In Part I I discussed how I reinsulated our fridge and freezer on Priorities. All the work on the fridge would have been a waste if I hadn’t improved our boat’s side door or its door seal. I’ll discuss the door improvements in this post, and the mechanical improvements in Part III of this series.
The first year I owned Priorities I noticed the seal on the fridge side door was deteriorating. While it was nice having both top and side access to our fridge, I was concerned by large amounts of ice and condensation that formed on the evaporator plate. Power consumption was very high, too, with the compressor running at 6A for about 75% of the time… about 100Ah per day.
The seal was a friction fit into a slot on the door. I contacted Catalina, who then referred me to Seaward, the door manufacturer, for replacement recommendations. This resulted in a dead end. I even tried to get a door gasket repairman out to make a replacement, and they didn’t think they could get one to attach to the slot in the door properly… another dead end.
Eventually I blocked the side door with styrofoam and didn’t use the side door for years. This meant I had to redesign the shelf for access to the lower section of the fridge, which I wrote about a few years ago.
Since I was doing a refit of my refrigeration system this past winter, I removed the door from the boat and decided I would try to modify this door frame to improve the seal and any insulation. The white exterior trim panel was cracked, too, so the door really needed some TLC.
Removing the door from the frame in the boat is straightforward. Removing the wood trim from the top and bottom reveals the hinge screw pins. The hinge screw pins are easily removed, in fact, I almost bent the hinge bracket after removing the first pin.
Once the door was off, I unscrewed the white plastic inner liner that forms the door shelves. At this point I realized I could install a completely new door seal via screws in this position, and it would still mate with the metal frame on the fridge.
The door was insulated with 1” of spray foam. Though the foam was in good condition, I replaced it with new 1” foamboard I already had.
The exterior trim panel slides out after unscrewing an edge piece. I considered various things to replace it with, and even considered a stainless steel sheet made for a home dishwasher, but eventually just painted a thin sheet of plywood since it was cheap and easy to get the right color.
I considered reinstalling the old interior shelves, but I wanted more insulation. We had grown used to not having shelves in our door, and I wanted to discourage crew from frequently opening the side door anyway. Using too much insulation interferes with the swing of the door, so I glued on one 2” thick piece of foamboard.
For an easy to clean, attractive finish, I glued fiberglass sheet “Glasliner” panels to the foam. I used Glasliner in Part I of this project, though I actually did the door before the fridge and freezer as a “test” for the bigger project. Home improvement stores sell plastic edge and corner trim pieces for use with Glasliner panels, and I used them on this door project. I found the trim pieces to be way too fussy and ugly, so for the fridge and freezer projects I used thickened epoxy fillets with better results.
After careful measuring, I purchased a custom door seal from coolergaskets.com. I found Profile 494 worked best, and attached it to the frame with screws. I also applied caulk between the door and seal to keep things more air tight.
After hanging the door on its frame again, I initially found the seal on the hinge edge would twist and deform excessively during closing. After manually straightening it when closing the door during the first day of use the seal eventually molds to the proper shape. As long as the door is normally kept closed, the seal won’t deform.
While the new seal is in a slightly different position than the old seal, the metal plate on the fridge still mates with the seal. This is good, since the magnets in the seal are attracted to the metal plate and help keep the seal closed. The metal plate extends farther into the refrigerated space than originally, though. Unfortunately metal conducts heat, so some losses probably occur from this, and we get some condensation on the bottom of this plate.
Having a working side door on our fridge gives us more usable space. I built a new, mostly solid shelf to subdivide the fridge into top and bottom sections. Frequently used stuff like drinks and snacks are kept on top, where less cold air is lost when opening the top lid. The bottom section is used less frequently, such as only during meal prep.
Now that our fridge door is overhauled it feels like our refrigerator is finally “normal” after so many years of it being blocked. The last step in our refit of the refrigeration system was replacement of the mechanical systems… which I’ll discuss in Part III.