Fridge and inverter, can I do this?

I just finished the install of a 21.7 cuft whirlpool Frig and a 2812 Maxiun PSW inverter in my 05 Itasca Horizon. The frig was 65.5/8" tall (With Wheels removed) 32 5/8" Wide. I created my opening 66" tall and 35 3/4" Wide. I fabricated 12" steel "L" brackets that screwed to the rear edge of the frig on each side, that screwed to existing steel mounting brackets attached to the coach wall.

Kountryguy wrote:
I have a Samlex 1000 Pure Sine and it sometimes trips the ground fault starting my small freezer that draws 75 watts when running. Samlex told me residential unit sometimes take 10 times the running wattage to start. That sounds high to me, but who knows.

that is correct and normal, the Lock Rotor Amps of the compressor

you will find the LRA stamped on the compressor

our fridge draws 90~100 watts running but draws 9amps at 120v on compressor start thats 1080va aka watts

I did something similar using a Xantrex 2000watt sine wave inverter that I found on Amazon for about $330.

Fridge is happy and the inverter isn't being taxed at all. I would strongly recommend sizing the inverter to give you a little "headroom". Don't go overboard though or you will pay for it in loss of efficiency.

I have a Samlex 1000 Pure Sine and it sometimes trips the ground fault starting my small freezer that draws 75 watts when running. Samlex told me residential unit sometimes take 10 times the running wattage to start. That sounds high to me, but who knows.

I use a small 120V dorm fridge. I tried using a new Samlex PS 600W inverter and it could not overcome the Lock Rotor Draw. I replaced it with a Xantrex PS 1000W inverter and now it runs fine.

I'd suggest to get a larger inverter than what's just necessary to run the appliance. The idle draw difference is insignificant and durability/longevity will be better.

Those EPA labels makes a lot of assumptions, like the fridge is installed on a north facing wall, with an average ambient temperature of 68 degrees, door is only opened once every 12 hrs, ice maker is turned off, etc etc.

:S Only took me a month to realize I had all the information to figure the duty cycle of this refer as I posted this in my DIY post:
"This EnergyStar Whirpool 21 CuFt Refer has a energy guide of $44/year and 410,000 kWh/year or 1,123 W/day or 94 Amps/day... So out of my 500 AH battery bank I should be able to go two days before getting to 50% and needing to recharge. $44/year is 12 cents a day... It's amazing how energy efficient they have gotten these things."
1,123W/day divided by 100W running equals 11.2 hours/day or a 47% duty cycle.

I would suggest checking the controller board of the fridge, to be sure you didn't fry the capacitors.

I also run a residential fridge off a full sine inverter. No reason you can't just plug the new one into your existing batteries.

Jose

You are in luck as I recently installed a 21 cu ft Whirlpool refer here and the 6.5 is the start up amps. I did a test run on battery power (500 AH) with my 1000W PSW inverter and at the start with 13.2V my inverter was drawing 7.5 Amps as the battery voltage dropped the amps increased to 8.3 at 12.4 V. At one point the amps jumped up to 22 and I'm wondering what's going wrong:h ... it was heating the ice tray to harvest the ice. :B So running it's drawing 100 Watts and even times 4 for startup... a 500W inverter would do. I wanted to power my Sat receiver and a DVR too so I went with a 1000W. I installed it's own battery bank mainly to get more charging amps while running the generator. I looked into upgrading my inverter to a 3000W PSW but between the price and the control cable not having enough wires I could add a separate system for less money.
Even figuring a 75% duty cycle (18 hours run time) that's aprox 144 AH/day so almost two days before needing to recharge. I tried setting the inverter to power down when not needed, but it will not power back up so when waiting to go to work it draws 0.7 amp. I left the door open so I could see how many amps it took to start the compressor... 32 very briefly so a 500W PSW inverter would be big enough.

If I had to guess, the capacitor for your fridge compressor is shot (and what you smell is the electrolyte boiling away), probably from dealing with the ripple of a MSW inverter. A PSW inverter might not solve the problem at this point.

Electrically, there's no reason I can think of not to connect another inverter to the battery bank. 6v golf-car batteries are built for heavy loads, so as long as your wiring and charging can handle it - go for it.