Refrigerator Installed

As I write this I am celebrating with a cold beer out of the newly powered refrigerator - my third beer in almost 8 weeks.  Roger arrived at 9 AM and he was delighted with the shelf that I had fitted to the compressor supports. 

He installed the unit in 3 hours, which he said was at the lower end of the rang, which was quite true because his quotation stated 6-7 hours of labor.  At $55 per hour I think that my preliminary hack work was worth the effort.

Roger decided that it was best to mount the compressor cross-wise so that the output from the cooling fan would be directed to the corner with the exhaust fan.  Unfortunately I discovered later that the compressor cooling fan pushes instead of pulls, that is it sucks air out of the corner where the exhaust fan is doing its work and pushes it back over the unit.  I visited Roger and told him about my finding and he replied that he had made the wrong assumption about the fan.  Then he surprised me with the question of whether I minded the fan pushing instead of pulling.  Yes, I replied, because the cooling and exhaust fans are fighting each other.  With this setup I'd be better off having no exhaust fan at all.  He could see the logic of this but was reluctant to rotate the compressor 180 degrees because I would lose access to the connection junction box (which can be seen in the second photo).  He suggested a 90 degree rotation to align it the same as the previous compressor.  This sounded OK to me, so he will visit in the morning to do that.  Unfortunately it means that I have to spend another night with the cabin full of the items that are normally stored in the starboard quarter berth.

The second photo shows the current setup: a vent shown at the front, the compressor lined up athwart ship, the dome of the exhaust fan in the corner.  I'm storing only my copious supply of diesel motor oil next to the unit because I do not want to clutter up the space around the compressor.

The final photo shows the position of the thermostat inside of the refrigerator compartment.


After the installation I rode the bicycle to CCC and purchased 400 pesos worth of fish, fruit, and vegetables as badly needed provisions and thermal ballast for the new refrigerator unit.

For the record the unit is an Italian-made "Vitrifrigo", model ND50 ORV GR with a Danfoss BD50F compressor, input 12 & 24 volts, input current 4.9 amps @ 12V and 2.45 amps @ 24V, refrigerant charge 0.050 Kg of R134A, Serial Number 0190835.  It has a 3-year warranty but should give 20 years of service.