vas
Well-Known Member
good morning all,
I have two 80lt fridges onboard. In my quest for improving fridge temps/amps consumption, last year I replaced the builtin thermostats to both of them with the 10euro digital ones from ebay (china). Temp sensors are fitted on the back of the fridge just under the freezer compartment together with a small Hard disk fan which also kicks in when compressor turns on, circulating air within the fridge compartment. Both fridges have Danfoss BD35 compressors and matching el. controllers.
Also added on both 80mm dia flex hose from outside and an extra fan to bring fresh air in.
Of course I've kept the fan that came with the fridges by the "radiator matrix" next to the compressor, just replaced them with more efficient and lower consumption ones - so that I could add the two more fans out of the same F terminal on the Danfos el. controller.
Anyway, all that is done and dusted and work.
The one a 30+yo Vertifrigo is in the salon (mobo) with it's separate motor in a nice cool spot behind it, works fine, cycles once every two hours at 8-9C ambient, once an hour at 15C ambient and every half hour at 20C. Cycles on for around 10mins at a time. Waiting for temps to rise, but from past experience it will cycle once every 20-30mins at normal summer ambient of 25-28C in the cabin with hatches open, side windows open at anchor with a bit of breeze. Boat locked in dock, salon temp will easily be in 32-35 midday.
Now, the Waeco was bought s/h unseen v.cheap during the rebuilt. never worked right, eventually found some decent technicians locally, took it to their workshop checked it, no leaks but blocked filter, emptied/soldered new, checked, vaccumed whatever, repaired. Now works fine whole of evaporator goes down to -18C so seems fine. Galley is in front of the salon and slightly elevated (at the lower helm level) at the hottest spot of the boat with the nicely designed 70s lines with only two small triangular windows opening up. Yep, seen 40C plenty of times in there. Further it's stuffed in a cabinet and had to do a bit of surgery to bring air from outside and "extract" it unfortunately in the salon no other way unless I destroy one of the two main cabinets and I'm trying to avoid it.
So after all this intro, the situation is that this fridge now, keeps decent temps 4-5.5C but cycles at rates that are more related to surrounding temps.
Almost 4h
before cycling at 8-9C ambient, 3times an hour at 15C ambient, 4-5times an hour at 20C. Of course outside temps also play a role.
For the record I collect and view all that data at my desk at home having recently installed temp senders on each fridge that hook up to my custom boxes pumping the data to the NMEA2000 bus which then via SignalK and an onboard router goes to my work server in a influxDB and viewed from grafana. Get 1min granularity of data. The following is a pic from grafana Ignore the "peaks" on the salon fridge when it kicks in, it circulates the empty fridge air from the compartment and temp lifts by a degree before going promptly down again.. Similarly if you see a plot of these fridge temp curves against the W consumption over time superimposed, you'll notice that again on salon fridge, when the compressor stops, temp keeps on going down for another couple of mins and almost 1C, Will check how well the plastic protective piece/condensation collector under the freezer compartment fits, feel that cold air escapes from the back of the freezer down the rear of the fridge and straight onto the sensor. Yellow temp is inside v.close to the galley fridge. Been cold last couple of days... Ah, it doesn't help that both fridges are empty at the moment, one has two bottles of water the other 4 cans of beer...
TBH, not much I can do now, other than reflect on the almost 4h cycling at 9C on the waeco vs 2h on the Vertifrigo and wonder if the door seal could be to blame. Waeco is nicely designed and fairly flat, Vertifrigo is more roundish ribbed along, you know, more like 70-80s fridge seals. Waeco is rather hard not really at the stage of being brittle, but for sure it doesn't "press" with any force against the body of the fridge. Tried the old trick of an A4 page, close and pull to see if it "bites" or slides out, mixed results, mostly stays, some places slides v.easily.
So Q time: is there a way to revive a door seal?
Cannot seem to find a replacement for my fridge, found one on a similar model on ebay from AU but that's going to set me back almost 100euro delivered which is ott.
Alternative is to take the door off and take it to a industrial/professional fridge builder/repairer and get them to fit a new custom seal but worried about the 90deg angle at the corners as I think they just cut at 45deg and glue with cyanoacrylic glue (like superglue thing) Doubt the bending trick will work with this seal...
anyone has experience in restoring/replacing seals?
edit: I wonder if something like this would work https://www.hunker.com/12002391/how-to-soften-a-refrigerator-seal
cheers
V.
