Replacing RV fridge with Residential Fridge
My RV fridge has been dead for a week now. The cooling unit is bad. I was going to get a Dometic replacement, but the price is $3000 at camping world. Today I was at Home depot and they had a ...
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Egad, nobody ever has thought to ask this question before, surely you must be the first! Good thing you didn't bother with the search feature.
In general residential fridges need more battery, more solar, and perhaps an inverter capable of a huge surge to get the compressor spinning. Even if the compressor draws only 100 watts when running, it might need 1500 watts to get spinning.
Thats not to say it cannot work, it most certainly can and many here do so successfully. But the cost savings might not be there once all is said and done and running nicely, especially if one dry camps often.
A DC compressor fridge is not cheap, but are more efficient, and should not require as much solar or battery, and are likely built a bit tougher. Residential fridges were not designed with vehicular road stresses in mind. Some of the inexpensive residential fridges are power Hogs with no thought given to efficiency, and are not a good option, On such models, any $ savings will be short lived, once one realizes they need more solar, more battery and more inverter to power it.
Waking up to a low voltage alarm on the inverter, and dead batteries once is too much, in my opinion.
In general residential fridges need more battery, more solar, and perhaps an inverter capable of a huge surge to get the compressor spinning. Even if the compressor draws only 100 watts when running, it might need 1500 watts to get spinning.
Thats not to say it cannot work, it most certainly can and many here do so successfully. But the cost savings might not be there once all is said and done and running nicely, especially if one dry camps often.
A DC compressor fridge is not cheap, but are more efficient, and should not require as much solar or battery, and are likely built a bit tougher. Residential fridges were not designed with vehicular road stresses in mind. Some of the inexpensive residential fridges are power Hogs with no thought given to efficiency, and are not a good option, On such models, any $ savings will be short lived, once one realizes they need more solar, more battery and more inverter to power it.
Waking up to a low voltage alarm on the inverter, and dead batteries once is too much, in my opinion.
