Measure twice, cut once

Luckily, we brought a shovel with us when we went to the boat today.  The marina driveway is down to one lane with very limited parking.  We spend a half hour shoveling a path through a snow pile just so we could get inside the shed where the boat is stored.

We removed the stuff that was stored in the area under the cabin floor and crawled in to take a look.

There's a lot of space down there. In fact, the only thing there is the control unit for the air conditioner. The spot where we want to mount the inverter is on the wall behind the work light in the photo.

Unfortunately, that plywood wall has a nice big bolt head sticking out right where the inverter will go.

So, we'll have to add some little shims to the base that holds the inverter so it will clear that bolt.  That duplex outlet on the right was where the old Norcold refrigerator was plugged in, but now it will power the battery charger in the inverter.

The inverter will be powered while underway with two 12-volt Group 27 batteries wired in parallel. The space that you see in that photo is big enough for me to crawl into but, it turns out after measuring, that it isn't high enough to drop a Group 27 battery into a permanently mounted battery box.  We'd need at least another eight inches of height to do that.  So, we'll build two plywood fixtures that will hold the two batteries in place.

While we were there, we took some time to investigate where we'll put the new 110-volt AC outlet that will run from the inverter.  The inverter has two outlets (served by a transfer switch) and we'll use one for the new fridge.  No sense wasting the other one so we thought that we'd put a duplex outlet somewhere on the starboard side near the lower steering station. Not a lot of space to fish wires and make a nice neat installation, in fact, there is almost no space near the floor behind the white panel below the radio.We'll have to think about that for a while.

We've ordered the battery cable and connectors from Del City and this week, if it doesn't snow more than a foot or so, we'll make some platforms that will hold the batteries in place.  Let's see: the inverter cost $400, the battery cable and connectors another $63 and the two batteries $85 each.  Nothing cheap about making an old Silverton the way you really want it.