I have two 80lt fridges onboard. In my quest for improving fridge temps/amps consumption, last year I replaced the builtin thermostats to both of them with the 10euro digital ones from ebay (china). Temp sensors are fitted on the back of the fridge just under the freezer compartment together with a small Hard disk fan which also kicks in when compressor turns on, circulating air within the fridge compartment. Both fridges have Danfoss BD35 compressors and matching el. controllers.
Also added on both 80mm dia flex hose from outside and an extra fan to bring fresh air in.
Of course I've kept the fan that came with the fridges by the "radiator matrix" next to the compressor, just replaced them with more efficient and lower consumption ones - so that I could add the two more fans out of the same F terminal on the Danfos el. controller.
Anyway, all that is done and dusted and work.
The one a 30+yo Vertifrigo is in the salon (mobo) with it's separate motor in a nice cool spot behind it, works fine, cycles once every two hours at 8-9C ambient, once an hour at 15C ambient and every half hour at 20C. Cycles on for around 10mins at a time. Waiting for temps to rise, but from past experience it will cycle once every 20-30mins at normal summer ambient of 25-28C in the cabin with hatches open, side windows open at anchor with a bit of breeze. Boat locked in dock, salon temp will easily be in 32-35 midday.
Now, the Waeco was bought s/h unseen v.cheap during the rebuilt. never worked right, eventually found some decent technicians locally, took it to their workshop checked it, no leaks but blocked filter, emptied/soldered new, checked, vaccumed whatever, repaired. Now works fine whole of evaporator goes down to -18C so seems fine. Galley is in front of the salon and slightly elevated (at the lower helm level) at the hottest spot of the boat with the nicely designed 70s lines with only two small triangular windows opening up. Yep, seen 40C plenty of times in there. Further it's stuffed in a cabinet and had to do a bit of surgery to bring air from outside and "extract" it unfortunately in the salon no other way unless I destroy one of the two main cabinets and I'm trying to avoid it.
So after all this intro, the situation is that this fridge now, keeps decent temps 4-5.5C but cycles at rates that are more related to surrounding temps.
Almost 4h
before cycling at 8-9C ambient, 3times an hour at 15C ambient, 4-5times an hour at 20C. Of course outside temps also play a role.For the record I collect and view all that data at my desk at home having recently installed temp senders on each fridge that hook up to my custom boxes pumping the data to the NMEA2000 bus which then via SignalK and an onboard router goes to my work server in a influxDB and viewed from grafana. Get 1min granularity of data. The following is a pic from grafana Ignore the "peaks" on the salon fridge when it kicks in, it circulates the empty fridge air from the compartment and temp lifts by a degree before going promptly down again.. Similarly if you see a plot of these fridge temp curves against the W consumption over time superimposed, you'll notice that again on salon fridge, when the compressor stops, temp keeps on going down for another couple of mins and almost 1C, Will check how well the plastic protective piece/condensation collector under the freezer compartment fits, feel that cold air escapes from the back of the freezer down the rear of the fridge and straight onto the sensor. Yellow temp is inside v.close to the galley fridge. Been cold last couple of days... Ah, it doesn't help that both fridges are empty at the moment, one has two bottles of water the other 4 cans of beer...
TBH, not much I can do now, other than reflect on the almost 4h cycling at 9C on the waeco vs 2h on the Vertifrigo and wonder if the door seal could be to blame. Waeco is nicely designed and fairly flat, Vertifrigo is more roundish ribbed along, you know, more like 70-80s fridge seals. Waeco is rather hard not really at the stage of being brittle, but for sure it doesn't "press" with any force against the body of the fridge. Tried the old trick of an A4 page, close and pull to see if it "bites" or slides out, mixed results, mostly stays, some places slides v.easily.
So Q time: is there a way to revive a door seal?
Cannot seem to find a replacement for my fridge, found one on a similar model on ebay from AU but that's going to set me back almost 100euro delivered which is ott.
Alternative is to take the door off and take it to a industrial/professional fridge builder/repairer and get them to fit a new custom seal but worried about the 90deg angle at the corners as I think they just cut at 45deg and glue with cyanoacrylic glue (like superglue thing) Doubt the bending trick will work with this seal...
anyone has experience in restoring/replacing seals?
edit: I wonder if something like this would work https://www.hunker.com/12002391/how-to-soften-a-refrigerator-seal
cheers
V.
Last edited:
well, it was, obvs not as well as the sides but not much I can do, it's some sort of polyurethene foam thingie.
