The past two days we have had the joy of cleaning our water
tank including the forward portion. Gaining access to the forward port
had its' challenges. I know that Bill has a write up on how to removed
the aft freezer however, our boat being a bit older was a little
different. These are the steps I took to remove the freezer.
1. Remove all floor storage
access/floor panels below the dinette. This is to access the screws
at the bottom of the kick plate
2. Removed the freezer lid.
This just made it lighter to move, not sure if necessary. This also made
it easier to remove the screws along the top of the freezer that attach it to
the back of the cabinets
3. Removed the lower bottle
holder/panel in the liquor cabinet.
4. Removed two screws at the lower
right corner as you are looking into the liquor cabinet. These screws
penetrate the back of the cabinet into the freezer box framework.
5. Removed the 5 screws along the
top of the fiberglass freezer box that attach it to the cabinet.
6. Removed the 5 screws along the
bottom of the kick plate on the fwd side of the freezer. One of mine was
hard to see as it was right in the corner next to the floor boards.
7. Remove the 3 screws that connect
the AC kick panel to the freezer kick panel right where they meet. These
screws are accessed from the AC side and can be hard to get to. I had to
move the AC unit in order to gain access to them. Also the bottom screw
was covered over with fiberglass tabbing so I'm sure my forward portion of the
tank has never been cleaned.
8. At this point, you can lift the
freezer 8-10" and slide it forward enough to gain access to the water
tank.
Note, I didn't have to disconnect any
electrical or hoses. The whole freezer moved as a unit. Also note
that you do not need to remove any of the top screws that attach the kick plate
to the freezer
I have added photos to the photo albums
labeled "Trillium Aft Freezer Removal" for reference.
Now I'm not going to go into detail as to
how I cleaned the tanks as I could write a whole book on that.
Anyway, good luck if you attempt
it. I know it can be a daunting task.
Paul Schofield
SV Trillium
SM 215
