Residential Refridgerator

And of course there's also the question on how to power them while underway...

You may try and redo the shelving, inside walls are an ABS sheet with insulation behind it, but powering it without hookups would be a royal pain. Without going into details, here is the summarized electrical part: Residential Refrigerators

We have 2 Residential Refrigerators, a large on in the Kitchen and a smaller one in the outdoor kitchen. While travel, I was told they would stay cold up to 12hrs without being plugged in and not opening the doors, most of my travels have been 4 hrs or less. I have also had electricity or a generator once at the sight. I did buy an invertor for that purpose, but haven't hooked it up yet. Was going to use it main while traveling down the road and TV keeping batteries recharged.

Kountryguy wrote:
I have been thinking about putting a residential unit in our rear kitchen fifth wheel trailer. Most that I have seen have shelves that just sit on the side supports. Might they be always be bouncing of during travel? How about glass shelves? Anyone with any experience? One other thing I have not seen discussed is how these units are fastened in so they do not move around. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

We fastened ours by drilling a whole on either side of the bottom frame and nut and bolting them in through the floor on the bottom. The top is wedged from the front back and them trimmed in. After almost two years it hasn't moved.

Powering it is no problem. A thousand watt sine wave inverter powered by two batteries and those in turn charged by the truck charge line will provide all the power the fridge needs while underway. If you plan on dry camping much, add an additional two batteries and two 160 watt panels. Residential fridges don't draw much power and are usually only on for 20 minutes out of an hour.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

I think they asked not about fastening the fridge, but the shelves inside.

Yes, 2 large solar panels should supply enough power on a sunny day. I would think 2*200W flat mount. And one more pair of batteries. 2*160W is slightly undersized for the task, won't cut it on a less than perfect day.

I wouldn't count on it staying cold for 12 hours without opening the door. More like 4-5 hours until it warms up so much that is no longer useful. Deeply frozen goods will remain frozen, but closer to thawing point.

Kountryguy wrote:
I have been thinking about putting a residential unit in our rear kitchen fifth wheel trailer. Most that I have seen have shelves that just sit on the side supports. Might they be always be bouncing of during travel? How about glass shelves? Anyone with any experience? One other thing I have not seen discussed is how these units are fastened in so they do not move around. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Believe it or not, our shelves do not and have not moved. Some of the contents sitting on the shelves have moved but not the shelves. Our shelves are glass.

To help keep the contents from moving around so much we bought small round curtain rods, the type that are spring loaded. An inexpensive fix.

For keeping the fridge in place I simply reused the existing holes on the TOP of the fridge for the hinges and made simple brackets out of steel angle material I had laying around. With most home fridges the door is designed to be changed from right hing to left hinge. This gives you the chance to use the hing holes as a mounting point.

For the side with hinges still in place I simply substituted longer screws which go through the bracket and hinge. Be aware, at least in the case of my fridge the screw holes are NOT SAE but METRIC so you might have a difficult time finding screws at most local hardware stores.

I didn't find any need to screw down the feet on the fridge after installing my top brackets, fridge doesn't seem to move.

Do however be careful of drilling ANYWHERE on the front of the fridge including the SIDES and top. Many fridges have either an electric heater or use some loops of refrigeration tubing to "warm" the door area slightly to prevent condensation at the door. Drilling into either item WILL result in a expensive and heavy door stop.

Some fridges actually embed the coils just under the skin of the sides instead of mounting on the back or under the fridge with a fan so if you do not have coils on the back or under the fridge you must assume they are in the sides and you need to leave several inches of air space (do not add extra insulation to the sides). Once again be careful or do not drill into the sides.

Fridge latch, I found a metal side latch which was small enough to fit between fridge and freezer door. Then I reused the holes for the hinges to mount the latch. I used several pieces for aluminim to shim the latch away from the face of the fridge. Then reusing the hing pin holes on the doors I ran screws into those holes.

The latch covers the screws in the door hing pin area when locked shut and when open the latch is pulled away from those screws.

And for those folks who can't figure out how to make the fridge run with out shore power, simple I installed an inverter. I used a Tripplite PV1250 which has a neat power save feature called load sense. It senses if there is a AC load or not and will turn on and off with the AC load. I set mine to turn on at 9W so when I open the fridge door the 15W bulb inside will turn the inverter on and when I shut the door the inverter turns off. This saves at least 24Ahr of battery per day.

So far with one pair of 6V GC batts I have enough capacity to run my fridge 24 hrs before needing recharged. While driving the charge line to my trailer helps to recharge the batteries when fridge is not running.

It's interesting that those that have a residential fridge have no problem powering them, but those that don't have one say it's a real problem. I side with the ones that actually have one.

Roadpilot wrote:
It's interesting that those that have a residential fridge have no problem powering them, but those that don't have one say it's a real problem. I side with the ones that actually have one.

X2 it's a non-issue. Been done a thousand times already. I wish people would get over it.

Another tie down option.. IF you have enough room on the sides to get your hand in, . we installed a 3/8 eye bolt on the platform on each side, put a cargo strap over the fridge, anchored to the eyebolts, tighten strap. No movement.

Jim

Drilling or screwing screws anywhere could spell trouble. Once you hear that hissing noise its to late you have ruined your refrigerator.

They have hot gas loops that run around all sides and the front dont do it. Same goes for the inside unless you have a tubing diagram just dont do it. Even then the tubing can be off a little due to the foaming in place.

As long as it is frame tight to the top of the refer and a couple of anchors at the front bottom frame you should be good.

Good way to tell if the refer has good airflow is to open the door if the frame is really hot you dont have good air flow or condenser fan motor has failed.