ARP Refrigerator Protection

Harvey51 wrote:
I started out to buy it when I saw Pianatuna's recommendation but the $200 price stopped me. It just seems like a lot for a device that flips a switch off when the temperature rises too high. A $5 thermostat can accomplish that. It seems to me it should be possible to make an electronic device with $5 worth of parts that turns off upon sensing high temperature and does not turn it on again until cool AND level, or flashes a light to indicate a person needs to turn it on when ready. Must I make my own to get a reasonable price?

I don't blame the ARP guys; they probably have horrendous insurance and legal costs when fridges fail for whatever reason.

I am very careful about levelling and turning off the fridge when not level and live in the cool north.

As Larry said- the ARP does much, much more than that. If it were that simple, don't you think Dometic and Norcold would already be doing it, instead of trying to bypass the ARP patent (unsuccessfully, I should add).

The ARP uses a very high end temperature sensor and an algorithm that basically knows what is going on in the tubing. It adjusts the cutoff temperature after a shutdown.

Harvey51 wrote:
I started out to buy it when I saw Pianatuna's recommendation but the $200 price stopped me. It just seems like a lot for a device that flips a switch off when the temperature rises too high. A $5 thermostat can accomplish that. It seems to me it should be possible to make an electronic device with $5 worth of parts that turns off upon sensing high temperature and does not turn it on again until cool AND level, or flashes a light to indicate a person needs to turn it on when ready. Must I make my own to get a reasonable price?

I don't blame the ARP guys; they probably have horrendous insurance and legal costs when fridges fail for whatever reason.

I am very careful about levelling and turning off the fridge when not level and live in the cool north.

The ARP does MUCH, MUCH more than just turning the refer off due to temperature and one would pay multiples of its current cost to design and build one that does what it does IMO.

Larry

I started out to buy it when I saw Pianatuna's recommendation but the $200 price stopped me. It just seems like a lot for a device that flips a switch off when the temperature rises too high. A $5 thermostat can accomplish that. It seems to me it should be possible to make an electronic device with $5 worth of parts that turns off upon sensing high temperature and does not turn it on again until cool AND level, or flashes a light to indicate a person needs to turn it on when ready. Must I make my own to get a reasonable price?

I don't blame the ARP guys; they probably have horrendous insurance and legal costs when fridges fail for whatever reason.

I am very careful about levelling and turning off the fridge when not level and live in the cool north.

You can install the unit through the outside service door. I don't know where you want to install the 2 fans. If outside at the service door if you have the room you can. If at the top of the refrig. on the roof you do that after taking off the roof vent cap. If it's in a slide out you can install the fans at the top side air vent. So for just about all cases you can do it with out pulling the refrig. If you see him selling at a rally or Quartzite he will come out and install it for you.

This is the reason to install the ARP. It does NOT improve the actual cooling as long as all parameters are to spec. The main thing it does is STOP the cooling process when you park off level for those short periods of time that can start a cooling unit break down in a few years. Doug

Your RV Refrigerator boiler operates at about 350 degrees all the time, but even a brief time off-level, like driving up a hill , can send that temperature sky-rocketing. Events like this produced a lot of thermal stress in the fridge boiler, stress that causes the metal to fatigue and the anti-corrosion chemicals in the coolant to deteriorate leading to fridge failure and perhaps even causing an RV fire. This is the reason for Dometic and Norcold recalls leading to class action suits. The ARP Control can monitor the boiler temperature and automatically shut down the boiler if temperatures begin to climb out of normal range. Best of all, ARP continues to monitor and re-starts the fridge once it cools down again, so that your food doesn't spoil. And all without any effort by you!

To install an ARP unit along with the 2 fans, does one have to "pull" the fridge out or can it be done by removing the vents in the rear and/or roof? Does it have to be done by an RV service center?

Mike

I added the ARP controller along with a thermistor replacement ("Snip The Tip") and fans both interior and exterior.

I can't say which improvement specifically helped but overall I couldn't be happier with the result. In almost any weather the fridge is around 34 to 38 degrees and the freezer is anywhere between 6 and 11 degrees.

The thing I like the most is that it controls the fans so they're not running constantly, especially in cold weather. Also I had an unrelated fridge issue right after installing the ARP and my email inquiry to the owners was returned immediately.

I would like to have gotten the data logging version but we are an Apple-based house, so, no. That said, it would not surprise me if it did do a shutdown, as it is supposed to, during a long climb/decline in Colorado. I absentmindedly had left the fridge on in propane mode and it wasn't until I got to the campsite that I saw that the unit had been running all day. We were either way, way lucky or the ARP did it's job.

Further, our stock fridge routinely got too warm or too cold. Either way we were seeing ruined food. Since the upgrades, we've had no issues at all.

Gjac,

These were the only times that the unit shut down the fridge. I was not "out of level" any more than usual. It was not cold enough for my Thermocube controlled light bulb to come on.

We installed one in Sept after doing a fair amount of research. Very little negative and lots of positive feedback. So far it seems to do it''s job.

Price is reasonable, about the same as 1000 miles of travel with our e450 v10. Fridge replacement is probably $2000-3000.

Have it on ours. It was highly recommended by Pines Refrigeration (Makers of the Amish Cooling units).