I read all four pages and the MAJORITY of those who are against residential refrigerators have never owned one. What's even funnier is that they are driving older gassers and even one poster with a short Class C. Are you kidding. You're coaches weren't designed for a residential refer and you'd be foolish to even try to install one.
MOST of the people replacing their refers have a large 12 cubic foot or larger unit that has been problematic. And those refers are GENERALLY installed in larger motor homes that can handle a residential refer with an OEM battery bank and inverter.
Then you have the boondockers who chime in about power use...you're right, a residential refer is probably not the best choice for serious boondockers.
We had a Norcold 1200 LRIM for 7 years. It worked well for the first couple of years, but always suffered in hot weather. As years went on, it got worse. Some people like their food and drinks cool, but I like mine cold. We eventually changed to a Samsung RF197 and LOVED it. Food was finally cold.....ALL the time!
How many of you who state they would never get a residential refer, yet find yourself opening your refer door and as quickly as you can find what you need and shut the door. Especially, in hot weather you don't want to let the cold air. Guess what.....that's not an issue with a residential unit. You can stand in front of the wide open doors and just stare....it won't affect the cooling and the refer won't take two hours to recover.
An absorption refrigerator will cool the air around your food and keep it from spoiling, but the interior of the food won't reach the temperature of the air around it. A residential refrigerator will cool the food internally to the temp that the refer is set at. That's a big difference when it comes to how you like you food kept.
Lastly, I think Norcold designed a nice refrigerator with the exception of the cooling unit. Once the units started to fail, they were put between a rock and a hard place. They couldn't afford to replace every cooling unit so they came up with the silly override unit. When you look at the cooling unit on a 1200LRIM, it looks like they tried to use an 8 cubic foot unit and stretch it out so it would work on the 1200. It was a poor design that has cost them dearly.
