how long does it take for an electric marine refrigerator to cool down on avg?

[gerard143]

Thinking of adding a new electric 12v marine refrigerator on my boat. Curious... how long do these things take to cool down empty? I was watching a youtube vid of an RV one and it was lucky to cool down much more then 15 degrees per hour.

I was hoping it would be much faster and I could skip grabbing ice before every trip out. I trailer this boat and its not going to be on shore power. Its more like a hit the water, fire up the fridge and run it off batteries when the motor is off deal. No generator. But if they are really this slow to cool down then a refrigerator isn't going to cut it.

 

[mr 88]

Most marine fridges do not have the insulation that a cooler has, so it runs quite a bit. There designed to fit in a tight cut out. If your talking about a boat under 21' then stick with the cooler. IF over 21 you could hook it up to 110 in your driveway and leave it on all week long so your not lugging stuff back and forth,then when you hit the road switch it over to 12vdc. Items will stay cold that way as the contents will radiate cold. But if your just throwing beverages in there for a day or two freeze up some Gatorade containers and put them in the cooler,you will have cold water to drink and it will last longer than cubes.

 

[GA_Boater]

One thing to help the fridge cool faster is to always load it with pre-cooled drinks and so on. The cold stuff will help drop the air temp and the fridge won't be working as hard to cool warm stuff.

 

[crazy charlie]

Make sure you have 2 battery system with switch.Plug fridge in full with the goodies the night before.Will cool much quicker on household current and slower on battery power.Make certain to ONLY use 1 battery while out on the water with fridge running.

 

[tpenfield]

Cooler and ice would be good for you. 12V fridge won't cool down very fast and will kill your battery if you leave it on while anchored, etc.

 

[82rude]

get a cooler like me, 190 cans of suds plus ice .

 

[GA_Boater]

get a cooler like me, 190 cans of suds plus ice .

That's a decent start! LOL

 

[JimS123]

Don't know about a "marine" unit but my RV unit (12 volt powered by a 120 v converter) takes several hours to cool to fridge temp. it goes a little faster if I run it on propane. Doesn't matter if its empty or full of pre-cooled stuff.

 

[JoLin]

We rely primarily on the cooler- our Coleman Extreme works very well when we prime it with ice the night before. I do keep drinks in the fridge for when I'm at the dock working on the boat. I keep condiments in there too so we always have them aboard, Away from the dock I turn the fridge down halfway to conserve battery power. The fridge gets loaded up more when we take a week-long outing. It can be less convenient to get ice, and we have shore power available to power the fridge.

Overall, the fridge is nice to have but its utility is limited. If the boat hadn't come with it I probably wouldn't have added one.

My .02

 

[hemi rt]

Whether RV or Marine, the fridges work exactly the same. The 12 volt part of the fridge is designed to keep the fridge cold once it is down to its' operating temp. They were never designed to take the fridge from outside temps down to a cold temp. Most of the fridges were originally designed as propane fridges and work best on propane, then 110 volt and finally 12 volt. now the thermal fridges work on a different principal and will work better on 12 volts but they do take a lot of power to work properly. if you are runnig on 12 volts you should be running on a battery/s that are remote from your starting battery when the engine is off.

 

[frantically relaxing]

I'm considering getting a pair of these-
IF they work half as good as they claim, pre-cooling the interior with ice the day before should make them work nicely...

 

[JimS123]

The 12 volt part of the fridge is designed to keep the fridge cold once it is down to its' operating temp. They were never designed to take the fridge from outside temps down to a cold temp.

Well, that's not exactly true. If it wouldn't bring it to cold temp, what are you supposed to do - keep it cold all the time?

Funny thing is that they work better in warm, temps. If we open the RV in 90 degree Summer it cools down pretty quick. OTOH, if we start up when its below freezing already it takes an hour or 2 longer.

The other off thing is that ours has a freezer attached. The freezer freezes sold as a rock before the fridge part reaches the "normal" fridge temp.

Once it reaches temp it maintains for days with little 12V DC required.

 

[QBhoy]

Bit of a loaded question...depends where the fridge is, what type, it’s age and efficiency really.
Proper compressor type units are very good, but knock lumps out of the battery in most cases.
These days I have a smaller day boat with no fitted fridge. Having spent years wasting my time with cheap plug in 12v cool bags and boxes...I decided to invest in a Weaco CF-11. What a thing this is. Capable of freezing it’s contents to -18oC in ambient temps of +20oC.l and anything in between. So efficient and even has battery safe cut outs at different settings, so the boat will always start. It’s so efficient and almost silent.

 

[frantically relaxing]

re: the 12 volt part of the fridge: I'm not sure of all brands but Danfoss and other AC/DC compressors are actually 12/24 volt units, a transformer is used to step down 110 voltage to run them... so as long as your batteries are capable of supplying the needed amperage the cooling is the same either way.

 

[gerard143]

awesome advice everyone thanks!