On 7/3/2007 12:10 PM neil wrote:

> Good questions.
>
> Yah I guess so. LP useage would mean it's an asorption refer. Can't
> imagine just how inefficient it would be to run a compressor off of
> LP!
>
> ( LP burns to heat a boiler, the steam is used to drive an engine
> which would turn the compressor)

Exactly. I proposed the same thing a couple months ago. A separate
trailer with a big iron and brass boiler, great dripping rubber hoses
bringing live steam into a compressor -- or a steam-powered generator. A
steam radiator under the bench seat. Nineteenth-century technology -- today!

> IF the 3163 was designed after the 182, then one could safely assume
> that Norcold would have studied the Dometic and learned from Dometics
> "mistakes".

Yeah maybe so. A refrigeration engineer would know this stuff, I reckon.
Anyone know such a person?

Ammonia-water absorption refrigeration has been around for a long time.
Used during America's Civil War. So it's not new tech. I dunno how much
more refinement has occurred in the last 50 years or so, but I bet that
if the Dometic is not as good a refrigerator as the ammonia-water cycle
is capable of, it's due to manufacturing or budgetary constraints, not
lack of knowledge about to make an ammonia-water absorption refrigerator.

We need test results!

* BTW, Theroux's "Mosquito Coast" is about a fellow who takes his family
to the Mosquito Coast of the Honduras and builds a large ammonia-based
ice making machine.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
KG6RCR