Residential fridge upgrade?

Jim....I've done three of them. If you can find an RF197, it would be huge. It will run on your inverter with no issues and fit your cabinet like it was made for it. If you find the RF197, it will fit thru your front door. You take your passenger mirror, loosen it and swing forward. Next, you disconnect one end of the upper door arm. This allows your front door to swing all the way open and gain two inches. Lastly, you unbolt the passenger front seat and move it out of the way. If using the Samsung, it's lighter than what your removing. Strip out the interior shelves and remove the doors. It will fit thru the front door with an inch or two to spare. It's pretty light and can be done by two people. One inside and one outside.

Make a rolling cart out of a Harbor Freight furniture dolly so you can roll the refer around inside the coach. If you make it the same height as the floor of the new refer opening, you can slide it right in.

On my Diplomat, I had the heater under the old refer. I had to cut the feet and rollers off of the Samsung and didn't install a new floor. I just used a rail system. I also added a second Magnum, 600 watt inverter to run just the refer.

PM me if you have any questions.

JimM68 wrote:

Any info - details - pictures - links is appreciated.

First, make sure you check you current fridge manual for install dimensions. This should help you select a replacement.

If you haven't already done so, check out possible fridge replacements at www.appliancesconnection.com. You can specify height & width to narrow down your choices.

Finally, you may need more than your forklift. Your current fridge weighs over 300 pounds and manhandling it could be prolematic.

Consider having it installed. I did. Here's my fridge install.

You might want to check the vent/flue for your fridge...you might not be getting good ventilation....I mounted a fan in the upper vent to pull air thru and put a manual over ride for the two fans back there in the lower part..Turn them on when over 90 out and between the two, my fridge is 37 and my freezer is 4 degrees or less..perhaps your cooling fans are not coming on with the snap disk that is in there..you might want to check that too and just make a switch like I did and run them...You might be surprised.

I recently installed one myself. It is a Whirlpool WRT771RWYB 21 cu ft which is the closest I could find that would fit BUT it was still 3/4" too high for the Nocold 1200 I replaced. I was able to make it fit without loosing the drawer below... happy DW.
I was at HDepot getting water line fittings and they have basically the same Whirlpool refer on sale for $648 plus $99 for a ice maker... I bought mine at a Sear's Outlet for $500 including ice maker, but that was eight months ago as scratch and dent. In years of looking this is only refer over 16 cu ft I found that was not 70" tall.
WRT311FZDW... white
WRT311FZDB... black
SS for $949. I have seen same refer with water on the door, but not ice.

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.

Slide note: With the LR slide in the refer is not any further into the hallway than the slide itself.