Jack Webb wrote: Braden,
Have you used your Engel yet? I'm curious how it performs, when compared to a standard boat fridge. Drifter has an Adler Barbour unit that works fairly well off shore power... just not sure yet how it will do for extended cruising.
One of my restoration projects was to recover all of the counter-tops with new Formica. In retrospect, I wish now that I had removed the counter-top and and checked the insulation. If I can still find Formica to match what I replaced, that project may get added to my to-do list.
Jack
We have had the Engel just sitting in the empty spot for a couple months now. It is plugged into one of the outlets and runs on shore power and wired directly into our dc panel for use on battery. We'll wire it directly to the ac side of the panel someday - but for now works fine plugged in.
It switches seamlessly between ac and dc and uses very little power. On the lower settings it freezes water without a problem, we have not turned it to the higher "freeze" settings, but I am sure it would put quite a deep freeze on whatever was in it. We read a ton of good reviews and saw them at the miami boat show for several years - just never pulled the trigger.
After we decided to purchase we looked into shipping and it turns out that the US distributor for engel is in Jupiter, FL. Right down the street from our house...so we picked up at the warehouse.
Recently, engel came out with a "drop-in" type of unit that might be a better bet, provided the dimensions would fit.
On the topic of formica - ours only covers the back portion of where the ice box was - so we didn't end up touching any of it. Like you, replacing that ugly yellow stuff is on our list. Did you end up applying the new stuff on top of the old or completely removing the old?
