Where to get boat fridge

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tamarind

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I need a replacement 12v/240v fridge for my Fairline Targa 33. Looking for a reasonably priced unit max measurements 570mm high x 460mm wide, any ideas? looked at new waeco and cheapest I've found £499!!!! Looks like i'll be drinking warm beer for a while!
 
Hi clive what a knightmare i searched the internet for the old boat and eventually found one have you tried aquafax or try boatfridge.com they came up with a good price for me but keep your hands off mine as i will be down on thursday night.
Nic
 
Suggest ebay. Jedi's fridge came from there, big Shoreline with 2* freezer for £70 and does exactly what it says on the tin.

Worth checking Shoreline and seeing if they have any special offers. How space constrained are you? Our fridge required a partial galley rebuild to get it in which was a bit of a nuisance.
 
hlb said:
Suppose you could go for domestic fridge and an inverter. You need to check if that works out.
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This is the route I went down in the end. Bought a small domestic fridge, about the same size as a boat one, for around 60 quid from Makro. The plan was to run it from an inverter when not connected to shorepower, but after years now I have scrapped that idea. I nearly always have shorepower when moored up and I now use the little freezer compartment to freeze picnic type freezer packs, which help to keep the fridge cold on passage. It works very well and by the time I am plugging in again the freezer packs are often still frozen and the beer still cold.

The only time this hasn't worked so well is on my trip up the Thames earlier in the month. Here we went days without shorepower and the inverter would have been good.

I resorted to using the suitcase genny whenever I was moored away from other boats and this just about got us through.
 
My Engel 63 litre fridge packed up on my Targa 33 and I found the place that stocks the replacement is Bainbridge International. You will be scared though when you find out how much they cost!! In the end I fixed mine as it turned out to be the neon light had failed on the Printed Circuit Board. Took 10 mins and saved £500.00
 
hlb said:
Try a caravan shop or web site. Suppose you could go for domestic fridge and an inverter. You need to check if that works out.
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This seems to be a very cost effective answer - marine and caravan firdges are ridiculous prices - due to lack of competition. The technology is no different to domestic ones except for that very expensive device to keep the door shut....!

Eg Argos sell several own brand compressor models from £99 with class A energy rating and a 150watt inverter costs £20-30.

I have one of their table top freezers which is almost silent and uses only 45watts so I'd expect the fridges to use about the same. This is (unsurprisingly) the same as a Waeco or Dometic fridge costing 5 or 6 times the price.

When I change my ancient & noisy Sanyo fridge it will be for one of Argos's but I'm building it in with an extra 2" of polystyrene all round.

Don't throw money at the over priced lesiure market ones..
 
Just a gentle warning...

I went down the same route of fitting a domestic fridge rather than pay through the nose. Mine cost about £70 from Comet.

Trouble with the domestic ones is they don't like being bounced. The fridge died on me after I'd been giving the boat a bit of a pasting in some bouncy stuff, but it was my own fault and could easily have been avoided.

I bought another (identical) fridge and tried again. All you have to do is resist the temptation to switch the fridge back on after taking the boat out. Leave it for an hour or so after returning to your berth for the gas to settle, and it should be ticketyboo when switched back on.
 
carlton said:
Just a gentle warning...

I went down the same route of fitting a domestic fridge rather than pay through the nose. Mine cost about £70 from Comet.

Trouble with the domestic ones is they don't like being bounced. The fridge died on me after I'd been giving the boat a bit of a pasting in some bouncy stuff, but it was my own fault and could easily have been avoided.

I bought another (identical) fridge and tried again. All you have to do is resist the temptation to switch the fridge back on after taking the boat out. Leave it for an hour or so after returning to your berth for the gas to settle, and it should be ticketyboo when switched back on.
Click to expand...

Was the Comet one a compressor type or a silent absorption type?
Did you have it running when at sea?

I wouldn't have expected a compressor type to suffer due to boat movement.

When I replace mine I am rewiring the thermostat to switch off the inverter rather than just the mains. The fridge will have its own small inverter but as the motor only runs for about 10mins per hour, there's no sense in the inverter running all the time as it uses about .2 -. 3amp with no load.
 
ianj99 said:
Was the Comet one a compressor type or a silent absorption type?
Did you have it running when at sea?

I wouldn't have expected a compressor type to suffer due to boat movement.

When I replace mine I am rewiring the thermostat to switch off the inverter rather than just the mains. The fridge will have its own small inverter but as the motor only runs for about 10mins per hour, there's no sense in the inverter running all the time as it uses about .2 -. 3amp with no load.
Click to expand...

It was a compressor - on shorepower only, so not running at sea.

No inverter was used. It was simply 'off' when at sea. We cranked it up for an hour or so before disconnecting shorepower before going out so it was plenty cool enough (together with the ice-packs in the freezer trick) but switched it on again immediately on our return, to discover it didn't like it at all.

From that moment on it simply wouldn't cool, so we bought another and left it switched off for an hour after returning to our berth. It has worked fine every time we've done this, and is now four years old.
 
If you do decide to go for a Waeco, these guys are the cheapest I've found. The CDF18 Compressor Cooler is just short of £300. I've seen the same one priced significantly higher elsewhere...
 
carlton said:
It was a compressor - on shorepower only, so not running at sea.

No inverter was used. It was simply 'off' when at sea. We cranked it up for an hour or so before disconnecting shorepower before going out so it was plenty cool enough (together with the ice-packs in the freezer trick) but switched it on again immediately on our return, to discover it didn't like it at all.

From that moment on it simply wouldn't cool, so we bought another and left it switched off for an hour after returning to our berth. It has worked fine every time we've done this, and is now four years old.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. If a £99 Argos one has to be changed every 4 years, its still cheaper than a marine fridge!
 
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