Refrigerator Question/Discussion
My refrigerator in my 2010 Mountaineer has always been a pain: alternately freezing or randomly going into the 60's. I've tried many fixes, none have worked. But my freezer works just fine. Anyway . . .
I recently put a "dorm room" sized refrigerator in my trailer, run while traveling with a battery and an 800 watt voltage inverter. I used it once so far on a 2-1/2 hour trip and it worked great! But what about longer trips?
According to my calculations, I can reasonably use this for about 5-7 hours before risking depleting the battery excessively. So I'm wondering if I couldn't tap into the 12V circuit and use the truck's power to keep the battery topped off while traveling all day.
The refrigerator draws about 11-12 amps at 12V, but of course not all the time, when the refrigerator is idle it draws very little current. The location of the battery when traveling is right by the breaker box, close to the door, where 12V should be readily available. I could add a cigarette lighter 12V receptacle for convenience. That should be a reasonable power draw on the charging circuit when driving, shouldn't it? Has anyone else done this?
I recently put a "dorm room" sized refrigerator in my trailer, run while traveling with a battery and an 800 watt voltage inverter. I used it once so far on a 2-1/2 hour trip and it worked great! But what about longer trips?
According to my calculations, I can reasonably use this for about 5-7 hours before risking depleting the battery excessively. So I'm wondering if I couldn't tap into the 12V circuit and use the truck's power to keep the battery topped off while traveling all day.
The refrigerator draws about 11-12 amps at 12V, but of course not all the time, when the refrigerator is idle it draws very little current. The location of the battery when traveling is right by the breaker box, close to the door, where 12V should be readily available. I could add a cigarette lighter 12V receptacle for convenience. That should be a reasonable power draw on the charging circuit when driving, shouldn't it? Has anyone else done this?
