refg swap from RV style to home style

Here's a link to Executive's residential fridge upgrade on his blog. It's a really good example of how the process should go.

He's posted it here before so I would think it's okay to link to it again.

Scroll down to June 7th.

We have a residential fridge, but it is original to our MH. We like it 1000 times better than the "fin fridge" in our TT.

we changed ours, 5yrs ago this month
when the repaired NorCold blew up

OP, you do not say what refer you have now. Depending on the sizes, getting the units out/in can be the biggest challenge. Finding a home refer the same size is not likely so some modifications of the cabinet area may be required. I recently replaced my NoCold 1200 myself here.

Another issue is how are you going to power it when not on shore power... these are campers so often off the grid. If you boondock often then extra batteries will be necessary plus a inverter to power it.

I put one in a couple of weeks ago, a Frigidaire 14.6CF which fit through the door after removing the TV cabinet. The evaporator fan didn't like the modified sine wave inverter and quit the first day on the road. It had an electronic circuit in the fan housing. The replacement looks like it doesn't have electronics in it but is inaccessible in molded plastic so I can't be sure. I had a 1000 Watt sine wave inverter with me so I installed it as a stand alone power for the reefer, that works fine. We like it fine although we haven't boondocked yet due to high temperatures. With 760 watts of solar I don't expect much problem. Pines RV sent a replacement cooling unit under warranty, I can put the Norcold 1200 back in if I choose. I was leaving on a trip and didn't have time to wait for it.

Here's a write up I did in January on the Escapees site.

Well, our Norcold 1200 died in a flurry of the bad smell of ammonia, and not in flames like some do. We decided to switch to a residential unit and found one of the now hard to get Samsung RF197’s in Platinum Stainless at a fair price. As a side note the RF197 has been replaced by the RF18 which uses just a bit more power and is also a little taller. One of the reasons I picked the 197 was its minimal use of power at a grand total of 3.9 amps (468 watts) when both cooling evaporators and the “defrost” cycle are running. Most of the time it’s just the compressor and one evaporator demanding cooling and that only takes 130 watts or about 1 amp of 120VAC.
Deciding how to power the new unit was the next challenge. I communicated with Samsung tech support and they told me that they no longer recommended that the 197 could be powered by a modified sine wave (MSW) inverter. My options were to replace my whole house 1500W MSW unit with a new 2000W PSW one or add a second smaller unit just for the fridge. After some research and recommendations from Yarome and others on this site I went with a separate 600 Watt PSW unit from Samlex at a cost of $200. I had a hard time trying to locate the new inverter close to the battery bank due to the configuration of my coach. I wound up placing it in the closest available compartment at a distance of 10 feet that also was just underneath the refrigerator. We used AWG 0 wire for the run. The fuse is located near the battery bank.

The Install. We removed one of the windows on the patio side of the coach that measured 48” X 40”. We removed the Norcold and passed it out thru the window onto a hoist. The cabinet had to be modified for the new unit by lowering the cabinet floor by 7” and moving a few other things out of the way. We also fed the existing 120VAC outlet, in the back of the fridge cabinet, into the lower compartment and secured it near the new inverter. Once that was done we brought the new fridge in thru the window and placed it into position, hooked up the water for the ice maker and fed the plug down into the compartment below. In order to get it level we had to remove the front rollers and use shims for the final adjustment. The top of the fridge was secured using the old brackets from the Norcold that were relocated and re-bent. We fired up the new inverter and plugged in the new fridge and it all works great. I can leave the fridge plugged into the inverter all the time if I want, but what I do is plug it into the newly relocated 120VAC outlet. I’m kinda of like a manual transfer switch and may add an automatic one later on. We secure the doors for travel with Velcro.

The day after the install we headed to Lake Mead for a week of dry camping. We did not have any power problems all week. The new unit sips power. Our routine, starting in the evening, was to run the generator for about an hour while preparing dinner and watching TV. At 10PM I would shut down the whole house inverter and check the battery voltage. I would check the voltage again around 7 AM when I got up. Typically we would lose about 0.2 volts overnight. I would then start the generator and use the toaster, coffee pot and microwave and leave the genset running for an hour. At that point the bulk charging was done and I would let the solar finish the job during the day. We have 375 watts of solar, four 6 volt house batteries and a BlueSky 2000E charge controller. As a note we measured the power consumption on the whole house inverter, with no loads turned on, just stuff plugged in like TV’s, microwave etc. and found that it consumed 2.3 amps feeding the parasitic loads. On a typical overnight with it on the battery bank would go down by about 0.6 volts. I am very happy that I used a second inverter as it keeps my power drain at a minimum.
So far we are really happy with the new unit and have 12 cuft in the fridge and another 6 cuft of freezer space. BTW, it makes a lot of ice in a relatively short period of time.

MrWizard wrote:
we changed ours, 5yrs ago this month
when the repaired NorCold blew up

You don't mean that it blew up.....literally, do you? Like: Boom-Fire-Panic blew up?

yes..I do
DW was inside, i was walking to the trash can
there was a boom and fire and smoke shot out of the fridge vent on the roof
I yelled for her to get out,grabbed the fire extinguisher from the outside storage
yanked the fridge outside vent door off
but i did not need the extinguisher the thing blew itself out when it blew off
i quickly turned off all propane

a few days later i was installing the new Apartment size residential fridge
there are some pictures in the thread about it
August 2010

What a mess!

I just read back your old thread. Wow - good thing you were around (but not too close) when it happened.

Also found an autoformer thread, so thanks for that.

Our never cold died it's death after 11 years from new, and we ended up with guidance from many other RVers deciding to put on a solar system and new increased battery bank (recommended to us was min 600ah for residential style fridge but preferably 800ah). The newer residential fridges, just like the flat screen TVs are typically way more energy efficient than what came with units a few years ago, so draw down is much less.

Considered and got quotes on amish replacement part or buying a new RV style fridge. Our residential fridge cost us almost $3000 less than a new RV one which we applied to our solar system.

Best thing we ever did, ice cream stays hard now and bread freezes properly = happy dance, plus much better useful dimensions for pizzas etc than the old side by side. Take your exit door/window measurements to get the fridge out of the rig (we had to take the door off and had a smidgeon of an inch to spare on the removal) and our new fridge we bought sized to fit through doorway and hallway (that was the tightest spot for new fridge sizing) opposite bathroom door for reinstall.

FWIW: It was quite a bit of work cutting and to find trim to replace around new fridge being a different dimension overall on width and height, but we love, love, love the residential fridge and wish we'd done it years earlier. As a huge bonus we enjoy being more off grid independent to boot.

I communicated with Samsung tech support and they told me that they no longer recommended that the 197 could be powered by a modified sine wave (MSW

Its about time they came around. As a former authorized service company for Samsung I have been advising folks on this board not to run there refers on modified sine wave inverters. I always hear the same thing I called tech support and they told me I could.