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SV-Zanshin
Freezer |
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While the boat comes with a normal air-cooled fridge by default, I opted to add a second unit as a freezer which is keel-cooled. After a season I realized that I don't need to freeze food very often as I am often close to stores but I do want additional fridge space for cold drinks. Thus I changed the original thermostat, which only allows freezing temperatures even at the warmest setting, for a new one which allows a large temperature range to be used and currently am using the freezer for my cold drinks and the fridge for everything else. This works out well enough, and the insulation on the freezer section is excellent and the keel cooling works very well, too. Keel cooling means that the warm parts of the cooling circuit are piped to a heat exchanger in the hull and the heat goes into the surrounding water rather than the normal air system, which on Zanshin blows the warmed air from the compressor area into the back of the stove and the top of my range is always a bit warm to the touch from this.
I got some special insulating foam from Mr. Cool in St. Martin in May 2014 and cut it to shape so that I could place an insulating layer at the bottom of the freezer in order to reduce energy consumption. I am monitoring it as I write this. Since the fridge and freezer energy consumption accounts for most of the energy use aboard Zanshin even a small increase in efficiency will make a significant reduction in my energy use.
I've also gone and purchased an additional portable fridge/freezer, a Waeco CDF 36, which runs off either the house bank or AC current. While this is usually not needed, it does provide some extra capacity for cold storage.
