Fridge Upgrade (Waeco CRX50)

My main reason for upgrading my fridge was due to the fact I had established a very effective Solar Install. It seemed silly not to take advantage of all of that free energy to power a compressor fridge. This type of technology is far more effective than the stock fridge at doing it’s job. It actually has a dedicated freezer draw which is great for Ice Lollys on a hot day 😉 .

Anyways, on to the installation: I wanted this to sit just below the slide out chopping board as I wanted to maximize the depth of the draw I am going to fit below it. So after some careful measurements i set to positioning a couple of pieces of angle aluminum to sit the shelf on. The shelf was then made by two pieces of marine ply. The first was the full width and depth required to seat the fridge on. The second was a slimmer piece with two holes drilled into them where the two front feet of the fridge will locate. This will stop the fridge from sliding about as there are no real fixings as such everything is having to be bespokely made. The two pieces were glued and screwed together and painted grey.

After this i needed to find something that would provide padding either side of the fridge to wedge it in place. I wanted this to be something that wasn’t going to get affected by damp or humidity, but provide a nice gentle compression on either side of the fridge. After some time i decided that kneeling pads would be just the right depth to bridge the gap (the sort of thing you get for gardening). These cost me £1 each from Wilko . These were sprayed black at the front and they were screwed to the inside of the fridge compartment (two screws at the front and 1 at the back. each screw head had a large washer on it to pull the padding in and I tightened the screws up enough so that they sunk in and didn’t catch the fridge when being slotted in. The heads were also covered with a piece of insulation tape to be ion the safe side.

Here you can see the fridge in place:

From here on it was just about trimming the surrounding area. I brought angle aluminum from B & Q and cut and drilled to size. I had to make some bespoke brackets to mount the whole lotso it wasn’t straight forward. However, i’m pretty happy with the end result

This has then been connected directly to the leisure battery with a 5 amp fuse in line. I really need to get an additional fuse board fitted as there are way too many connectors tacked on to the battery at the moment. I will seek to have this done professionally to get things tidied up
PS. There is a gap either side of the fridge of about 5mm. The finished photo here doesn’t show that and is a little miss leading. I feel this is enough of a gap to let air circulate and stop any rattles through vibrations.

Slide out Chopping Board

Slide Out Cutlery drawer