Standard vs Residential Refrigerator

We have a Samsung RF197 residential fridge in our Winslow. It doesn't have ice and water in the door but does have an icemaker. It has 2 6 volt batteries and a 1000 watt pure sine wave inverter. We have had it for 2 years and put about 20K miles on it and the fridge has never missed a lick. We have driven all day and the lowest I have ever seen the voltage on the batteries is 12.3 and the temps never budge. We have an automatic transfer switch which changes from inverter to shore when you plug in and vice versa. Very handy. This is our second residential as the motorhome we sold a couple of years ago also had one. It was a replacement for a Norcold 1200 which had a big problem keeping things cool and frozen during the five years we had it despite all kinds of mods and fixes. The Samsung gets to 38 and 2 below in just a few hours and stays there. When we shopped after selling the motorhome anything that did not have a residential fridge as an option was eliminated from consideration. We do not drain the icemaker but instead let the water pump feed it rv antifreeze until we get pink ice and shut it off for the winter. For storage during warm weather I would simply let the icemaker work for a while and dump the first few loads of ice.

This works for us because we never dry camp. I have computed that we could get a couple of days running the fridge if we were careful with battery usage. I would think a couple more 6 volt batteries and a generator would be necessary if you did long term dry camping. Solar charging would be another consideration.