Boondocking with a "residential" (compressor) refrigerator

I spent way too much money keeping my NoCold 1200 going because of the myth spread on this forum that you cannot boondock with a residential refrigerator. In the summer we usually boondock 5 days/week.
If your rig has one battery...residential is not for you.
If your rig has two batteries...doubt residential is for you.
If your rig has four house batteries...residential is a viable option by adding two more batteries as you probably already use a fair amount of power and you probably have an inverter and so way of charging your batteries.

Two batteries will run my 21 cuft refer for 30 hours before needing to be recharged. It draws 8 amps DC (96 watts) measured before the inverter and the duty cycle is 40%. That's 75 AH/day. No need to shut it off at night BUT I do turn the icemaker off until I crank up the generator for the hour at dinner and half hour in the morning when making coffee...actually less than before going residential as I add another 100 amp charger and I'm up to 500W of solar.

Ivylog wrote:
I spent way too much money keeping my NoCold 1200 going because of the myth spread on this forum that you cannot boondock with a residential refrigerator.

I've been reading here for about 3 years now and have NEVER seen anybody say that you can't do that. I think you are mis-representing what people are saying......or not understanding it.

What I am saying is: I think that most people can get along just fine without a residential fridge.....IF they adjust their requirements just a little bit.

Ivylog wrote:
I spent way too much money keeping my NoCold 1200 going because of the myth spread on this forum that you cannot boondock with a residential refrigerator. In the summer we usually boondock 5 days/week.

Two batteries will run my 21 cuft refer for 30 hours before needing to be recharged. It draws 8 amps DC (96 watts) measured before the inverter and the duty cycle is 40%. That's 75 AH/day. No need to shut it off at night BUT I do turn the icemaker off until I crank up the generator for the hour at dinner and half hour in the morning when making coffee...actually less than before going residential as I add another 100 amp charger and I'm up to 500W of solar.

Thanks for the info. The 75AH/day isn't bad.

There is one nice thing about a propane fridge. An older one that needs a manual light will work and keep stuff cold regardless of the state of the batteries or electrical system. Newer ones are tied in, so if the batteries die, they do.

What I've wondered is why Dometic or another maker doesn't make a fuel cell that uses propane, and have that (as well as a small battery) as part of a refrigerator, perhaps with the ability to charge the house batteries. That way, even if the house batteries are dead, the fridge will still run and have electricity to keep going.

X100 on the RV world needing an affordable line of small but mighty propane fuel cells!

The RV residential refrigerator crowd, especially, might love to cut their ties to the sun and their generators.

"Thanks for the info. The 75AH/day isn't bad."
If I'd know how efficient the new residential refrigerators are and IF I'd found one that almost fit (ended up being 1/2" too high for the NoCold 1200 hole) I would have switched sooner and saved a lot of $$$. The NoCold required constant attention and tweaking...now I do not even look at the remote temp gauge leftover from the POS.

Ivylog wrote:
The NoCold required constant attention and tweaking ...

What kind of "tweaking"?

Maybe it's the bigger cf absorption refrigerators that don't work so well in some RV situations (in addition to cheap-out installs by RV manufacturers causing it).

Our Norcold is only 6-7 cf and it's trouble free - so far, after only 11 years.

If you look at the back of the 1200 series you will find the coils and fins are not much bigger than your 6-7 and it's twice as big. The Amish replacement cooling unit is much bigger but even it struggled in hot weather. Without a third fan on the back milk would spoil. Yes I decreased the air gap on the back so all the air went over the coils and fins. Fortunately mine was not in a slide.
Tweaking was turning it off every two days so it would not go into the defrost cycle and warm up. This requires that you have a pair of computer fans that you move to various positions on the fins to remove the ice buildup. Any hot leftovers had to be left out until they cooled down.

There are some downsides to a residential refer...besides ice cream being hard to scoop out, I drink more beer as I do not like luke cold beer.

So far very happy with out 3-way fridge.
We only have one battery so just marginal for electron supply.
With only one battery we would be running the generator too often to keep up.

So far very happy with out 3-way fridge.
We only have one battery so just marginal for electron supply.
With only one battery we would be running the generator too often to keep up.

Same here, plus I fire it up the night before we leave at the storage yard so its cold when I pick it up after coming back from work the next day. I dont have the luxury because of work to be able to go start it a few hours before we leave.