Residential Fridge or Not?

add some solar and the residential fridge will shine and boondock just fine.

I finally gave up on my NOcold 1200 and installed a 21 cuft home refer. I added a separate battery bank (500 AH AGM) and a 1000W PSW inverter with a 100 amp charger and transfer switch as we boondock often. When running it's 8 amps into the inverter (100W) and 22 amps during the icemaker harvests cycle. Amazing how energy efficient these Energy Star refers have gotten. The compressor is not much bigger than a grapefruit. Just got back from first camping trip with it and I did a test of my battery system even though we had power. Did not get on the DW about leaving the door open too long...:B and used a fair amount of ice. The batteries started at 13.2V and 24 hours later they were at 12.5V. After one hour with the 100 amp charger they were back to 13.2V. Could probably go 36 hours before reaching the 50% point on the batteries but we usually run the generator every evening.

OP, while one battery might go 12 hours, you really need two for it and two for the 5er... total of four.

Until the RV frig manufacturers get their act together and build a frig that will cool and least longer, I will not have another one.

We have a 22 cu.ft Frigidaire residential frig with 4 large 6 volt batteries and a solar charge on the roof/ We have never had an issue with the frig, the batteries, the inverter or the solar charger.

If you are going to dry camp, I'd suggest a Honda EU2000i to furnish some power in the event, the batteries cannot keep up.

Ken

I still have a Dometic but read all I can about residential. If I do get one I dont think using it in an RV is an issue. I dont drive fast on dirt roads, I usually crawl so I dont think I would be hammering it enough to hurt it. Maybe I'm wrong? My concern is mainly energy use. I have four 6 volts and 520 watts of solar. I dont think I would have a problem and might only have to run my Honda 3000 if there were a few bad days. I have had a couple people tell me that they had friends that had them and couldn't install on enough solar to keep up. Who knows what their install was like? Maybe they wired it with 16 gauge. Sounds like BS. It's just a matter of crunching the numbers for each model and figuring out their expected energy use is. My solar stuff is new so I'm not 100% in tune to how well it will do this winter. I have a Bogart 30 solar control and a Trimetric so I will be able to monitor it better this year.

You have to power an inverter which uses some power also so it wont run long on one group 29 battery, maybe 2 but who knows how much generator time you would have the next day. Then you get into the whole issue of how your converter performs. 13.6 volts wont get it at all.

I leave my house unheated all winter so it has to be winterized. The frig has always been the biggest pita. I use compressed air to blast the whole system out and it works well but I was always nervous about leaving residual water laying in a solenoid valve and damaging it.

At first I fabricated a 5 gallon air tank so that it could be filled with rv solvent and pressurized it to feed the appliances. It worked good on the dishwasher and the washing machine but it was difficult to purge the ice maker.

It worked ok for the first couple years but I messed up and cracked the valve bank for the ice maker. So we bought a new counter dept frig with all the gizmos. I now remove the water filter and complete ice maker valve bank. The valve is probably $150- $200. I then blow out the lines to the filter etc.

The pressure tank method wasted too much solvent so I started using a small drill motor driven pump connected directly to each appliance. It worked good for the dw and washing machine but I still didn't trust it with the new frig so I remove valves.

In theory if you put the time into cycling the ice maker you should be able to push solvent through it. I know the water filters work so good that they take the pink out. I would have to smell and look closely at the glass of water to know when the solvent was making it through.

My Dometic is 15 yrs old and as long as I keep researching this issue it should keep working. I do also have a couple large fire extinguishers. :R

If you are going to dry camp, I would recommend an RV gas/electric. If you primarily use hookups, a residential fridge works fine. You should use at least two batteries in parallel. Your truck should keep the batteries charged while traveling. I would have a generator as backup, especially for dry camping.

I can't answer your question for winterizing; that is something I don't have to worry about. :)

All depends on your type of camping and needs. We just traded up to get the Residential Fridge with a larger freezer section, but we spend 7 to 10 months a year in our unit. We've added 2 extra batteries for a total of 4 and can go for a few days without power.
If we were just weekend warriors don't thing it would have been worth it, or if you spend days boondocking probably the norm Gas/Electric would work best.