Update SunDanzer 12 vt freezer

Hi All;
Just an update on the SunDanzer 13.9' chest freezer. I have had it almost 6 months now. Lives outside in the 90 year old barn.
Best purchase ever!  
I have 600 watts of solar panels I bought , on hand to supply the Sundanzer... Eventually I will install part of them but, NO RUSH! I hardly need them!
This freezer sips power! So little I hardly notice!
I have it stand alone , with its own pair of t-105 6 volt battery's.
I have a small high frequency trickle charger that I have plugged into the house power. We shut off the power every night.
I literally can't notice it using power.
The freezer has 5 settings on it. I have it set on #2,  Steady 8-9 F mid way up the freezer!

I delayed literally 20 years before buying this.... The old should have ,would have , could have...
If my Diamond brand Amish made 17' propane fridge/freezer ever decides to break... (had it 15 years now...) I will replace it with a SunDanzer 12 volt refrigerator!
They are that good!      So is the Diamond brand propane if you don't have good solar.  

I heard they are really expensive and with the price of solar going down for refrigeration it does make me wonder if I should go the route of taking an ac chest freezer and one of those over-control devices to turn it into a chest refrigerator.  I have to weigh the cost of upsizing solar and using ac appliances over these 12 volt solar or lpg alternatives.

Maybe sundanzers will eventually lower pricing as I have been wanting one for a while.

Thomas Rubino: Cool!
I'm curious, how much wattage does it pull a day?
And what are the bricks on the lid for?

Here is a link to the SunDanzer site with all the spec's.  https://sundanzer.com/product/dcf390/

I knew some observant soul would ask about the bricks...
I happen to have a good supply of heavy firebricks on hand...
Our old freezer had a warped lid and needed bricks on top...
Old habits die hard... only takes a moment to move them ...

I have not checked power usage myself.  It's too little.
Spec sheet says, an  ave. 800 watts a day @ 32C or around 90F
Or 67 amp hrs a day 12 vt @ 32 C

If you wanted, I could plug my kill a watt meter into the battery charger and see how much 110 vt I'm using to keep the 105's charged up.

thomas rubino wrote:

If you wanted, I could plug my kill a watt meter into the battery charger and see how much 110 vt I'm using to keep the 105's charged up.

Would you please? A 24 hour reading would make me very happy :)

Hi Denny;
Yes, the initial cost is high. That is why I delayed as long as I did. I wish I had not waited!
As far as A/C freezers. I did a lot of comparing and looking at spec sheets.

This freezer has almost 4" of insulation on all sides. 98% of A/C freezers  DO NOT say... only how great and "Energy Star" efficient they are...
I found one comparable A/C freezer , 4" of insulation, slightly smaller than the SunDanzer.... it was $2200 plus delivery... makes the SunDanzer at $1600 much more reasonable.

Anyone who has concerns about the power going out and thawing their thinly insulated A/C freezer, just might consider having this battery powered beauty in the barn, happily keeping the ice cream frozen!

For anyone else interested in the numbers...
Thomas's freezer used .18 KWH in 12 hours (he powers it down at night.) off his solar.
My freezer, similar size, old, used, with 2.5 inches of foam insulation added on all sides (held on with a camo ratchet strap, I'm so stylish!) in 22 hours used 2.08 KWH off the grid.

So was the price of his freezer high? Doing the math off that data, I'm probably buying one at some point. It's WAY cheaper.

:D

To clarify  for folks.  
Pearl's stylish freezer is connected to her house power.  Her number is a true reading of running power use.
My boring white freezer is running off of the 2 six volt battery's in series. The power use reading at my house is on the high frequency trickle charger keeping my battery's full.
I have 600 watts of solar panels I purchased to supply this freezer. The manufacturer suggested 270 watts was sufficient.
I never suspected that simply hooking up an efficient charger would do the job with my existing power system!

New update on my Sundanzer.
We have had this over a year now and could not be happier!  
I still have not put up the new solar panels! There is no rush, as this thing sips power!
My two T-105 six volt battery's do not even know they are working!

We are so happy, that this week after receiving our stimulus check .
We decided that one 12 vt freezer was just  not enough.
I went on line to buy a second.  Right away I noticed the price was up 50-100$.  Oh well its well worth it to us.
And then I discover that the factory is out of stock ! Puck! And then they tell me it will be 6-8 months before they have replacements ! Double Puck!

Sigh... I guess we will still want one in the fall.

I Highly recommend these to everyone!  Especially the folks with grid power !  Imagine if those folks in Texas had one of these in their barn when the power went down for so long...
On that line of thinking.
Imagine if they had built a RMH ???  Warm and with frozen food... all without power... who would have thought?

It has been almost five years now for the Sundanzer and two years on the SunStar.
Both are working great and are an excellent investment.
Yesterday, I replaced the two six-volt batteries for the first time. ($309 for two 220-amp deep cycles)
My little charger from Harbor Freight works great until it suddenly decides it no longer wants to anymore.
The first time this happened, I brought my large auto shop charger to the barn and used it until a trip to Harbor Freight could be arranged.
This has happened several times, and each time, I have caught it in time before any food thaws.
I started buying two chargers at a time so I always have a spare.

