Refrigeration Newbie question

[sailliny]

Hope everyone had a nice 4th on the water.
My question is how long can you run your refrigerator on battery (assume that batteries are up to speed, and on anchor with no means of recharging). And you want to be able to start your motor after the time.
Other question would be how long do you need to run your engine to recharge batteries?
Would it help to have a block of ice in the refrigerator ?

 

[Witzend]

Lots of variables here:
Condition of batteries
Output of alternator
What temp you set the refrig at. How often are you opening up the rerfrig. Did you just load it up full of warm beer.
What other loads do you have active, IE anchor light/cabins lights/other
You should always have a seperate start battery isolated from house loads.

 

[Tom J]

We run our refrig for at least two nights at anchor, without running the engine. That's after we parrelled the two house batteries, and installed a separate start battery. We run the engine for at least an hour to get a third night at anchor. Our only load on the batteries is the refrig and one or two cabin lights. I just istalled two cabin fans, so that could change things a bit. A block of ice sure couldn't hurt. Haven't tried that yet. If your'e running the original battery setup in the 310, you'll have to run the refrig and whatever on one battery, and save the other for strarting. Very inefficient, and the diesel doesn't really crank over very well with the deep-cycle battery. You might only get one night at anchor on the single house battery, without running your engine.
Good luck!