Residential Fridge Report

Amp Hours used per day is really a function of your refer and freezer set points.

If I set my freezer down to 0 degrees F it has a duty cycle of 75% or so.

If you have enough solar panels, you can run the refrigerator as long as you want - while dry camping. One owner of a DP that is all electric found that he can dry camp longer without running the generator than his older coach without as much solar and a smaller battery bank and gas refrigerator.

The larger battery bank, 500 - 700 watt solar system, and high efficiency inverter all work well to run 4 - 5 days between recharges.

You can buy solar panels for much less today than 7 years ago. SunElec.com had some 140 watt 12 volt panels on sale for $230 last time I checked. Each would put out about 45 AH per day. By putting on as much solar as will fit, you can avoid needing to conserve power or run the generator.

Also if you have more panels, you don't really need a heavy battery reserve, as you are making plenty of power each day to stay ahead of the power consumption. And more batteries means more lost amp hours to the battery in-efficiency.

Have fun dry camping!

Fred.

Like Ivylog said, you may have damaged your new batteries. Best not to let voltage get below 12v or so. A battery monitor is cheap insurance against drawing a battery bank below 50% capacity.

Ivylog wrote:
Sounds like you may be drawing the batteries down below 50 percent... Not good for them so what was the voltage? My 21 CuFt draws 8 amps and runs less than 12 hours per day... Less than 100 AH/ day. Your Samsung should use slightly less and runs well on a MSW inverter. If you boondock often I would want four batteries.

It was an impromptu test resulting from being too tired to unload the RV upon arriving home and not being able to hook up to 120v power that night.

I didn't bother to check the battery voltage. I was surprised there was enough juice to bring in the 6 slides first. I suspect it was 11v or less by the time I tried to retract the levelers because they require, off the top of my head, no less than 11.5v to operate.

My fridge draws 7a or so, and since the doors were not opened during the 17 hours, I'm guessing it didn't operate more than 8 of those hours; perhaps much less.

BTW, I forgot to mention it's a 1000w inverter, and yes (based on this not too scientific test), I'd think anyone boon-docking with a similar setup would need four 6v deep-cycle batteries, preferably a good solar panel supplement, and expect to run a genset to recharge every day.

I have wondered about the residential because currently I go to the storage yard the night before and fire up the fridge. I was wondering if I had a residential if I could do the same thing and how long would it run.

Sounds like you may be drawing the batteries down below 50 percent... Not good for them so what was the voltage? My 21 CuFt draws 8 amps and runs less than 12 hours per day... Less than 100 AH/ day. Your Samsung should use slightly less and runs well on a MSW inverter. If you boondock often I would want four batteries.

Thanks for the information. I have read a lot about it but so much conflicting info I wasn't sure what to think! Our next unit will definitely have a residential refer too.

phillyg wrote:
Many folks are asking about residential fridges so here's my report FWIW. Samsung 18cf came installed and with only one battery. Dealership added one at my insistence. They're typical hybrid Interstate "RV/Marine" batteries so nothing special.

Snip

Regardless, I am satisfied the fridge ran for 17 hours on admittedly inexpensive batteries. Four 6v batteries would be much better.

Four would be a minimum. I have a residential (compressor) type refrigerator and freezer, both are 6 cuft each (12 total).

I figure about 250 amp hours a day for just them.