At 09:35 AM 6/30/2006 -0700, Michael Elliott wrote:
>a clue about how much electricity it would take the circulate the water
>and blow air through the little radiator, but if it is on par with the
>2.5 amps it takes to run a Norcold, and lets the Dometic pull a delta-T
>greater than 40F, it could be useful.

I'd be quite surprised if it achieved a better delta-T overall,
though it could certainly move the reference point to a more
favorable location than the inside of a closed van. And don't be
totally shocked if it makes the thing stop working entirely:  I was
quite impressed back in the day to find that adding a boxer fan to
pull chunks of air out of that space caused a definite deterioration
in performance.  Wouldn't surprise me a bit to find that there's a
definite delta-T necessary between those two sets of fins in the back.

As to the 2.5 amps, that's a 1.5 orders-of-magnitude increase over
the intermittent 60 ma of the stock setup and to me is out of the
question for off-grid use, not to mention the noise.  As originally
constituted and with all its faults this fridge would run 2-4 weeks
on one charge of propane, without running down the battery.   Of
course I feel the same way about the Norcold.

>I toss this idea out with a $5 reward to the first guy that can show me
>where waterboxing the Dometic in a Vanagon application has been
>suggested before.

Well, I stopped short of suggesting using the water tank as a heat
reservoir for my Peltier idea.  I submit that in the half-assed
spirit of this whole discussion. <g>

david

--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage," '85 GL "Poor Relation"