Refrigeration

Today Tim was flying to the UK late afternoon so we only had the morning together and decided to first put some more gel-coat on the winch block and then try to get the refrigeration working. Tim suggested bets on whether it would work or not and I gave it a 50-50 chance of working.

So we set to replacing the 220 volt pump -- it's a water cooled system. Most fridge-freezers on land are air cooled, ie they pump heat out into the surrounding air. Water temperature can be cooler than air temperature, so on a boat it's more efficient to use water.

The pump had been wired in by the previous owner with just twisted wires taped up with insulating tape. Even for testing I used a terminal block!

The pump also had been located underneath the floor boards in the for'ard heads [toilet to the non-nautical folk]. Now the floor boards in the heads had a grating, so water can easily fall onto this pump. It's not a submersible pump, so its pretty dangerous. We will find a better place to locate it eventually. Somewhere in the engine room.

We connected up and turned on... and... the compressor started immediately. That wasn't a surprise I had turned it on for a few seconds before. After sorting out a water leak from the pump [one of the fittings broke] we left it on for about 15 minutes to see how it ran.

Both the fridge and the freezer got cold! So my 50-50 was a pessimistic outlook. We then tried it on the inverter. The compressor was not happy running on the inverter, so I switched back to shore power...

PHUT! And then all the power went off. The Sterling Power Automatic switch over unit went wrong... well... actually when I opened it up I could smell burning. Not happy with that. It appears that it somehow managed to connect both the shore power and the inverter together!

So Tim will be taking that back to the UK to return under warranty.

During the week I had also been painting the engine. Ken had remove the diesel pump and so I had wire brushed, painted with Kurust and then with two coats of Hammerite. The engine is beginning to look clean and cared for!

In the afternoon a friend popped by and we chatted and then I wired in the alarm. The alarm will be a general boat alarm, but specifically will be for the secondary bilge pump at the moment.

If the primary bilge pump goes wrong, or cannot cope and the water level rises 15cm above the float switch for the primary bilge pump the float switch for the secondary will cut in starting a secondary pump. Since this is an emergency situation then an alarm will sound to tell us something has gone wrong and needs fixing.