Refridgerator / inverter ques

We have a Montana 5er and travel with the fridge on propane all the time. Just turn it off when you pull in to fuel up the TV. Check out the Montana Owners Forum. Lots of good info on your Montana there.

Jgeorger1 wrote:
We have likewise run with propane on, but checking many YouTube RV tutorials, Ive lost count of the number that warn against this practice,

I have threads covering years of debate on this board, if you're interested. It gets crazy.

Bottom line: do what you feel comfortable doing. It's not like you're going to go around setting gas stations on fire.

Thanks all for your input. We have likewise run with propane on, but checking many YouTube RV tutorials, Ive lost count of the number that warn against this practice, beyond the fill up scenarios..... Does anyone have a satisfactory inverter/ fridge combination, it sounds like it works better in theory than in practice.

I always run my fridge on propane while on the road and have been doing so for over 10 years for thousands of miles. I've read that some tunnels require you to turn the gas off while passing through, but I've never encountered any of those.

You should turn your fridge off while fueling up with gas however, but most don't.

Moved from Forum Technical Support

Jgeorger1 wrote:
Recommendations Needed:
I read that we should not go over the road with our montana fifth wheel, with the fridge on gas.................

Where did you read that - they are WRONG.
RV fridges are designed to run while on the road. Mine runs that way all the time, except when stopping for fuel.
But some people prefer not to drive with propane on.
If that is what you are trying to avoid, yes you CAN run your fridge from an inverter.
Make sure it can handle to current draw from the fridge and the battery charge is maintained as you drive.

We've always kept our TT fridge in automatic mode, so when we are on shore power, it runs on electric but on the road, always on gas. That is why there IS a gas option.

It is true that when you are going through tunnels or on ferries, you are often required to shut off the gas cylinders, but for general travel, there's no reason to do so, and many reasons to leave the fridge running on gas.

However, there ARE some fridges that run on 120 volt AC/12 volt DC/propane. One of these units would be a better use of your money than an inverter. Inverters are inefficient, for starters, and besides, the fridge is going to use up battery power pretty quickly, more so with an inverter.

You will find that adding an inverter to power the fridge when you are not on shore power will require some modification of the trailer electrical system. The reason is that most people just run it on gas when on the road.

We have powered our fridge on and off hundreds of times without any issues. Maybe it is a common problem with certain models, but we have not experienced any downtime or failure due to this phenomenon.

Most elements for standard sized RV fridges require roughly 300-350 watts of AC power, you will need to get an inverter that can handle that and a bit more for consistent, reliable operation.

We installed a large inverter after the first camping trip in our new rig. We did power our Dometic fridge a couple of times with the inverter while driving down the road with less than ideal results.

In our case, we discovered that our fridge did not cool as well as propane mode and that our batteries were somewhat depleted although they are receiving a charge via alternator and 7 pin cord.

Suffice to say, our fridge is set to auto mode which utilizes propane to cool our unit while traversing down the roadway to our next RVing adventure. Over 30K miles logged thus far and no issues.

Every RV should have an inverter onboard, it was one of the first mods I performed on our current rig. We camp often without shore power and they sure come in handy, just didn't see any benefit for powering fridge during transit.

Welcome to the forums. "should not go over the road with the fridge on gas" Not sure where you read that as almost everyone runs theirs on gas on the road. I've only been doing it for 40 years and when I had a gas tow vehicle I would turn it off when filling, but with a diesel... never turned it off.
I always turn mine off at the end of a trip as a fire prevention measure.

yes