House Refrigerator VS RV Refrigerator

valhalla360 wrote:

Adam H wrote:




One last question. With so many houses in North America fitted with natural and propane gas that runs the furnace, hot water, BBQ, range, why is the ratio of compressor vs absorbtion fridges 1,000,000 to 1 for domestic use?

Houses use compressor fridges because they are more energy efficent when plugged in and it's pretty rare to unplug your entire house, so needing a backup power source is unneccessary.

Most RV's are unplugged regularly and when you pay for a site, electricity is thrown in so most don't really care too much about efficency.

If this arguement held weight, RV's would have switched over to compressor based back in the 50's.

Good morning. You gotta fugure though, in the fiftys a compressor fridge would pull 8 amps (120 Volts) or greater while compressor was running. A modern fridge pulls around 1 amp while compressor is running. So not quite the same.

creeper wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:
You must have had a real dud. 2-3 hrs ahead of time is usually fine. If you are packing it with pre-chilled food, you can turn it on when you load the fridge.

Not at all. I know lots of people who do that, plus my instruction manual said the same thing to bring it up to operating temp.

You must have really got some kind of a dud if the manual called for a 5 day cool down before use.

Rv fridge always have trouble keeping up on hotter days.Never had this issue. Were you per chance leaving the door open...a lot?

Nope door not left open. Common problem discussed many times around the campfire with many other people. Many discussions on how to deal with the issue. Along with the defrosting issue. I've camped since I was a little kid. Never had an issue unless the door was constantly being opened.

RV fridge has many accessories fans to make them cool better.What fans?

Don't spend much time in RV stores? Yes the make cooling fans that will go into the exhaust area of the unit to move more air and have it cool as well as fans to go in the fridge itself to move air across the cooling fans. Made by dozens of manufacturers, because it's a pesky problem. No I don't. I spend it out camping. They sell lots of strange things. Never seen them in use or seen the need. Who said they don't use the same fans on compressor based fridges.

RV fridge very dangerous, lots of fires.Electricity can cause fires too. The few RV fires I've seen and heard of were all electrical. Not saying you can't have a propane fire but it's not the end of the world.

In all the years of owning residential fridges I've never had a manufacture contact me about the their fridge causing fire. I still have Dometic haunting me to have my propane fridge repaired for fire hazard and we sold the coach. They are begging us to locate the new owner for them. Sounds like and issue. Finding a coach burned down because of a propane fridge is easy to find. A little melodrama there...You most likely didn't hear from the compressor based fridge company because its easier to pass off wiring issues as wear and tear.

Generally smallish.They come in different sizes just like compressor based dorm fridges aren't the only size you can get.

Yes, and our last one propane was double door side by side with a separate freezer. I've yet to see a propane fridge in any coach that is the size of our Kitchen aid residential.

So if I decide to run a catering buisness out of the RV, I'll consider the switch so I can get a bigger unit. Until then the simplicity of the absorbtion fridge makes a lot of sense if you are away from power posts at times.

Adam H wrote:




One last question. With so many houses in North America fitted with natural and propane gas that runs the furnace, hot water, BBQ, range, why is the ratio of compressor vs absorbtion fridges 1,000,000 to 1 for domestic use?

Houses use compressor fridges because they are more energy efficent when plugged in and it's pretty rare to unplug your entire house, so needing a backup power source is unneccessary.

Most RV's are unplugged regularly and when you pay for a site, electricity is thrown in so most don't really care too much about efficency.

If this arguement held weight, RV's would have switched over to compressor based back in the 50's.

Argh... fumble finger city in my previous reply. I don't mean to be redundant, but what I meant to state was that absorption fridges are common in RVs, compressor fridges are replacing them.

As time goes on, lithium batteries (well, LiFePO4 or similar) get cheaper, solar panels become standard, we will see batteries that can handle the 2-3 amp-hours a compressor fridge (the biggest Nova-Kool fridge is at around 5.5 amp-hours) uses. We also will see solar setups that can put that much electricity back into the batteries. A move to lithium batteries means they can be drawn down to 10% without damage, giving one almost double the usable battery capacity. Of course, it means a charger... but those are falling in price as well.

The only place I see absorption fridges (ones that use propane) are small RV units which either don't have the space for at least 400 amp-hours of batteries, or don't have the solar panel space, and are used mainly for boondocking. Even those, such as truck campers, as technology improves with batteries and solar, those will wind up with compressor units eventually.

There is one piece of the puzzle missing; a game changer. A few years ago, Truma made a VeGA fuel cell which give a relatively low, but steady wattage from incoming propane. We have EFOY's methanol fuel cells which last about a month, and give 80, 140, or 210 amp-hours per day (a more relevant figure is about 3, 11, and 17.5 amp-hours, respectively.) However, their cost is very expensive, about $3600, $5000, and $7000, and that is without installation. The 10 liter methanol jugs are about $80 each, and last about a month.

However, if the price on fuel cells does come down, this changes everything. If the 17.5 amp-hour model got to a $2000 price point, absorption refrigerators will be history. If someone makes a propane fuel cell that puts out 10-20 amp-hours... again, there would be no need to have an absorption fridge.

I'm crossing my fingers... fuel cell technology for RVs is where lithium batteries were in 2010, and MP3 players were back in 2000 -- relatively expensive curiosities. The technology is there, but it is going to take a well-heeled company to get it to the mass market at a price people would pay.

