Another residential frig question

joe b. wrote:
As Bill says, the size is of importance to some people. The largest DPs have fridges the size found in many homes or larger. But the down side to some, is that you have to have them plugged into electrical power, enough battery power and inverter power to run them during the driving day, or have an auto start generator that will start to recharge the batteries on board.

My truck camper has a three way fridge in it, propane, 12 volt or 120 volt. Down side is it is slow to cool, and small but I don't have much room in my TC anyways.
Our 5th wheel has a two way, propane and 120 volt fridge. It is a bit larger by about 2 cubic feet, but has the same drawbacks of being slower to cool. The residential style fridges cool quickly as they have a compressor which the propane ones don't have, being they are absorption types.

If a person plans to live in their rig or mainly camp in full hook up sites in campgrounds, the residential ones work very well. For boondocking, if you don't mind your diesel generator running at different times of the day and night to power your fridge, then they work as well for that.

I have been running RVs for 50 years now and have never had a fire in a fridge unit and all of mine have been the multi fuel source, gas or electric. So I wouldn't be the least concerned with a fire. But as with any use of propane or NG, you have to check for leaks on a regular basis, especially if you get a smell of the gas in or around your rig. Not saying a fire couldn't happen, but as a former fire fighter and arson investigator, I have never had to deal with a fire in an RV fridge.

It tends to be easier to get a residential fridge repaired, it seems. Many times when one of the RV multi fuel source fridges goes bad, it just gets replace at a high cost.