Seafrost Tradewinds Engine Driven + 12V Combo
Just Imagine came with an old, Seafrost, engine-driven refrigeration unit which the previous owner told me was no good. I found after reinstalling the compressor on the engine that there was nothing wrong with it, and all it needed was leak repair and a bit of R-134 freon. It cooled the 9 cu ft box very efficiently.
The only problem with the engine-driven-only unit is that you need to run the engine before leaving the dock to cool it down and when you are docked for a long time, there is no easy way to cool the box without running the engine.
We noticed that there were two coils running through each of the two holding plates, so we invested in the Seafrost BD-12 add-on that runs on 12V. This is a great combination. (Seafrost sell the engine driven and 12V units as a combination called Tradewinds which is the same thing).
This works so well together and I would highly recommend it.
When we are plugged into shore power, the small 12V unit runs off the battery charger and we don't care about the 5 or 6 amps that it is drawing.
At anchor or when not plugged into shore power, we generally run the engine for about half an hour in the morning and and hour in the evening if we have not been motoring during the day. Our two large alternators quick recharge the batteries, and the powerful engine driven compressor quickly freezes the holding plates afterwhich the 12V thermostat does not need to kick in again for several hours.
Now that we have a solar panel, we can run the engine even less often.
The engine + 12 volt combination gives total redundancy as well, as they are totally separate units. If the 12 Volt unit should fail, it just means you need to run the engine driven more often, and vice versa if the engine driven unit fails, the 12 Volt will run most of the day, and you will need more battery charging (or more solar charging).
The 12 volt unit has only a fraction of the cooling power of the engine driven compressor. The 12 V unit needs to run most of the day, but the engine driven will do the same cooling in two 40 minute sessions, morning and evening.
Cleave at
Seafrost provides excellent technical support and can be reached at +1 (603) 868-5720 .
Howard [ Just Imagine ] 01-Jan-2008