Use a 110 V fridge in RV ??

scottyboy28422 wrote:
can we use a regular 110V fridge in our RV for use a campgrounds w
electricity. The small dorm, home type ones. Walmart has some for under $200. The reason Im asking is because of the jolting down the road and also unplugging the fridge each time we leave a campground.

Residential fridges are becoming more and more common even in new RVs. The energy efficiency of residential fridges HAVE been greatly improved over the years along with the advent of Inverters. 20 yrs ago it was practically impossible to get a reasonable sized inverter which would be affordable and light weight enough to take with you. Now days an inverter is inexpensive and will easily fit in a shoe box for size.

You DO need to make wise choices in the fridge, small dorm size (1.1-5 cu ft) tend to have very little insulation and hence they run longer and more often then the larger fridges.

Apartment size fridges 6-13cu ft tend to have considerably more insulation pretty much like a full size home fridge and tend to operate the compressor about 20-22 minutes per hr.

The important item to look for is the name plate data, many of the newer fridges use only .9A-1.2A while the compressor is running and when in defrost mode they will use about 2A. Pretty much a doable thing even for "boondocking" providing you take this draw into account in battery capacity.

We are very pleased with our home fridge conversion, our camper it was a no brainer since it was not worth putting a new $2000 RV fridge into a trailer we paid $700 for!

We typically overnight and travel using an inverter and one pair of 6V GC batteries which so far has supplied all the power we need!

I don't have a lot of photos of our setup online but you can check out what I have in the following online PDF..

HERE

There are a few photos of our fridge in our rebuild PDF

HERE