Glacier Bay makes a pretty good refrigeration system which is very overpriced. In addition to the prices charged if you have warranty issues it is unlikely you will get satisfaction from the company. The company is terribly run by its owner, Kevin Alston. Some of GB's former dealers have discontinued carrying the system because they get stuck in the middle when the company fails to honor warranty issues. If you have a hard time finding a dealer this is the reason.
However the problems with GB systems run deeper than that
Much of GB's early business and still their main claim to fame was a refrigeration test performed by and published in Cruising World a number of years ago. GB still uses this test in their ad and website 10 years later. I think CW is an extremely fine publication however the article's author made an honest but serious mistake in his testing. The author has subsequently promoted GB systems however whether this is because he was convinced by the tests or had a conflict of interest I do not know and I will not speculate on the subject.
The tests were set up with a number of refrigeration systems installed one after the other in what was designed to be a representative refrigerator/freezer box. Each system was tested for electrical consumption as well as temperature range over time. A Heart Link battery monitor was used to measure the amps consumed by each system.
The concept made sense however the test was inadvertently set up to guarantee GB's system would look the best. Here is why. GB uses 1/2 or 1 hp motors on their 12V system so the draw is 33 or 66 amps respectively. Others use motors that draw maybe 5-8 amps.
Let's assume the GB system consumed 66 amp hours per day.
Let's assume a system such as an Adler/Barbour also used 66 amp hours per day.
The Link monitor used in the tests would say the systems tied each using the same amount of electricity per day.
WRONG!
The 1 hp GB motor will cycle on and off as needed during the day drawing 66 amps while running with a total running time of 1 hr giving us our 66 amp hours.
The Adler/Barbour system may run as much as 11 hours per day drawing 6 amps also giving us 66 amp hours per day.
While the monitor shows both used 66 amp hours we are comparing apples and oranges as far as our batteries are concerned. A 200Ah battery will gladly deliver 200 amps if you take them out at 6 amps per hour as the AB system does. If the AB system takes out 66 amp hours you need only put back 66 amp hours (plus charging inefficiencies).
However if you try to take out 66 amps in one hour as the large GB motor does your 200 Ah battery will really only deliver maybe 50 amp hours total before it is dead. Now to charge it up you have to put back 200 amp hours (plus charging inefficiencies). Suddenly the GB system used 4 times more electricity and to charge our batteries back up it will take four times as much electricity.
Nigel Calder's excellent book "Boat owner's Electrical and Mechanical manual has a nice graph on page 9 that shows how battery capacity drops radically with heavy loads like a GB 1 HP motor.
Batteries are rated by 20 hour discharge. A 200 Ah battery is a 200 Ah battery because you can pull 10 amps out of it for 20 hours and it will then be dead or 10.5 volts. If you pull amps out of it at the rate of 66 per hour you would be lucky to get a total of 50 amp hours out of it not 200.
In practice -a 200 Ah battery will not run a 1 HP motor for a full hour as it will drop below the voltage the motor needs to run long before the hour is up.
I am not particularly promoting Adler/Barbour systems but they are representative of many such 12V systems on the market. I certainly do not recommend Glacier Bay systems.
Below is an unsolicited letter from another GB customer who visited my website.
Rob:
I wholeheartedly agree with your assesment of glacier bay....five years ago I purchased a 1/2 traditonal unit with seperate freezer and refer compartments and holding plates (one plate was custom built and I also ordered the digital upgrade for both thermostates....after five years of trouble (including constant leaks in factory supplied equipemnt, the dealer who installed it refusing to repair it, the raw water pump corroding away after one or two years, the relay in the control box catching on fire, the condenser leaking, and the worst service or help(actually I have had no service or help) from glacier bay, and the last thing......both holding plates leaking on the inside and expanding (in this case, I called glacier bay and they said I had a corrosion problem and should take the plates out...after that they had no suggestion because, as they put it there was no one in the southeast who knew anything about refrigeration)...what a bunch of bullshit!..anyway, I am now in the process of removing the glacier bay unit and repacing it with a rich beers unit which I purchased yesterday........Good luck and feel free to print this on your website.....Bill Aldridge "S/V Mobetah"
Since originally putting this on my website in 2001 I have received at least a dozen other emails with horror stories about Glacier Bay. The number of dissatisfied Glacier Bay customers is gigantic.
Nearly every letter complains that they NEVER get
anything close to the GB quoted holdover times.
Most also complain that the large motors simply kill their batteries and they
end up replacing 2 or 3 8D batteries every few years
(Ventana is now on our 5th set of batteries in 12 years).
Anyone who has attempted to get warranty service
has met with Kevin Alston's refusal to acknowledge problems with his product and
his usual blaming of the customer or installer.
This is also our experience on Ventana and was confirmed
to me by two former dealers who no longer handle GB for this reason.