We did too
We have a GS 50 sloop and the refrigeration has taken up a LOT of our time. After a few false starts, lot of errors and a few things that looked good and just plain didn´t work, we finally have a system that seems to work well. It really depends on where you will be using the boat and how much you will be aboard. We live aboard and spend about 6-9 months a year a anchor, so we have to have a way to run the fridge-freezer on both dock power and while at anchor. We decided on using Cold Plates as they really do use less eclectricty as you run them about 2/3 hours a day and they stay frozen for the rest of the time. We have used 4 cold plates that have dual coils inside them so that we can use two seperate systems to cool them. We have an engine driven compressor for the time we are at anchor and a 110V system for the time we are at the dock. It really works great! With that said, our experiences with this darn thing for the last 4 years has been FAR from satisfactory-- there are 1000´s of refrigeration experts out there and we have found that most of them don´t know Squat! All of them charged a fortune!!! None of the junk worked!!! Grunert factory people were great!--their reps in the field were robbers, thieves and other things which were also bad-- not to mention being bad repairmen. There is a book which my wife finally bought for me and it makes this whole process understandable!!!! it is Do-it-yourself-boat-refrigeration by R.L Kollman and can be purchased from Blue Water Books and Charts in Ft. Lauderdale 1-800-942-2583, it cost $35.95 and has literally saves us Thousands of Dollars. Get the book, READ IT and then you will have a better understanding of what you need than most of the refrigeration people you have met or will meet! I have not shown it to a refreigeration man who did not want to make a copy of it-- it tell them to buy the darn book and let Mr. Kollmann make something for his knowledge. I really hope this helps you-- get the book or spend a few thousand for something that won´t work. good luck!