Calicajun wrote:
After reading all the posts it seems to me that a residential refrigerator could work out just fine. We already have a 2000 watt generator and all the units we have looked at come per wired for solar. Plus the wife does like the larger size of the residential refrigerator. She was once happy with our first travel trailer, 23', and the 6 cubic foot refrigerator. Wonder what I did wrong as now she wants a 36' 5th wheel, large oven, large microwave and the big refrigerator.

Craig

:)

After reading all the posts it seems to me that a residential refrigerator could work out just fine. We already have a 2000 watt generator and all the units we have looked at come per wired for solar. Plus the wife does like the larger size of the residential refrigerator. She was once happy with our first travel trailer, 23', and the 6 cubic foot refrigerator. Wonder what I did wrong as now she wants a 36' 5th wheel, large oven, large microwave and the big refrigerator.

Craig

Don,
A guy doesn't have to have a 21 cu ft fridge. There are available all sizes of 12 V and 120 V boxes.
I camp almost exclusively off grid and using a single 235 W solar module with 300 H of battery capacity have never had to shut down the fridge. Someday, I may run into a week of bad weather but I do have a generator.

valhalla360 wrote:
You must have had a real dud. 2-3 hrs ahead of time is usually fine. If you are packing it with pre-chilled food, you can turn it on when you load the fridge.

Not at all. I know lots of people who do that, plus my instruction manual said the same thing to bring it up to operating temp.

Rv fridge always have trouble keeping up on hotter days.Never had this issue. Were you per chance leaving the door open...a lot?

Nope door not left open. Common problem discussed many times around the campfire with many other people. Many discussions on how to deal with the issue. Along with the defrosting issue.

RV fridge has many accessories fans to make them cool better.What fans?

Don't spend much time in RV stores? Yes the make cooling fans that will go into the exhaust area of the unit to move more air and have it cool as well as fans to go in the fridge itself to move air across the cooling fans. Made by dozens of manufacturers, because it's a pesky problem.

RV fridge very dangerous, lots of fires.Electricity can cause fires too. The few RV fires I've seen and heard of were all electrical. Not saying you can't have a propane fire but it's not the end of the world.

In all the years of owning residential fridges I've never had a manufacture contact me about the their fridge causing fire. I still have Dometic haunting me to have my propane fridge repaired for fire hazard and we sold the coach. They are begging us to locate the new owner for them. Sounds like and issue. Finding a coach burned down because of a propane fridge is easy to find.

Generally smallish.They come in different sizes just like compressor based dorm fridges aren't the only size you can get.

Yes, and our last one propane was double door side by side with a separate freezer. I've yet to see a propane fridge in any coach that is the size of our Kitchen aid residential.

Sometimes this residential refer discussion gets silly. Residential refers first appeared in large motor homes that have the support system to run them. As people realized how well they worked, they slowly started creeping down into smaller less expensive motor homes and now into more expensive 5th wheels. My sister is currently looking for a new Class A gas and we've been helping. Even less expensive gassers are adding smaller, 10 cubic foot residential units.

With that said, the residential units are being put into RV's that can SUPPORT them with additional batteries, inverters and generators. This is where it gets silly. People are posting here, that have small TT's, that the units just won't work for their type of camping or in their situation.....no kidding! This discussion is NOT about putting a 21 cubic foot refer in a tent trailer. If you have a 26' TT and boon dock while hunting, a residential unit is not for you.

No matter how much many disagree, residential (all electric) refers are the future.

Adam H wrote:
I put a residential in my last TT when the absorption let all it's ammonia out. Couple hundred bucks + a cheapie HF inverter and all was good. I had 2 group 29 batteries and no solar, a portable 3 stage charger and 3 hrs a day gen time kept everything topped off including all my other 12v draws.

When I sold the TT I had 1 person back out because of the residential. A few days later, it was sold so I guess there is a small risk with resale. My new PUP has a 4cu/ft 3 way that works as well as any other absorption fridge (so/so) and when it dies, I will replace it with a residential. I figure gen time or solar is required for most of us when off grid. I'm sure someone will chime in and tell me otherwise....

With the availability of modern solar and the efficiency of modern appliances, the absorption refrig is almost obsolete. When I tested my compressor fridge in the garage, it ran 10 hours (cycling) before my 1 grp 29 battery hit 12.10 volts.


Taking it all in, a residential might have more advantages than disadvantages.... Think about it :)

Adam

Adam H,
Pretty well summed up what I was going to say. I will add that using the term RV fridge as an absorbtion unit only is no longer true with so many people going to the all electric compressor style fridge.

We dry or boondock camp exclusively, have a compressor fridge (12-120V)which is a little different than a house fridge and the only thing we had to do differently from having an absorbtion fridge( which we had in our last TC), was double batteries and solar if we did not want to run a generator. Still have the genny sitting there as dead weight only using it a few times in the last 4 years. If we kept with the standard 2 batteries and 150W solar, the genny would have to be run more often.

One last question. With so many houses in North America fitted with natural and propane gas that runs the furnace, hot water, BBQ, range, why is the ratio of compressor vs absorbtion fridges 1,000,000 to 1 for domestic use?

Dave