Father Christmas has Come Early to Hadar!

For some time now we have been thinking about adding a small freezer to increase our frozen food storage. We had 2 ideas forthcoming.

1. To purchase a 240v AC chest freezer to go in the hold. This would be the cheapest option with chest freezers from as little as £119.99, with a capacity of 170litres but would need to be run off of the invertor.
2. To purchase a small 12v DC upright freezer to go in the galley in the place where the tumbler dryer is, this being the expensive option with prices starting from £409, with a capacity of 40litres.

We have weighed up all the options and pros and cons for a few months now. We were edging towards the 12v option. We have been very impressed with the Shoreline fridge/freezer we have had since Hadar was built. The price is the drawback, but the advantages are that with a mains freezer if the invertor fails then there is no backup, at least with the 12v version it will run off the batteries, and we have 2 ways of charging the batteries, generator or engine, so at least we have a back up system with the 12v version. Jo was also concerned that even a small chest freezer would be too large for our requirements, plus the hold gets extremely hot in the summer, which would not be ideal for keeping a freezer in.

My original concept for the design of Hadar was that the majority of electrical equipment would run directly from 12v. The main exception to this would be the washing machine, which although we mostly run it whilst running the generator the invertor is large enough to handle it if needed.

With all this in mind we recently decided to have a look at one of the small freezers in Midland Chandlers to see if it would be large enough inside for what we needed.

So this morning we visited Midland Chandlers to have a look at one. We walked around the appliance area but not one was in sight, so we asked if they had one in stock. Fortunately they did, just not on display. It was wheeled out and unpacked. It wasn’t the type advertised on their website, and apparently a previous customer had ordered one through them, and when it was sold to them, the company sent through another, which was rather handy for us. It is a Philco PHCT36FZ. Jo reckoned it was large enough internally for what we needed, so we did some discount negotiation and bought it. I also bought some cable and a connector block to be able to install it.

We needed to get one of our trolleys to carry it on, so we returned to the boat, and had lunch. After lunch we then moved the tumbler dryer into the hold, and I fitted the new section of cable from the existing fridge/freezer to where the new freezer would go so it was already for us to manoeuvre the new freezer straight in once we got it back to the boat. With all the preparations completed we returned to Midland Chandlers with our trolley and picked up our new freezer and returned it to the boat. It was connected, fitted and working in no time.

It is now sitting above the washing machine where the tumble dryer used to be. This was the best photo I could get under the circumstances.

We like Christmas presents like this, even if it is a few days early.

Keith.