Refrigeration on a CD 36

[Ed Kelliher]

I have a Cape Dory 36 and am looking for some ice box conversion (to a marine refrigeration unit), help. My fuel tank is in the forward end of the port locker. There are two batteries, a 24 and a 27, in the starbord locker along with the hot water heater. The boat has a Perkins 4-108 engine. There are water tanks under the port, starbord, quarter, and forward berths.
* If you install an engine driven compressor, where do you mount the compressor? Does the compressor require its own belt?
* If you install a DC system, what do you need for batteries and where do you put them?



ekelliher@NSES.com

[Bill Michne]

I have a Cape Dory 36 and am looking for some ice box conversion (to a marine refrigeration unit), help. My fuel tank is in the forward end of the port locker. There are two batteries, a 24 and a 27, in the starbord locker along with the hot water heater. The boat has a Perkins 4-108 engine. There are water tanks under the port, starbord, quarter, and forward berths.
* If you install an engine driven compressor, where do you mount the compressor? Does the compressor require its own belt?
* If you install a DC system, what do you need for batteries and where do you put them?

Ed:
I have a CD 40 with a 4-108 and Sea Frost system. I have two compressors. One on the engine, has its own belt, and freezes the block in about 20 minutes at 2000 rpm as I'm motoring down the river to the main (Chesapeake) bay. The battery system requires about 12 hours to freeze the block. I have two 27 batteries in parallel for each bank and they don't seem to run down all that much in this application, although I usually charge every day or every other day at the worst. Aside from the engine compressor you can pretty much install things where you want, but keep your refrigerant lines as short as possible. This might relocating your batteries. Good luck.

Bill Michne
CD 40 Mintaka

[Della]

We bought an Alder Barbour DC refrigeration for our 1986 CD36 and we are putting the compressor in the port locker. We have the hot water heater and two batteries on a shelf and just aft of the two batteries is where we plan to put the compressor. We are also using heatshield to line the icebox to reduce the engery requirments. You can check out their website: www.heatshieldmarine.com. This stuff is really neat, NASA uses it to line the tiles on the space shuttle. We also are adding two batteries and splitting the house and start batteries. Using gel cell for the start and a trickle charger for the others. If you would like any other information you can email my husband Charlie direct or call him at 252-441-5523.

Good luck,
Della



svladybug@msn.com

[Jerry Kimble]

CD 36 #086. I installed a Sea Frost engine compressor system and a Sea frost AC unit that uses the same cooling unit in the ice box. The compressor is mounted below the Alt. I also upgraded the Alt to 90 amps. The braketing was guit simple and yes the compressor has its own belt.

I also took out all of the ice box insullation and built it up to 4" all around. I found a great deal of unused space in the ice box area upon removal of the existing insullation and thus we lost very few cubic in. I actually was able to set in the ice box and build up the new insullation. the drain at the bottom was also removed. While in New Zeland, I had a new lid made that provided much more insulation than the stock lid. I'm very pleasd with the system. It served us well through out the South Pacific. The compressor works on a timer and I ran it about 20min, every other day while charging the batteries. It has been installed for 10 years and has been maint. free. The AC unit is very handy while pluged in at the dock, it works on a thermostat.

Jerry Kimble
408-559-7169



jkimble@mcn.org