New fifth wheel refrigerators

pianotuna wrote:
Hi,

How are you measuring this wattage?

drfife wrote:
They are incredibly efficient. Especially if you turn off the ice maker. Draws about 1 watt. When the compressor kicks in it consumes 4 watts.

Indeed! I want one of those fridges!!

Hi,

How are you measuring this wattage?

drfife wrote:
They are incredibly efficient. Especially if you turn off the ice maker. Draws about 1 watt. When the compressor kicks in it consumes 4 watts.

drfife wrote:
We've had our residential fridge for 2 years. Love it. Would not go back to the traditional RV fridge.

The folks that bash them ore ones that have no experience with them.

They don't know what they are missing....

They are incredibly efficient. Especially if you turn off the ice maker. Draws about 1 watt. When the compressor kicks in it consumes 4 watts.

The 120V refrigerators are cheaper, weigh less, cheaper to service, and more efficient than traditional RV fridges. Inverters are less than $200.

The main thing is dry camping for some. Do you dry camp? And if so for how long?

We've had our residential fridge for 2 years. Love it. Would not go back to the traditional RV fridge.

The folks that bash them ore ones that have no experience with them.

They don't know what they are missing....

They are incredibly efficient. Especially if you turn off the ice maker. Draws about 1 watt. When the compressor kicks in it consumes 4 watts.

The 120V refrigerators are cheaper, weigh less, cheaper to service, and more efficient than traditional RV fridges. Inverters are less than $200.

As good as the residential fridges are these days using power, they are still too power hungry for the RVer who wants to do much more than an overnight powering the fridge with his inverter which is drawing from a small battery bank.

So, what are the savings using the residential fridge compared to the 2 way power of an RV fridge?

With the residential fridge you will have to add the inverter, at least a 1kw model & preferably a pure sine wave type so that it gets power just like off the grid. You will need to have a decent sized battery bank. 2X6V GC batterys are not enough for any real time. If you want to dry camp anymore than a couple days you will need a genny to charge the batterys.

How much will all of that stuff cost to buy & install so that a domestic fridge can be used offgrid for more than a night?

Using an RV fridge for multiday dry camping leave it on propane & it uses very little 12V amps. For 120V AC needs one can get away with a small inverter of only a few hundred watts. Phone power supplys & such are not so sensitive to non pure sine wave power so a much cheaper inverter is good enough.

Of course if you do not want or need the flexability of multiday off grid camping at things like music festivals, balloon festivals etc. & are always tethered to shore power, then a domestic fridge is fine. It will only be a potential negative to future rig buyers who want to multi day dry camp & it is not equipped to do so.

We have a 20 cubic foot French door frig bottom freezer. We love it. What an improvement over the 10 cu ft. rv fridge. That being said I do not know how long my batteries would last without recharge. I have 4-6v a 2800 watt inverter, a 6500 Onan and we are wired for solar. I haven't put in the panels yet. As far as light and stuff. All of our lights are either LED or CFL. The residential frigs cost a lot less then the electric/LP rv frigs. The doors have to be removed from the frig to get it into or out of a rig but this a very popular upgrade. Kind of what do you really like better situation.

I just can't by into them. Maybe you FT'rs can as you would be at FH more often than not probably. We tend to boondock 80% of the time so the fridge runs off LP. I guess with solar and 4 6V dedicated batteries one could probably stay out forever if the weather permitted. Rainy days could cut that short though.

One other thing to remember, will the Residential Fridge burn your RV down? Haven't heard of any Residential Fridges being recalled for that problem or being blamed for such catastrophes.

One other thing to keep in mind when considering a residential fridge is; will it fit back out the door when it eventually dies? A "counter depth" model can fit. Our door is 28" wide and we were able to remove the old 26" deep unit and replaced it with a 27&15/16 deep replacement. I use 2, 12 volt Wal-Mart cheap-o deep cycles and you would be lucky to get 12 hours. I ran a #4 cable from the truck batteries to the trailer to keep them up while driving.

sail2liv wrote:
What is the time that a gas/elec will last when plugged in all the time except when traveling and occasional boondock...for a night or so.....running on gas..is level all the time.....just curious if anyone has met above criteria...I know ones that are not level...have short lifespan.......temp in trailer runs 45-80 95% or more of the time.....

Our Dometic has been ON (except for3-4 times a year to defrost) since Nov 2006.

Either plugged in or using propane.

Has temp setting from 1-5....normal setting on 2. And if outside temps about 95*F we use setting 3.

Traveled FT for 7 yrs.......moving 250 miles every week or so.
Lots of road travel and parked.