Thursday, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:56
The main difference between the engel and the waco is the motor/compressor.
Engel is owned by swafuji and they make their own unique patented motor........waco is a box fitted with a danfos motor/ compressor.....many other fridges use a danfos motor.
the engel motor may be a little more efficient, rugged and capable of tolerating running off angle and on bumpy roads better, but the danfos motor can achieve a much better temperature difference.
the temperature difference is the difference between the temperature of the outside air and the temperature that can be achieved inside the fridge.
Run as a fridge the engel has enough temp dif to cope with almost any outside air temp you may encounter, but run as a freezer in hot areas it will be running very close to its temperature difference and will become very inefficient.
both the engel and waco have quite poor insulation and thus people report improved performance from the use of covers.
there are a couple of smaller fridge builders that graft a danfos motor onto a pretty decent esky.....they may not be as pretty but thay are far more efficient than either the engel or the waco
Remember as soon as you say the word FREEZE, you at least quadruple the energy consumption of your fridge.
So may people seem to want to drag big fridges and freezers about, there are lots of us that don't think that is very clever.
Remember that -15 is the recomended maximum temperature for a freezer.
we have seen above people claiming that they are running 80 litre freezers on 80 watt pannels with 100 amp hour batteries....sorry folks you are dreaming.
read further and they are running the freezer
well above the recomended temperature, running the vehicle to charge or one way or another it simply is not keeping up.
If you want to keep up with a 40 liter fridge reliably on a continuous basis and without flogging your battery you need at least 160 watts of pannels and 200 AH of battery. run as a freezer ( particularly if you are feezing down) and it will no longer be long term reliable and will struggle to keep up, particularly in hot overcast weather.
For those who think their feezer is keeping up...remember it is possible to keep food frozen (not down to -15) in a
well prepared good quality icebox for 5 days easy...and that is a total loss system.
Realy.....ask ya self are you running a freezer or are you simply running a slow defroster.
cheers
AnswerID:
490713
Follow Up By: rumpig - Thursday, Jul 12, 2012 at 16:52
Thursday, Jul 12, 2012 at 16:52
i must be dreaming, because i can keep food frozen in the freezer section for weeks at a time with our set up mentioned above and have done so numerous times. yes the vehicle gets driven at stages and would help charge the battery some, but it's done whilst we tour around looking at stuff, because that's the whole point of going on holidays for us, not sitting around in one spot doing nothing.
i've just asked myself... it's a freezer not a slow defroster, as it keeps our food frozen.
does our freezer go below the magical number you have quoted...maybe it does, i've never looked and i don't really care. what we do works for us, we've had the fridge since 2006, toured lots of the country with a heap of food frozen in the frrezer section and eaten weeks later on the trip and never gotten sick, so obviously it's working for us.
cheers
FollowupID:
766117