RV Residential Refrigerators

John & Angela wrote:

RayChez wrote:
I always have wondered, what happens to the motor on a residential refrigerator when the batteries start going dead and the motor starts dragging. Isn't that bad for the motor? Is that why they do not warranty residential refrigerators IF you are going to install them on an RV that does not have the solar and extra inverter? I am talking about dry camping with no shore power or auto-start on your generator.

Good morning Ray. Its one one of those "it depends" answers that we all hate but generally speaking the output of a converter doesn't drop as the batteries get weaker. The inverters internal "inverters, voltage and current regulators" are designed to provide a fixed voltage (or acceptable range thereof) regardless of input until ,for lack of a better way to describe it, they can't. At that point they simply cut off. The load never sees that drop...in theory. I can say though that at least one of my inverters will drop to about 108 volts under low battery voltage before it gives up. A little outside of my comfort zone but the reality is that only seems to happen under heavy load like a microwave. A refrigerator is roughly the same load as a TV (around an amp) so it doesn't get dragged down at all. And having said that I guess thats why I like to see dedicated installs for the fridge so there is no chance of something else loading on the inverter although really it is more the affect of dropping input voltage and current. We have two inverters in our Rig. Neither is dedicated to the fridge but I run them so that the microwave and fridge are not on the same inverter although for the most part I would think it would be fine anyway.

Again, all just my humble opinion.

John, thank you for a very intelligent answer. I never knew what would happen to the motor if we were away and the voltage would drop down to where the motor on the fridge would start dragging. Did not know if the brushes to the armature would cause damage to the motor itself.

The reason why I asked the question was because my Norcold 1200 LRIM is twelve years old and it could blow up.
And it had crossed my mind that maybe a residential refrigerator would be in line to replace that Norcold. Most of our camping is with full hookups. But it is good to know what could happen if dry camping was in store.

Now Don got a little defensive right away and my post was not to discredit anybodies refrigerator. It was a question for my own and others that are interested on maybe going residential.

Thanks John greatly appreciated.