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
RJsfishin wrote:
Quote:
Don't even think about it !
Theres your straight answer
When you post that you have a 150W inverter and 2 12V batteries what might be a straight answer for you, is not for those of us with energy hog MHs. I have a 2000W inverter, a 1000W inverter, 10 batteries and a 10KW generator.
Having been of your opinion, it only cost me a couple thousand dollars wasted on my NoCold 1200 trying to keep it working before I gave up. Most trips out west we boondock 5-6 days/week so the idea of a residential refer was out of the question. After a year of actual use, no way will I ever have another absorption refer.
Yes, a Danforth compressor refer is very efficient but do you really want to spend $1000 for a 3.8 cuft unit that draws 3.75 amps. My $550, 21 cuft refer (5 times larger) draws 8 amps and this past summer it ran 40 percent of the time... a little over 900 W/day or 77 AH/day. The rest of my MH's power usage is close to 3 times that amount requiring close to 2 hours of generator use/day, way more than what's need to keep the refer's batteries up.
