Residential Refrigerators While Boondocking

naturist wrote:
The possibility of going boondocking would be WHY RVs typically come with absorption (ie, gas) refrigerators, not residential ones.

A residential fridge is going to draw a lot of power, particularly when the compressor starts. This will require a rather largish inverter, which will suck down batteries pretty fast. No doubt you've discovered that already.

The number one suggestion I'd have is to avoid opening the fridge up for any reason while boon docking. Open door time is the major warm-up factor in a fridge's day.

Well certainly many RV's come with absorption fridges but its getting tough to find a middle to upper end motorhome that doesn't have a residential fridge. I would think absorptions will be available for awhile yet but certainly residentials (compressor type) are making big inroads into the RV world. With the price of solar nowadays I can't think of any real advantages to absorption units over residentials in coaches or larger fifth wheels that have room for larger battery banks.

I believe your coach is already set up with 4 X 6 volt batteries. More is better but 4 will do. Now add about 400 watts of solar and for the most part you are set. We still occasionally run the genny during hi current usage like microwave or toaster but for the most part the solar will more than run your fridge and a bunch of other things. If we do start the genny for the microwave or toaster or whatever we usually let it run for an hour. Good for the genny and rapid charges the battery bank. Your residential doesn't use that much power. We have a large battery bank and lots of solar but we dry camp a lot and the residential hasn't made much of a difference in how we camp unless we have LOTS of cloudy skys. Then we end up running the genny a couple hours a day. No big deal. Your resdiential will draw just over an amp or so, and only for about 20 minutes out of the hour.

Boondocking and residential fridge

LARGE battery bank.......LARGE inverter......BIG Generator to either run fridge and/or charge battery bank

Folks that change out an absorption fridge to a residential fridge typically go to CG's with FHUs.

Batteries and solar.

The possibility of going boondocking would be WHY RVs typically come with absorption (ie, gas) refrigerators, not residential ones.

A residential fridge is going to draw a lot of power, particularly when the compressor starts. This will require a rather largish inverter, which will suck down batteries pretty fast. No doubt you've discovered that already.

The number one suggestion I'd have is to avoid opening the fridge up for any reason while boon docking. Open door time is the major warm-up factor in a fridge's day.

Good battery bank and a generator. I can't imagine more than 24 hours without 120v to the fridge. I'm guessing you have 5-6 k genset onboard, right. So it runs 2-3 hours in the am and 2-3 hours in the pm and you should be good. It's all depending on the restrictions of running the genset where you are and how much fuel your using for the genset.