For those of you that have one in your rig, what do you do to pre-cool it? I have the standard 3-way fridge now and go the night before and fire it up on propane. We have been recently looking at some new rv's and a lot of them have the full size fridge in it. I am curious as to what folks do.Mine is in a storage yard so there is no access to electric. I would think with an inverter it would drain that battery pretty quickly.

YEs your would have to turn it off. It cools down pretty fast but that being said I can only tell you from the time they plugged it in when they were installing it till the time I was backed into my spot I had one tray of ice dump.

Plug it in and wait 1/2 hour. If you want to run a 120V fridge without connection to shore power, you'll need an inverter and more than one battery (if you plan to run it for a day or so).

Just to be clear, you are looking at a new rig with residential electric-only fridge? Or, a full sized 2-way (electric & propane) fridge?If electric only, you could throw in some a several frozen water bottles, bags of ice or similar when you turn it on the night before. I have no idea if it would cool down enough to be beneficial. The nice thing about using frozen bottles is the water is contained as ice melts.

Ours cools down in less than hour. Considerably faster than any RV absorption fridge. It starts cranking out ice in minutes.

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.

Pre cooling a residential fridge | Good Sam Community

John___Angela
Explorer
Jul 10, 2014
Ours cools down in less than hour. Considerably faster than any RV absorption fridge. It starts cranking out ice in minutes.
hotbyte
Explorer
Jul 10, 2014
Just to be clear, you are looking at a new rig with residential electric-only fridge? Or, a full sized 2-way (electric & propane) fridge?

If electric only, you could throw in some a several frozen water bottles, bags of ice or similar when you turn it on the night before. I have no idea if it would cool down enough to be beneficial. The nice thing about using frozen bottles is the water is contained as ice melts.
westend
Explorer
Jul 10, 2014
Plug it in and wait 1/2 hour. If you want to run a 120V fridge without connection to shore power, you'll need an inverter and more than one battery (if you plan to run it for a day or so).
John_S_
Explorer II
Jul 10, 2014
YEs your would have to turn it off. It cools down pretty fast but that being said I can only tell you from the time they plugged it in when they were installing it till the time I was backed into my spot I had one tray of ice dump.

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