Refrigerator options

Opinions on these forums tend to be weighted towards replacing RV absorption refrigerators with residential AC units. But if you plan on doing a lot of dry camping, I would not recommend it unless you have a large battery bank or even a solar set-up.

The absorption refrigerators can run on gas for days with very little power, that's why they are in RV's. If yours doesn't work, figure out why. It might just be the circuit board. If it's the cooling unit, you can buy a new or rebuilt one without having to buy a new fridge. I changed the cooling unit out on my fridge for a little over $300.

Miles

Maybe you want to look for a used RV fridge on Craigslist.

Merrykalia wrote:
In our last TT, we replaced a broken Dometic 6 cu ft fridge with an Avanti 7.4 cu ft apartment size fridge. We purchased it online for a little over $300 and had it shipped to us in 3 days. It was about 6" taller than the Dometic, so we took out the trim piece off the top, cut 6" off, then installed the fridge and put the trim back on. We had to rig up a closer to make sure it didn't open while going down the road, but we drilled a hole in the plastic and put in a small dowel rod which was on a short chain.

We never had a problem with it getting warm or thawing things in the 4 years we had it in the TT and we did several trips of 7-8 hour travel time. We also don't boondock, we always have some type of hookups.

This is where we purchased it. Avanti 7.4

The lack of hookups will be our problem, we plan on "dry camping" a whole lot so we need a 12v supply, and don't have a to of room for a big battery bank.
I'm looking to purchase a Lifeline AGM battery, probably group 27 if it fits, which it should, that battery should buy us about 4 days without hookups??

In our last TT, we replaced a broken Dometic 6 cu ft fridge with an Avanti 7.4 cu ft apartment size fridge. We purchased it online for a little over $300 and had it shipped to us in 3 days. It was about 6" taller than the Dometic, so we took out the trim piece off the top, cut 6" off, then installed the fridge and put the trim back on. We had to rig up a closer to make sure it didn't open while going down the road, but we drilled a hole in the plastic and put in a small dowel rod which was on a short chain.

We never had a problem with it getting warm or thawing things in the 4 years we had it in the TT and we did several trips of 7-8 hour travel time. We also don't boondock, we always have some type of hookups.

This is where we purchased it. Avanti 7.4

The 12V coolers (and some dorm fridges) are thermoelectric units. These are quite inefficient and don't cool all that well; avoid them in general.

A compressor-based fridge can work fine. If you'll be boondocking much, you'll want a reasonably big battery bank and an inverter capable of powering it. (For travel down the road, just the inverter would be sufficient as the engine alternator should be capable of supplying the extra 12V power for the inverter.) Note that many of the smaller full-sized residential fridges don't use much if any more power than a dorm fridge; the dorm-sized ones are not all that well insulated or designed for the utmost of efficiency.

A final option if you won't be RVing for particularly long periods of time may be the old-fashioned approach of having a good quality cooler and keeping it cold with ice. The ice can get a bit expensive, but then again you can buy quite a bit of ice for the cost of a fridge.

I have changed to residential fridge in two separate trailers and never looked back. I don't camp "off the grid" so I always have shore power. Works for me way better than the absorption fridges.