Driving with fridge on & LP tank duration

Executive wrote:
NEVER refuel your vehicle with any pilot lights lit, including your fridge and your water heater!! Period!! Just like using your cell phone while refueling is dangerous. If there is a fuel spill, the fuel can spread and the FUMES could ignite due to your carelessness. Just because your trailer is not close to YOUR pump it may be close to someone else who is pumping in the next lane. Don't be foolish around fueling stations.

Ok, folks, the bit about the cell phone use while refueling being dangerous is one of those myths that won't die. See Snopes for further information about that.

That said, it is just generally a bad idea to do anything while distracted on your phone: driving, walking, fueling your car, etc.

And otherwise, there is some additional risk involved with refueling in the vicinity of a lit pilot light.

But to chime in on the Original Question: while you can safely drive with the fridge on propane, you can as easily drive with it off for 5 or 6 hours without it warming up excessively. And indeed you cannot take a rig with the propane on through many tunnels or aboard any ferries.

I've spent months and travelled thousands of miles with my fridge running on propane without incident. Since my TV is diesel, I've also rarely had to shut off the fridge while refueling, as diesel is not flammable like gasoline, and there's no gasoline around the diesel truck pumps.

Trip to frigid FL last year from West TN....started with both tanks full, ran the frig the entire way - we took 3 days driving ea way. Needed heat each night. About 6 days in FL with "unseasonable and unusual cold" - sure glad we were there for that!, ran furnace starting late afternoon/early evening and turned it off during the day. We had 20# tanks and DH manually swapped to the second tank on the last night just in case it didn't swap automatically, he wouldn't have to go out at 3:00 in the morning to do it. We actually did have some left in the first tank. So, about 10 - 11 days in the HTT with daytime highs in the low 50's and nighttime in the upper 30's = 1 20# tank for us. Also WH turned on every day enroute and while there. We were happy with the usage.

How long your lp will run the furnace is a quite variable matter. Things that effect it will include outside temps, wind conditions, insulation of your trailer (a weak point with hybrids). My 4 season trailer has gone through a 30 lb Bottle in as little as 4 days with windy temps in the low teens. If you are camping without electric and have a single 12 volt battery you MAY not last through the night but due to battery problems, not running out of lp.
Good luck / skip

When we had our hybrid I'd tow it up to 10 hr. WITHOUT the fridge being on and had NO issues with the fridge getting too warm. As long as you're not opening the fridge every hour or so to check to see if everything is still cold you'll be fine, just KEEP the door closed.

NEVER refuel your vehicle with any pilot lights lit, including your fridge and your water heater!! Period!! Just like using your cell phone while refueling is dangerous. If there is a fuel spill, the fuel can spread and the FUMES could ignite due to your carelessness. Just because your trailer is not close to YOUR pump it may be close to someone else who is pumping in the next lane. Don't be foolish around fueling stations. OK..rant is OVER...thanks..:B

Yes, it OK to travel with the fridge on propane. However, if you're traveling less than 3hrs the fridge will not lose it's cooling during that time unless someone opens the doors. Just turn it off and it will be as cold when you arrive as it was when you left.

There are some places you cannot go with the propane left ON...some tunnels, and all ferries will not let you proceed unless the propane is OFF....Dennis

Driving with the fridge running on LP won't hurt anything. We have done 14 day trips whithout ever turning it off. I park so that the trailer is not next to a gas pump while filling the tow vehicle.

How long your LP lasts depends on how much your furnace runs. A gallon of LP is about 90,000 BTU's. A 40,000 BTU furnace will burn .44 gallons of LP per burner hour. A 20 pound LP tank holds just under 5 gallons.

Gary

We've run over 80k with the fridge running on propane with no issues. You will get a lot of opinion on both sides of the issue.

As far as how long your tanks will last there are way too many variables - temp inside and out, insulation on the rig, efficiency of furnace, etc.

I think the shortest time we ever went through a 30 lb tank was three days when temps were in the teens at night and twenties during the day. We have a cold winter package with two furnaces.

You should be ok. Might want to turn it off when gassing tow vehicle.

We were having issues with our frig pilot light going out, so I froze four 1/2-gas milk cartons and placed two in frig and two in freezer. Worked fine on 5-hr driving enroute to Las Vegas in 100+ temps. When we stopped at KOA in Barstow for the night, re-froze the containers and they were good to go the next day for the 3-hr stretch.

mOST OF THE TIME IT MIGHT AN HOUR OR SO, BUT NEXT SUMMER WE ARE LOOKING AT GOING ON A WEEK VACATION SOMEWHERE. iS IT SAFE TO DRIVE WITH THE GAS ON? Sorry about the caps.

How far do you plan on driving with gas running frig?