Pre cooling a residential fridge

austinjenna.....The answers are all over the place on this. Simple answer, they cool very quickly. Most would probably be at temperature in 1 - 1.5 hours. In your situation you could do one of two things. Go late in the evening to the storage yard and turn the refer on (it will run all night on battery power). You could even fire up the generator, do some trip prep while the refer cools, turn the generator off and then head home. By the time you bring it to the house the next day, the refer would be fully cooled.

Or....you could go to your storage facility on the day you're leaving, start your generator, turn on the refer and drive it to your house. Load your clothing and supplies and then load the refer last. It would be cool by then.

austinjenna wrote:

Tell us a little about your rig. How many batteries etc.

I have 2 group 31 batteries, 120 watt solar panel as well

Yah really with that kind of setup assuming you have a proper inverter you would have no problem starting at the storage place the night before. If its sunny you could probably start it the day before. But like I say, all it needs is an hour.

Good luck.

Tell us a little about your rig. How many batteries etc.

I have 2 group 31 batteries, 120 watt solar panel as well

Good morning.

Two things. To precool a residential takes a fraction of the time so a ciuple things may work for you.

* Can you bring power to the rig when parked outside of the house. You don't need much in the way of current. Eg...no 30 amp needed.

* Do you have a small generator you can run for an hour or two the morning of

* Can you install an inverter. Fairly simple if it is just dedicated to the fridge.

Tell us a little about your rig. How many batteries etc.

The fridge won't use any more than a flat screen TV so its probably considerably less than you think. Even a couple of 6 volts will run a fridge for a day. But like I said they don't have to run long to get cold. An hour tops.

Hope this helps.

Austinjenna wrote:
I dont think I did a good job of asking. Currently I go the day before we leave, turn the fridge on propane then the next day bring it home, we load up the food and go. So how do you accomplish the same thing if your rig has the electric only 120V fridge?

Bring the trailer home, power up the fridge, and 15 minutes later, load the food into the fridge. Residential fridges, especially small ones, cool down exceptionally fast.
Yes, if you want the 120V fridge to operate in transit, you'll need an inverter to power the fridge from the batteries. Depending on the charge circuit from your towing vehicle, the amount of battery storage, and the electrical draw of the fridge, will all factor in to how this all works out.

Small generator or solar to keep batteries topped up,Thats what I will be doing when the never cold coughs.
Residential fridge while the trailer is in storage- pre cooling is a issue.If you can park in front of home while loading ,run as cord out to it and pre cool?

I dont think I did a good job of asking. Currently I go the day before we leave, turn the fridge on propane then the next day bring it home, we load up the food and go. So how do you accomplish the same thing if your rig has the electric only 120V fridge?

Are you taking your stuff in a cooler, going to the park, plug in, wait for it to cool then load up the fridge?

Certainly for the dry ice you dont do this every time you are headed out are you?

With it being an electric only fridge, there seems to be 3 options:
1). Keep it plugged in all the time
2). Take stuff in a cooler until you get to your park and the fridge cools off
3). Run the fridge off an inverter, but like I originally stated I think that would kill the batteries quickly

Dry ice. available at many walmart locations

Any type of empty fridge will quickly warm when cold if you put a bunch of warm stuff in.
A good way to chill a warm fridge down is to it put some frozen stuff in like blue ice or frozen casserole or really cold canned stuff. If you load it with room temp beer it will take a day to get cold.

I'm confused:

For a residential (compressor) fridge, it will get to operating temperature regardless of what's inside in a few hours.

An absorption fridge will take a lot longer. Those cases, I use hard sided gel packs and toss the perishables in the fridge already cold so everything is pre-chilled. Then, the freezer will be at a usable temperature almost immediately and be able to maintain it in 2-3 hours. The fridge may take a bit longer, but the gel packs and a small fan help a lot.