surely the main attraction of the cruising life is to anchor somewhere quiet and stay there for days on end? Who wants to be dashing to the shops every day because fresh food is needed to replace all the bad stuff?

 

[DownWest]

Hum.. I have lived 'off grid' for quite long periods. First time, had an Electrolux gas fridge and shared a Lister self-start genset with my neighbour. (quite amazing how dark it can get before one or the other's nerve breaks and flips the switch) When we finally got mains, people were lining up to buy the gas fridge. Paid more than the new electric one I bought. The gas jobby had an effective freezer too, with a separate door.
For the boat (Med might be different) some sort of evaporater with those computer cooling fans to play over the soaked cloth might keep the amps low. For now, the beer cools in the outboard well.
As said, gas fridges are not happy with tilting and if, in the cabin , probs with combustion products.
The boat we rented in Greece, had an main engine driven cold plate fridge/freezer. About half an hour in the morning kept it good, plus a bit of ice for the G&T. Since exiting the harbour and getting set for the day used about that, no prob.

A note, gas consumption for the fridge in S. Portugal was about one 13kg/ month.
A
Something else I learned, ALL gas fridges use Electrolux patents.

And some of our older neighbours had parrafin fired fridges-- slight smell around their houses)

 

[Ubergeekian]

Why is it a Fridge with a d.
When refrigerator has no d.

Some older books refer to the frig.

 

[prv]

I
BTW, how come I can buy a full sized domestic fridge freezer for £250 but even a kit for the boat is £350?

Because domestic fridges sell in their hundreds of thousands, while marine fridge kits probably (wild guess) in the low hundreds.

Pete

 

[ccscott49]

Because domestic fridges sell in their hundreds of thousands, while marine fridge kits probably (wild guess) in the low hundreds.

Pete

Which is why I have a mains fridge and freezer, with an inverter to run them.
1200 quid for "marine" 24v and 258 for the mains ones.