dry camping with residential refrigerators
I'm thinking of buying a new motorhome but we do a lot of dry camping and I can't seem to get a straight answer on battery life running these new residential refrigerators. Dealers, salespeople say i...
Forum Discussion
Since you do lots of dry camping the process is no different with the exception you have to manage a much higher power demand every day than what you have become accustomed to in the past. Extended camping without hookups generally includes some generator usage.
Generator usage for simply restoring consumed amphours to your DC supply/resources is significantly extended when battery bank is severely depleted which sounds like the case with your friend, even 6 hours of runtime will not fully restore them.
Add as many batteries as you can fit, improve charging characteristics by utilizing a smart converter that can deliver at least 14.4 DC volts and 100 amps, and ensure wire from converter to battery is properly specked, all will aid to reduce genny runtime.
Adding roughly 100 watts of solar per battery will further reduce genny runtime, with enough batteries and solar you might getaway with not running it at all on some days. This part may prove cost prohibited if you only dry camp a couple days at a time.
Many of the newer rigs that we have been perusing offer residential fridges, like you we do most of our RVing off the power grid. We'll pass as we've experienced excellent results with our Dometic fridges over the last dozen years, temp or elevation has little effect on performance.
Generator usage for simply restoring consumed amphours to your DC supply/resources is significantly extended when battery bank is severely depleted which sounds like the case with your friend, even 6 hours of runtime will not fully restore them.
Add as many batteries as you can fit, improve charging characteristics by utilizing a smart converter that can deliver at least 14.4 DC volts and 100 amps, and ensure wire from converter to battery is properly specked, all will aid to reduce genny runtime.
Adding roughly 100 watts of solar per battery will further reduce genny runtime, with enough batteries and solar you might getaway with not running it at all on some days. This part may prove cost prohibited if you only dry camp a couple days at a time.
Many of the newer rigs that we have been perusing offer residential fridges, like you we do most of our RVing off the power grid. We'll pass as we've experienced excellent results with our Dometic fridges over the last dozen years, temp or elevation has little effect on performance.
