12 cu ft fridge

Pretty much up to you and your camping style.
Kids make the bigger fridge a necessity, milk, soda etc.
If no kids along it depends on your trips. Do you intend to stay in more remote areas for extended periods? Or, to move every third day or so?
A stop for vegetables and dairy can be pretty quick on a travel day and is convenient in most areas.
Having to come 12 miles down a mountain to get to a highway to drive 20 more miles to town, not so much.
One thing I did years ago was to get a little cube fridge and mounted it in a storage compartment. When we had kids along, it was filled with sodas, later for myself and spouse , beer and wine. It was chilled each morning and afternoon when we ran the genny or full time when we had hookups. It sure freed up a lot of fridge space inside.

I like to go to town every two or three days.

I've generally found I run out of freezer space before I run out of fridge space. 12 cf is quite sufficient for two people for a week, in my opinion and experience, though a lot does depend on what you eat and how much you think stuff needs refrigeration. If you keep two cans of beer or soda in the fridge vs. the whole 12 pack (and rotate a new one in when you take a cold one out) you can save a lot of space.

If you like frozen pizzas, make sure your freezer is deep enough to fit a pizza in.

We had a 19 cu ft fridge in S&B prior to going FT
We had a 8 cu ft fridge when we FTd
We have a 22 cu ft fridge in S&B now

We go shopping once a week....then & now

8 cu ft was more usable ---we minimized having stuff in fridge, left-overs and surprise items in back of fridge

We have the most common 6CF fridge as shown. The 8CF might be a little better, but then again, maybe not so much. We are on-the-move travelers so we have to make sure there is enough in the fridge to keep it all from moving around. I also wonder how much more propane is used with an 8CF fridge. Bigger yet is a bigger wonder.

ron.dittmer wrote:
We have the most common 6CF fridge as shown. The 8CF might be a little better, but then again, maybe not so much. We are on-the-move travelers so we have to make sure there is enough in the fridge to keep it all from moving around. I also wonder how much more propane is used with an 8CF fridge. Bigger yet is a bigger wonder.

6 cu ft and 8 cu ft use same burner, propane consumption is same 1500btu/hr

Old-Biscuit wrote:
I also wonder how much more propane is used with an 8CF fridge. Bigger yet is a bigger wonder.[/img]

6 cu ft and 8 cu ft use same burner, propane consumption is same 1500btu/hr

True, but one would expect the burner to run with a larger duty cycle on the larger fridge, assuming the insulation is equally thick on both, since heat gain would be a bit larger.

In practice, I don't think there's a massive difference because RV fridges are pretty well insulated (they have to be to work). Installation quality, ambient temperature, how often you open the door, and such things have a greater impact, I believe...and none use a vast quantity of propane.

DrewE wrote:

Old-Biscuit wrote:
I also wonder how much more propane is used with an 8CF fridge. Bigger yet is a bigger wonder.[/img]

6 cu ft and 8 cu ft use same burner, propane consumption is same 1500btu/hr

True, but one would expect the burner to run with a larger duty cycle on the larger fridge, assuming the insulation is equally thick on both, since heat gain would be a bit larger.

In practice, I don't think there's a massive difference because RV fridges are pretty well insulated (they have to be to work). Installation quality, ambient temperature, how often you open the door, and such things have a greater impact, I believe...and none use a vast quantity of propane.

Doubt if you could measure the difference.
At 1500btu/hr fridge would have to run total of 61 hours to consume 1 gallon of propane

steelhunter wrote:
Is the larger fridge option worth the extra $$?

For us it is. We like to have gatherings when we camp, which include cook outs. With the 6 cu ft fridge, there wasn't much room to store food for the cook outs. We now have a 18 cu ft residential fridge and it is so nice not to have to rely on coolers to store food that doesn't fit in the fridge.

-Michael