Improving an Evakool fridge!

After having two 40L Engels (1 for fridge, 1 for freezer) for some time, I was not overly impressed with my new 82L Evakool . The 32L freezer side worked great, it pulled down to temp very quickly and did all that was expected. My issue was with the fridge side!

Being 50L and with only the “spill” cold air from the freezer to cool it, well it just didn’t perform like my 40L Engels that had the condenser wrapped around the fridge compartment. Some quick measurements showed 2°C on the freezer side yet 15°C on the far side. After 24 hours, both sides were down to 2°C. While these measurements were made on an Evakool, I would imagine it would be very similair for any combo type unit with only one compressor.

So then I tried removing the dividing panel between the fridge/freezer. This worked great, in that the time to get down to temperature was significantly reduced, but in the morning a can of soft drink had exploded – guess it was too close to the freezer coils :(

Back in went the divider and on went the thinking cap. Years ago I had added a 12v computer fan to a Two Zone compartment I have on one of my Engels. It too had the issue of not keeping things cool, but the fan had solved that problem. However, if I simply left a fan pulling freezing air across, I would soon have more exploding cans. So I obtained from Jay Car a temperature switch kit (~$25) and wired this up to a 12v fan. I set the fan to come on at 6°C and it goes off at ~2°C.







Now when I turn the Evakool on, the freezer pulls down as quickly as ever, but now the fridge side gets cooler much quicker and stays at a more even temperature. As the fan is switched off at ~2°C, there is no “overcooling” issue, well no more than with the original design anyway. And this also keeps the additional fan power consumption right down, not that the 200mA was noticeable in the first place.



So now I have an Evakool fridge/freezer that I am more than happy with. While I did this modification on an Evakool, it would work just as well on any combo unit where the fridge side relies on the cold air spilling over from the freezer – the Evakool is not unique in this design issue.

Cheers

Captain