I talked before about the Mobicool thermoelectric cooler the Hunter came with. It is a very nice design, mostly convenient and a relatively inexpensive answer to "refrigeration" on board. Unfortunately the Mobicool unit does a really poor job keeping anything cool. Not being a fan of lukewarm beers I have decided to give it the boot down into the basement where it will live with the Igloo Kooltrons I have acquired over the years and never used.

I was considering one of three options.
1. Pull the locker door off and the sliding tray out and retrofit with a 12v/110v marine fridge. That is pricey, would be a fair amount of work but I think I can make it look pretty good as the dimensions are pretty close.
2.I could also pull the locker door off and the sliding tray out and retrofit a 110v dorm fridge in the space if I can find one that fits, it seems that the majority are too wide. I think I could make it work although I think that may look like a backyard mechanics' kluge job and take away from the potential resale value of the boat. The fridge would spend most of the time running at the dock anyhow so not having a 12v option might still work out for day sailing.
3. There are some 12v portable compressor cooler/refrigerator freezers out there now that would be an almost exact replacement and would require little or no work to put in. These look very promising but run on 12 volts unless you use a 110v adapter that the cigarette lighter plug goes into. That part would be a PITA to keep switching back and forth. The cooler locker has a 12 volt receptacle located in the top back where the OEM cooler plugs in so I could easily plug the new fridge into the same receptacle.

My question regards sitting at the dock. Shore power is plugged in, the battery charger is charging and the new fridge would be drawing power from the (grp. 31 DC)house battery. What happens with that? I assume that the battery charger senses that the battery needs to be charged so kicks up from maintain mode to a charge mode? What happens when it runs 24/7 during the season? Does it boil the battery or? Normally the charger comes on, does a bulk charge, steps down to a lesser charge level and finally steps down to a maintenance charge level.