Dual Zone Fridge/Freezer or Standard?

Mark,
Pat and I were faced with the same problem recently, we caravan and had a 60lt. engle as well as the van fridge but were short on freezer space. What we did was sell the engle and bought two smaller ones, that way we can have them running on all fridge, all freezer or half and half. It is more expensive but very much more versatile and there are times when we need just a small fridge for short trips without the van, we are on one of those at present and I feel that we have made the right choice.
Cheers for now, Nev.

Mark,

I bought a second hand 60l Engel and when funds permit I'm going to get a Twozone as well. That way I can use the Engel section as a freezer and the Two Zone as the fridge.
Second hand Engel are well worth the money as I got mine with the Slide for well below the RRP of just the fridge.

Cheers Kev

I took a 60l engel combi up the Cape last year - it performed fine. The major issue I have with it is the cleaning - the divider is fixed and very difficult to get dried blood etc out of. The lids move around on the hinges which gave me the bleep s, and being thin sheet metal, the body is susceptable to knocks. The fridge basket also rubs on the body, leaving black rub marks everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind the thing - just giving you a critical review. The only other thing I didn't like was its physical dimensions - try carrying one on your own - empty.
I have since purchased a 60lt evacool and can't be happier - it's external dimensions are much smaller than the engel, and it cleans very easily. The body being fibreglass is tougher, and does not require one of those stupid covers - My engel one lasted me one trip before the zips were stuffed from a couple of light impacts, thus requiring surgery on the thing to extricate a beer!!!!!!
The main thing with the evacool is that I can vary the volume of the freezer depending on what I'm taking. ie at the start of the trip with heaps of precooked frozen baby food the freezer can be made larger,(I use the fridge basket from the smaller 40l model in this case) then as frozen supplies run out, the entire thing can be run as a fridge, and barely ticks over. Conversely, fishing at Fraser, I can run it entirely as a freezer to bring home the fillets :), and I can hose it out when I get home. Hope this helps with your search.
C.J.

Hi Mark,
Unless you need ice cream or ice cubes for your evening cocktails, or need to freeze your fishing catch, you'd be better off just running a normal fridge, and keep your meat in vacuum packs (cryovac), sourced either direct from the butcher or diy with a machine.
The added spin-off is that you will use a lot less battery power this way. As long as you keep the fridge around 2-3 deg, the meat will keep for up to 6 weeks (chicken excepted), and the sealed packs means no blood swilling around the bottom of the fridge.
Gerry

Thanks for all of your responses, I appreciate the first hand feedback.

We thought of the idea of using 2 smaller fridges a while ago and certainly haven't dismissed it either. We're contemplating a 6 month trip with kids and thought a big combi would be the go, but when we return the option of just taking a small fridge for small trips makes sense.

We borrowed a 40L Engel for a recent 2 week trip away and we thought it would be too small for anything longer, we even struggled with it on that small trip.

We are also looking at upgrading to a 2nd hand Trak Shak so the answer for us might be there. If it comes with the factory fridge/s the problem may be solved for us. If not...

Thanks again,

Mark.

G'day Markymark,

Yes the evakool is an overflow fridge when used as a dual fridge/freezer. To give you some idea of the efficiency, the thermostat dial runs from 1 - 10. I run mine on 4. This puts the freezer at approx -16 c and the fridge at about 2 c. I don't care what anyone says about power usage, I like cold beer.

If you look up the old 4wd monthly tests on fridges you'll see that the evacool was very close to most of the fridge only units in amp draw, and the testers had the thing running as a combo to keep one bottle cool in the fridge!

If you only want to keep one bottle cool, turn the divider around, run the freezer as a fridge (power setting 1), and put the bottle in there - try doing that with any other fridge on the market - youve just turned 60 litres of air into about 15 - now check the power draw.

Just on the two fridge deal (1 fridge 1 freezer) - My old man runs 2 waeco 35's without tooo many issues. They do draw a fair bit more than a single, but obviously offer redundancy etc.
The waeco's would appear to draw a bit more on startup (who's doesn't?), but what happens is that they stop cycling prematurely when running on the same circuit due to one trying to start while the other is already running etc, and the computer thinks the battery is too low. Proof of this is the old man starting his car in the middle of the night and stopping it immediately. This gives enough current for both fridges to restart together without the computers tripping over. Just a little something to think about.

C.J.