Cheap Refrigerator question

DrewE wrote:

azrving wrote:

If I was staying with gas I would modify it differently then they do with the ARP type devices. The whole thing is flawed and insane from the very beginning. Resi or gas both have their pros and cons but right now I'm for the one that doesnt have as bad of a history of burning everything down. My old gas fridge was in excellent condition and had very little rust and was always level but it would be bad to return to a burned out rig or the worst part would be knowing that I left my dogs in a known fire trap. We all know what a cheesy industry RV's are but how did anyone ever let this whole thing continue on for so long? I dont think it's very hard to fix but it does require a little more money. It seems like it would be talked about on here.

Gas fridges have somewhat of an underserved reputation for fire danger. More RV fires stem from engine fires and, if memory serves, electrical fires than from fridges, and at least a fair chunk (not necessarily the majority) of fridge fires are due to things not specifically fridge related, like leaking connections to the propane system that could just as easily be found on any propane appliance.

Ammonia is not particularly inflammable; it has a fairly narrow band of concentration where it will burn. That, of course, is not very much consolation for anyone who has suffered due to a fridge fire; but it's equally wrong to think of an absorption fridge as though it were a bomb waiting to go off at the slightest provocation.

Far more beneficial, in my opinion, would be to use more fire-safe materials and construction methods in RVs so that they wouldn't generally go from having a small fire to being a raging inferno in half a minute or so.

Yes, they are far from a bomb waiting to go off. The key issue is that they do have the ability like any other gas appliance to catch fire. The flaw that no one seems to address with an RV and is always addressed with a home is the installation. The compartment is used as a chimney yet it's made of wood. All it needs is to be built with a sheet metal liner and cap. When a propane fridge often catches fire from the release of gasses yet the total amount of gas is pretty small. It doesn’t contain enough to keep a flame blowing out against the wood for a long time; it's just that the wood chase catches fire quickly. It's like they did half the job. If the chase was lined with sheet metal it would probably be extremely difficult to catch it on fire. Lining with sheet metal requires some labor but would be cheaper that some of the protective devices which are not total protections from fire. A wood chase for a gas burning appliance is just crazy. What gas or wood burning home appliance is allowed to use a wood chase as a chimney?