I use a remote weather station to monitor temperatures in the freezer.
I can sit in my comfy chair and, with the push of a button, check how well the freezer is doing.

This time, things came close.  I hadn't checked the temperatures for a few days, and when I did, it was +27°F.
When I hooked up the new maintainer, it did not have the power (amps) to start the freezer!  WTF?
A quick check with a volt/ohm meter explained that one of the batteries had died and was only holding 3 volts.
Nine volts is not enough to kick on the compressors!   Luckily, my shop battery charger has plenty of amps, and I was able to get the freezers running again.
I brought in an old, tired 12-volt car battery to install while I went to Missoula to buy replacement batteries.
Of course, this happened on a Friday night, so we had to wait all weekend before getting replacements.

If my charger had not quit, these batteries would still be in good shape.
I have solar panels for this application, but I haven't installed them yet.
I'll need a charge control when I do, and they need to be monitored to confirm consistent operation.
I could eliminate the battery maintainer and purchase two charge controllers, so I have a backup in case the first one fails.
The thing is, charge controllers cost more than little battery maintainers do...
Eventually, I will install them, but right now it seems like six of one or a half dozen of another...

EDIT)  Here is a link to my Sunstar thread
https://permies.com/t/216684/newest-volt-deep-freezer

I realize I'm reading this now entirely too late, but hopefully it can help someone out.

Pearl Sutton wrote:My freezer, similar size, old, used, with 2.5 inches of foam insulation added on all sides (held on with a camo ratchet strap, I'm so stylish!) in 22 hours used 2.08 KWH off the grid.

The inner metal sides of chest freezers have the evaporator (cooling part) in direct contact. You can usually see where the lines are when the frost starts to form. To get rid of the heat, the condenser (hot part) Is connected to the outer sides of the freezer. It's probably harder to tell exactly where those lines are, but they can be felt if you put your hand on the side when has been running for a while. If you move your hand along the surface while running, you can feel warmer parts, and if you keep your hand in place is usually cools down some of the metal, but the thin condenser line stays very warm. The fan on the pump/motor is usually only for those parts, unless it is a frost-free freezer. In most circumstances, you can add a bit of insulation to the top and perhaps the bottom, but insulating the sides is likely to cause it to work much harder.

Daniel Schmidt wrote:I realize I'm reading this now entirely too late, but hopefully it can help someone out.

Pearl Sutton wrote:My freezer, similar size, old, used, with 2.5 inches of foam insulation added on all sides (held on with a camo ratchet strap, I'm so stylish!) in 22 hours used 2.08 KWH off the grid.

The inner metal sides of chest freezers have the evaporator (cooling part) in direct contact. You can usually see where the lines are when the frost starts to form. To get rid of the heat, the condenser (hot part) Is connected to the outer sides of the freezer. It's probably harder to tell exactly where those lines are, but they can be felt if you put your hand on the side when has been running for a while. If you move your hand along the surface while running, you can feel warmer parts, and if you keep your hand in place is usually cools down some of the metal, but the thin condenser line stays very warm. The fan on the pump/motor is usually only for those parts, unless it is a frost-free freezer. In most circumstances, you can add a bit of insulation to the top and perhaps the bottom, but insulating the sides is likely to cause it to work much harder.

Have you ever pulled the outer skin off one, or have a link to actual diagrams or video to one?

All of the videos I am finding right now are people replacing the evaporator line with a new one. I don't see any replacing the condenser. The upright freezers are either frost free (fans blowing through mini 'radiators' for the evaporator and condenser) or they have an external condenser on the back. I did see one video with a chest freezer that had a condenser on the back, and judging by the accent they were an ocean away. I'm extremely hesitant to give any info regarding refrigeration and have someone take what I say as fact when I have no idea what hardware they might be working with. It's very easy to make a logical leap to thinking something 'should' work and cause a serious problem.

A quick google image search for 'chest freezer diagram' brings up a bunch of pics with diagrams for various layouts. I'm not in the business of selling the machines, so I wouldn't know one from another purely by model name or number to be able to tell someone across the internet how to go about such a project. I learned on old cars that had leaked out years before I got to them and replaced the entire system with new parts. Those cars used the same r134a that many freezers use, so functionally they are very similar. If someone is looking for info in general then vehicle AC repair videos can give a basic overview of how the systems operate, as well as common faults that can occur.

I see a few videos of people making functioning systems, but they do things I wouldn't want someone to copy. The basic idea is sound if you know enough not to repeat the mistakes. You could disconnect the lines from an evacuated system, add more interior insulation, install a new evaporator line around the inside in a similar fashion to the original and ultimately get better performance. The reality of doing this successfully with the right ($$$) tools is a completely different matter.