What fridge unit?

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Westering

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I retire next summer and we are planning to sail our Sovereign 32 to France - Spain and ?. Planning to fit refridgeration unit to our well-insulated but smallish coolbox. I am currently favouring a Isotherm ASU self-pumping unit and wonder if anyone has experience of these or alternative / fitting advice to offer?
 
I fitted one in 2002 and have really been pleased. It made ice with the boat on the cradle in the yard in Greece with the air temp around 30Deg C! It uses around 2.5Amps so I just leave it running all summer. Our ice box is about 110 litres and I think it would cope with much larger.
I have had to clean the skin fitting a couple of times but I think that this was due to laying up afloat for the winter and the unit not being used. No problems when it it running.
Regards
GAJ
 
Isotherm are good but also look at Frigoboat imported by Penguin Refrigeration.
Their website makes selection and ordering easy and they'll give telephone advice
and service backup as I found recently.
penguinfrigo.co.uk/specify/default.asp
 
We have a Frigoboat engine driven compressor and find that here in the Caribbean we are well supplied. It copes with the much higher water temp(currently 85F) where most other systems are struggling. We run the engine for 30 mins a day and that keeps the food frozen in the freezer and all the wine well chilled!!
seriously consider if you are coming this way as electricity use is massive in these temperatures.
 
I've used Isotherm air cooled heat exchanger in the Caribbean and it worked well, next time I might go for a water cooled exchanger, but we were fine on electricity with just a wind gen, no solar panels, and a towed generator when sailing.

The main thing is to insulate really well.
 
I fitted a fridge freezer in my boat before sailing to the Caribbean and back. The box is 100 litres with minimum of 100mm of insulation.
The unit is a frigoboat water cooled using a keel cooler. The fridge box can be operated with all fridge or third freezer and two thirds fridge. In freezer mode in the Caribbean we used 2 amps only. In all fridge mode it was 1 amp. No other cruisers we met could bet near us for frugle energy costs. In the uk with the cooler sea water even in freezer mode the unit only uses 1 amp.
 
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