If your Norcold refrigerator isn’t cooling you may be experiencing one of the common causes that are easily remedied by resealing the evaporator foam pack pocket. In addition, some manufacturers of cooling units are providing a product that converts Norcold 1200 and 1210 absorption refrigerators to Freon based systems seen in most residential fridges. These new units fit into the same space as the original ammonia based cooling unit and use the existing electronics to control it.
The conversion is easy enough to do yourself if you follow some simple tips. First and foremost great care needs to be taken when resealing the evaporator. It is recommended that a thin bead of low expansion spray foam be applied around the outside edge of the evaporator pocket. In addition, the old evaporator should be removed and the sheet metal wind baffle transferred to the new unit. This is important as air infiltration into the evaporator can cause water vapor to condense on the evaporator coils and eventually destroy them.
In the case of the refrigerator I’m working on, the technicians didn’t remove the vertical baffle from the top side of the exhaust vent. This prevents the freezer from opening properly and should be removed when installing a new JC Refrigeration gas/electric cooling unit. The other issue was that they left a tube of the new cooling unit in contact with the bottom of the LP tank. This could damage the new unit and contaminate the fridge with ammonia. Dometic and Norcold absorption fridges use heat (either electric or LP gas flame) to distill the working fluid of ammonia into gas and water. The Fridge Defend monitors the boiler to ensure that the process doesn’t run away and destroy the fridge. norcold cooling units