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...
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I agree with BFL and the other pro LP guys for all of the above reasons. We dry camp 99.9% of the time, literally in a FHU CG mebbe one or two days a year. We run 4ea. T-145 Trojans with 500W of solar and a Magnum that can easily make 100A charging from a 7.5kw gen w/ AGS. With all that in place, when I replaced the cooling unit it simply didn't make sense knowing we are never in a CG to have to run the inverter 24/7 with its massive parasitic idle draw, and 10A fridge draw, even if it is 25-50% of the time. I don't crash till 1-2am, and with the TV, DSS, iPad, etc., that draw is ~15A starting at sundown, sans the additional load of a fridge.
The cooling unit only was replaced with a new Helium unit that is far colder than the OEM and also runs less (because it is so cold), and the liquid (gas) is inert. Here's to hoping it will last.. If NORCOLD and Dometic had done the Helium engineering 15 years ago, their problems at least with fire, (and cheaped the materials), residential in RV would have never gotten off the ground.
To backup BFL's comment; I too am not interested in looking over my shoulder at power system status, even tho it's pretty much automatic
The cooling unit only was replaced with a new Helium unit that is far colder than the OEM and also runs less (because it is so cold), and the liquid (gas) is inert. Here's to hoping it will last.. If NORCOLD and Dometic had done the Helium engineering 15 years ago, their problems at least with fire, (and cheaped the materials), residential in RV would have never gotten off the ground.
To backup BFL's comment; I too am not interested in looking over my shoulder at power system status, even tho it's pretty much automatic
