Refridgerated fish hold

[Zarco]

Built a system on a friends 50' sportfisher. Seems easy enough on a billfisher. Tossing the thought around? Just down size what we did on the big boat? Circulating brine spray system. Plan on adding a genset so power should not be an issue. Any comments? Anyone done it?

[Al Gagnon]

Previous owner of my boat installed coils. He used R-12. I am surprised the system even worked. Coils were piped incorrectly. lPressure control was not operational and did not have any type of temp control. He said it worked great. I removed portions of the copper coils and converted to R-22. I do not use it because I need to add a suction accumilator so I do not wash the oil out of the compressor. I think crushed ice or cubed ice in a kill bag below deck works great. I quess it depends on how much fish you are going to catch and how long you are going to be out. A few years ago we caught 9 albicore and used all of our ice up and did not have enough for about 2 fish so we rotated the fish and kept the fish that were not iced under wet gunny sacks. Just tried to keep the inner portions of the fish cold and keep the outer cool by spraying down. Took about 5 hours to get in and all the fish were great. Let me know if you need some help with install questions. My trade is in HVAC.

[Professor]

Fish quality is not all that good with spray brine. That’s why most of the long range boats have gone to RSW systems for a lot of their fish.

[Zarco]

Previous owner of my boat installed coils. He used R-12. I am surprised the system even worked. Coils were piped incorrectly. lPressure control was not operational and did not have any type of temp control. He said it worked great. I removed portions of the copper coils and converted to R-22. I do not use it because I need to add a suction accumilator so I do not wash the oil out of the compressor. I think crushed ice or cubed ice in a kill bag below deck works great. I quess it depends on how much fish you are going to catch and how long you are going to be out. A few years ago we caught 9 albicore and used all of our ice up and did not have enough for about 2 fish so we rotated the fish and kept the fish that were not iced under wet gunny sacks. Just tried to keep the inner portions of the fish cold and keep the outer cool by spraying down. Took about 5 hours to get in and all the fish were great. Let me know if you need some help with install questions. My trade is in HVAC.

Mainly thinking about 2-3 day trips. That would be a lot of ice. Plus the cool factor would be awesome.

[Al Gagnon]

The guy I bought my boat from used 1000 lbs of crushed ice. He would run to the Butterfly on friday night, fish sat. morning till dark and run back to SD. He still had ice in the fish holds and would sell to the markets. He used a automobile AC unit (approx 4 ton)to pump the refrigeration to keep the compartments cold. He could hold about 3,000 lbs of fish. He had two areas of fish hold. One in the back and one in the cabin under the deck.

[Zarco]

The more I'm thinking about it the more the rsw system makes sense. Probably a little easier to do. Any idea what size compessor I'll need? A friend has a few to choose from.

[Heron]

I also have an interest in a refrigeration system. I was looking into an icemaker for awhile. I could not figure out where to put it. I have a generator but also like the idea of a engine driven compressor. John said he thought my D4 had provision for mounting a compressor. I would like to at least have the ability to cool an area/ice chest or make ice for an extended trip. Seems like we never bring enough ice. Do you guys have a better source than grocery store for $5 bags of ice? What is RSW? I am hoping this thread will continue and we might be able to get a prototype going to test.

[Professor]

I get my ice at the San Diego Ice Company near the sports arena. 40# bags of cubes and blocks up to 300#. If I need to stretch the ice for a six day I put some dry ice in and I don’t get any melt until the end of day two.

[Heron]

Yale,
I wondered where they moved to . I believe they used to be on Market street. What does a 40# bag cost and what hours are they open? The dry ice is a great idea.

[Professor]

http://www.sandiegoiceco.com/

[Heron]

I called San Diego Ice:
Open M-Sat 8:30 AM-5:00PM
40 lb bag is $5, 25lb block is $4