Practical Boat Owner - February 2016

A tale of two fridges

PBO conclusion

I

suppose the moral of this story is

to think wider than the problem that

is staring you in the face.

It’s all very well to see if the fridge fits the

cavity – you have to do this, of course, and

with precision – but it’s also important to

ensure you can actually get the fridge (or

any other large equipment) to the site in the

first place without hacking half your boat

apart. We never had any doubt that we could

do it, but if the original fridge had been just

3cm deeper or if the Vitrifrigo had been 3cm

wider we would have had to cut the top off

the locker. Just a little wider again and it

wouldn’t even have passed through the

companionway – then what?

It was well worth doing, though: Ann is really happy to have the additional volume and

a freezer worthy of the name (it gets down to minus 15°C), plus the ability to open the

door wide enough to reposition the shelves, which we could never do before.

We managed to get the old fridge out

without hacking half the boat apart

2

Next we had to get the new fridge through the companionway, something we’d not considered
in our measurements. We found that as well as removing the saloon table, we had to remove
the companionway doors and take the door and door hinges off the new fridge. Then if we lifted it
high enough it would just clear the companionway surround.

3

There were two tasks to complete before

we fitted the fridge to the locker: the

wiring needed attention to bring the 12V and

mains supplies to the correct position, and

more efficient insulation had to be cut and

fitted. This is medium-density expanded

polystyrene sheet, built up in layers to

completely surround the fridge except where

an airflow is needed to the condenser.

5

The old fridge had the compressor at the
bottom while the new one has a very neat
arrangement at the top. This meant lengthening
the wires and providing a mains isolation
switch. The fridge as it comes is a 12V unit, but
we bought a mains module which senses the
availability of 240V mains and always defaults
to it if it’s available. I could see times when
I would not want this to happen so I added
the mains isolator to give me control.

6

All of the wiring connections had to be

made before the fridge was finally pushed

home. Both the mains and the 12V supplies run

to the black box on the left of this view. Once

the fridge was in its final position these

connections were no longer accessible.

7

The Vitrifrigo has a fan-cooled condenser

and the control unit has an option to

add another fan switched in parallel to the

condenser fan. This was ideal for us, and we

wired up the computer fan we’d had in place

for years to extract the hot air and push it

through the heads and out of the boat.

...and it was while we stood and admired the
result of all the hard work, measuring, cutting,
fitting, wiring and making good that we
realised – the fridge didn’t have a door handle!