A trick to Norcold fridges
Posted: June 17th, 2018, 10:25 pm
I've been playing around with my fridge recently. It run pretty good, but not great, so I was thinking of some mods to make to help it work better.
First, I insulated the cabinet. I probably need some drawings to illustrate this better, but the stock enclosure on my boat (83 3607) leaves about one inch of dead space around the left and right sides and about 1.25 inches above the top. This is behind the teak trim, which is cut to just barely fit the fridge. On the right side of the fridge, Carver installed a 2"x10" vent, so the heat rising from the compressor and condenser would travel up the back and around the right side and out the vent. A couple years ago I put an exhaust fan in the compartment right above the back of the fridge, so this side vent was not doing anything. I'm theorizing that the hot air that gets trapped on both sides and top of the fridge also conducts itself into the fridge through the insulation, so I put a couple layers of some foil-sided bubblepack on the top and both sides. It's not a lot of insulation but keeping the hot air out has to help.
I also improved the flow to my exit fan. There was a smaller opening in a shelf that I was able to open up a couple inches.
The other thing I realized is that you can trick the fridge to stay in cooling mode longer if you keep cold food AWAY from the temperature sensor on the evaporator. I also took a room temperature "blue ice" pack and put it right on that sensor and the freezer would get down to 0 degrees F and stay there until that blue ice pack froze. That also allowed the fridge to get a few degrees cooler too.. down to about 35.. the lower shelf was still about 40 though. This is even with a cabin temperature of about 80 degrees F. If I ever get air conditioning installed that fridge would probably be just fine even on the low shelf!
First, I insulated the cabinet. I probably need some drawings to illustrate this better, but the stock enclosure on my boat (83 3607) leaves about one inch of dead space around the left and right sides and about 1.25 inches above the top. This is behind the teak trim, which is cut to just barely fit the fridge. On the right side of the fridge, Carver installed a 2"x10" vent, so the heat rising from the compressor and condenser would travel up the back and around the right side and out the vent. A couple years ago I put an exhaust fan in the compartment right above the back of the fridge, so this side vent was not doing anything. I'm theorizing that the hot air that gets trapped on both sides and top of the fridge also conducts itself into the fridge through the insulation, so I put a couple layers of some foil-sided bubblepack on the top and both sides. It's not a lot of insulation but keeping the hot air out has to help.
I also improved the flow to my exit fan. There was a smaller opening in a shelf that I was able to open up a couple inches.
The other thing I realized is that you can trick the fridge to stay in cooling mode longer if you keep cold food AWAY from the temperature sensor on the evaporator. I also took a room temperature "blue ice" pack and put it right on that sensor and the freezer would get down to 0 degrees F and stay there until that blue ice pack froze. That also allowed the fridge to get a few degrees cooler too.. down to about 35.. the lower shelf was still about 40 though. This is even with a cabin temperature of about 80 degrees F. If I ever get air conditioning installed that fridge would probably be just fine even on the low shelf!