PDQ OWNERS FORUM

What do you guys have in that deck locker where the aux fuel tank is located? Mine is essentially empty -- we keep deck chairs and the spare backup anchor there.

hi russ,

i assume picture is taken from inside the locker over the front fuel tank. is there a reason you put fan in there sucking air out as opposed to in behind fridge blowing air out?

Mac - We store all of our lines in that locker.

John - Not sure what you mean. Are you asking why I drilled the hole at that location or why I mounted the fan from that side of the partition? If the latter, it just seemed easier.

Since I got a temperature activated variable speed fan, I'm going to install inside the fridge "hole" on the backside of the Aux fuel locker.

hi russ,

it appears that the fan is "sucking" the air out of fridge area and into fuel tank area. i was just wondering why you didn't mount it in fridge compartment. not sure whether or not it would work better.

Russ,

Could you clarify how you wired your exhaust fan? What fan is it? Is it on 24/7 or did you install a switch or a thermally activated switch?

Mac,

I used a common 4”? pancake/computer fan from Amazon. In addition to 12 volts, I looked for one with ball bearings & the best rated/most expensive (they are so cheap, the cost difference is tiny).

I hooked mine up to a terminal strip mounted below the fridge which powers my new digital thermostat, etc. I was going to install a toggle switch, but decided not to bother as the power usage is so tiny & these fans are good for a few years of continuous use.

For your part of the country, a toggle or thermal switch would probably make sense. For us, the good/bad is that our travels between CT & the southern Bahamas, the temp is most commonly in the mid-70’s - mid-80’s with higher cabin temp on sunny days - our poor fridge needs all possible help!

Thanks, Russ. That is exactly the route I'm heading - a good quality pancake fan. Given our cooler temps, we wanted it to: a) be thermally activated; b) have an On/Off switch for the winter months; and c) able to do a manual override to increase / decrease the speed.

Just trying to manage operating expectations on our novacool fridge as the “crew” is going crazy! We have a 2013 model on our new to us ‘05 boat so the fridge is “relatively” new. We keep it defrosted and allow for airflow by not packing it to the gills, but still struggle to keep temps below 50 as measured by a thermometer on the upper shelf of the fridge door. We have been plugged into shorepower every night so far. It IS hot in Florida right now, but should we expect better fridge cooling? If so, what’s the secret?

Nick & Barb,

This can be a very involved question/answer! Your Nova Kool freezer/fridge is not the “ideal” unit, with it’s single compressor attempting to keep both compartments at proper temps, with minimal insulation thrown in. I’ve outlined some things I’ve done here:
https://esc-pod.com/pdq-34-upgrades-mod ... -upgrades/

These have helped. Right now, we’re hauled out in Deltaville, VA where yesterday the interior temp was 97 & the exterior temp was 89. Amazingly, the fridge remained below 39.

Feel free to e-Mail me at rrlr@att.net & I’ll help if I can.

I completely agree with Russ’ assessment and his modifications. I just completed a similar set of modifications to our Nova-cool fridge (other than the external thermometer).

My focus was to decease amp loss on the wiring, increase air flow and reduce the ambient temp in the fridge compartment. Secondarily, I wanted to create a bit of exhaust for the galley. We found a tiny circuit controller board that was configured to allow manual ON/OFF and an AUTO mode that is driven by a thermistor sensor to increase fan velocity automatically depending on the ambient heat level in the fridge compartment. I’ll post some pics soon.

Here's pics of our fridge exhaust fan project. The controller is based on a nifty Qianson DC 12V 1A Automatic PC CPU Fan Temperature Control Speed Controller Case Fan Governor <https://is.gd/ggqorz>. This DC12V governor can be auto controlled according to the ambient temperature of the fan speed. A techie friend set it up so we also have manual control. The fan selected was a Noctua "NF P12 redux-1700 PWM" <https://is.gd/gWlAGt>. it is designed for pressure demanding applications such as CPU or radiator cooling with industry grade SSO bearing, over 150.000 hours MTTF rating and full 6 years manufacturer’s warranty. It is VERY quiet.

in response to nick's problems, we had trouble this winter. as russ points out in his webpage there are many things to help performance but in our case the root cause of our problem was a corroded connector on the dc power coming in. sprayed with corrosion block and things returned to normal. this fall we'll be installing a couple of mods per russ's tips.

Wow, what great solutions! Thank you so much. Here’s hoping Duetto’s solution does the trick, but I fear an escalation is in my future. Great guidance here. By the way, we saw Duetto on the hard last week when we passed through River Forest.....very nice boat! We’re working hard to get Catsaway as bright and shiny as every other PDQ we’re seeing these days. Believe it or not, we’ve been next to different PDQ’s on the dock for four nights in a row as we head up the AICW and they all look great. Sheesh, there’s a lot of surface area to polish haha. Thank you again for the help and will update as solution evolves.

Before starting this project, I am wondering why no one has put the fan in the bulkhead into the genset locker forward. That locker is vented so that the genset can breath and it is much larger. I have not gotten into this yet so maybe that bulkhead is too hard too reach?

Tim
M/V Expatriate