Why switch to a Residential Refrig, thinking out loud !!

I have a question on resd. Frigs. I have 38 year old fridge at my cabin still runs. I have newer high end may tag side by side that had 5 service calls under warranty and a new compressor after warranty expired for $500.00 I now have little faith in newer Frigs . How would a new resd improve my odds if my old rv one fails
Thanks jw

My Norcold works fine. Not thinking of replacing it!!

Desert Captain wrote:
OK Don, I have to respond as you are playing a little fast and loose with the facts... :B

You have to get it to fit securely (and that opening is not going to match up in most cases), and bring clean AC power to it. Don't forget to secure the doors and be sure it has adequate ventilation.

We do agree it is not the ideal way to boondock. As I noted RV's are designed to minimize the use of AC power and other than the air conditioning and microwave nothing draws as much as a residential frig.

Good afternoon

In my experience after doing three conversions including my own fitting and trimming in is simple with a miter box and saw and properly stained wood to match. Simple may be a relative term but I am not a carpenter or craftsman. Clean AC power is as simple as an inverter which many larger coaches already have. Most also have four batteries which are adequate although bigger and more is better. As I mentioned, a robust solar system should be considered part of any residential install for those who intend to dry camp. A robust solar system more than provides all the power required by a residential fridge and if the sun gods are shining, a surplus. Securing the doors, a 12 inch piece of velcro. We are full timers so our entertainment centres draw more than our residential fridge by a long shot. Overall if I factor in good and bad weather I would say that we run our genny about 15 to 30 minutes more per day than before our residential. We have always run our genny every day during breakfast prep and sometimes during supper prep. It is a 7.5 quiet diesel, no one cares and for the most part those with RV fridges and no solar run their genny considerably more than us. On days with full sun we run our genny no more than we use to before the residential.

I would agree that smaller rigs with room for only a single solar panel or two and one or two batteries would be less than prime candidates for a residential. For those rigs something like a sunfrost fridge would be a better choice or something with a dann foss compressor.

JMHO.

OK Don, I have to respond as you are playing a little fast and loose with the facts... :B

For the record, I'm the guy with the short Class C. Just because a residential unit would not fit in my C does not I am missing anything. Most RV's will not accommodate a residential frig without substantial modification. You have to get it to fit securely (and that opening is not going to match up in most cases), and bring clean AC power to it. Don't forget to secure the doors and be sure it has adequate ventilation.

We do agree it is not the ideal way to boondock. As I noted RV's are designed to minimize the use of AC power and other than the air conditioning and microwave nothing draws as much as a residential frig.


"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."

I hope you are kidding. :R The local utility company used to run an add to demonstrate what happens when you open the door of any frig. They laid one down on its back and filled it with ping pong balls, stood it up and filmed the door being opened in slow motion. The ping pong balls represented the cold air inside. Guess what, the cold air falls out just as fast with a residential frig as a AC/LP model. Once that happens both units kick back on and commence to making more cold.

Your assertion that AC/LP units don't thoroughly cool/chill food is false. When a frig, any frig, is 36 degrees everything in it is 36 degrees so long as that cold is not lost by opening the door. The food in mine is just as cold as any residential frig set to the same temperature. Simply put, 36 degrees = 36 degrees regardless of the source.

I don't care if folks want to put in a residential frig. Aside from listening to their increased generator usage it doesn't affect me. For people who always have the luxury of AC power I see no down side but that is not how we use ours. Between boats and RV's I have been using, designing and installing, absorption refrigeration systems for 20+ years. Don't sell them short, as millions of happy owners will attest they work pretty well. :B

Like I said Opinions and YMMV. :C

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.

cKarlGo wrote:

harold1946 wrote:

Bumpyroad wrote:
wait a minute, he evidently has a perfectly fine RV refrigerator and you want him to rip it out and put in one he can't run while boondocking? keep in mind that more of these did not catch fire than those that did. :)
bumpy

I am a full timer and boondock 90% of the time. I was not aware I could not do it with my residential. Should I rip it out and go to an absorbtion? I think not, for all the reasons Dave mentioned.

Harold,

I'd like to hear more about how you use your residential in a boondocking situation. One of the swaying factors on which Winnebago I go with is the availability of a standard RV fridge versus a residential. I'd like to know things like how long you can go without hookups or genny and the like. Do you have solar panels, etc.

Could you start us a new thread on this topic, please?

Thank you!

As you can see there are many opinions and very few that have much experience with a residential. Our first residential was in a 1998 Airstream Land Yatch motorhome. When we sold it in 2009 it had
69,000 miles of bouncing down the road. No problems.
We are boondockers and full timers with a residential.
It can be done.

I consider a residential fridge the ultimate example of 'keeping it simple'.
Bigger,cheaper,run on battery while traveling........what could be simpler?
No generator required unless you dry camp and you will run one even without a residential unit and what neighbours are there to bother in that case?

As to a residential frig, what part of residential don't you understand? :h Will they work? Sure they will. Were they designed and built to do so? Not so much. They only run on AC and that has to come from somewhere. Since not many have the battery capacity to support an inverter running a full size frig it is crank up the generators (and make lots of new friends), or stay only in CG's and parks that have AC..... Cha Ching!$!

Now I read that they don't draw squat (simply not true), and that if they are kept closed you lose little or no cold. I subscribe to the keep the door closed (along with the judicious use of a few Blue Ice blocks), and you lose very little cold theory. So why does this not work for all of the folks who insist they "Have" to run their gas refrigeration while driving and fueling? :E But I digress....:R

The last thing I want in our rig is an additional consumer of AC power. This is why RV's have DC lighting, pumps and fans. Since DC/LP refrigeration works well replacing it with a residential unit sounds like a solution for which there is no known problem. Properly operated and maintained the risk of a fire is minuscule and anything bouncing around with AC power to it brings much the same (minuscule), risk.

Bottom line: KISS!

As Always.... Opinions and YMMV.

:B

Most of the residential refrigerators use around 100A DC per 24/hrs. That is easily restored with solar, or a combination of solar and genset time. Granted, that is probably 90 more amps than a propane refrig uses, but it is still very viable for boondocking. Frankly, we boondock for as long as we like with a residential refrigerator. But we do have a large solar system and battery bank. For other reasons - not just to support the refrigerator.

Every time this debate surfaces, we hear a lot of negatives to the residential refrigerator from those who have never had one. It would be nice to have someone who has one to post any negative comments they have. I've had a residential refrigerator since 2008, having crossed the US 5 or 6 times, dry camping frequently, and I have yet to see a downside of my residential refrigerator. I'm on my 5th motorhome and I would never go back to an RV refrigerator.

I do run my generator, as others have stated, for a short time as needed while dry camping,usually while preparing dinner, but don't have to while traveling. One change I did make was to replace my inverter batteries with larger capacity batteries as big as would fit. I have dry camped for over a week on occasions without any issues. While traveling, I do use a small bungee cord to secure the doors so that they don't swing open if I have all the door racks loaded (which is most of the time). Also, after my ice maker fills, I turn it off until my ice runs low to conserve battery power.