Keeping Things Cold on the Road

NRALIFR wrote:
I would recommend that regardless of whether you run your fridge while travelling or not, that you put a thermometer inside the fridge section so you know for certain what is going on in there. On a hot day, a fridge that has warmed up to 55 degrees will still feel "cold enough" to most people. But, that's actually well into the danger zone for meats and dairy products.

I use a wireless thermometer in my TC fridge, and keep the base unit in the cab so I can monitor it while we drive. With the sensor unit placed close to the cooling fins I can tell when the fridge is cooling or not, as the temperature will generally rise and fall within about an 8 degree range.

Whatever you do, remember that food safety is important too. It would be a shame to make yourself or a member of your family sick (or worse) from eating spoiled food because you felt running the fridge on the road was a safety hazard. Preventing food-borne illnesses and deaths isn't just the responsibility of those big evil agri-businesses. The consumer is responsible for practicing safe food handling procedures as well.

:):)

I do the same thing with a remote reading therometer and even have one in the frig and in the freezer and like you see similiar rises and falls and would never think to leave my frig off for more than like 2 hours for fear of the temps rising too high to keep food especially in the front near the door in the "safe zone". This is especially true on warmer days and these frigs just aren't that well insulated and I wonder just how many folks actually monitor and know temp wise what happens inside their refers. Also, even internally they don't have any sort of forced air movement like a lot of home refers and depend totally on convection circulation from temp deltas to circulate the cold air. I have one of the remote units that has the high/low memory and alarm and mainly have it since DW keeps her insulin "supply" in the frig and I want to know what is going on and not just be guessing and hoping things are all right. Lastly my frig is usually full enough that trying to stuff any sort of sacrifical cooling addition like ice packs etc. in there is for us a real waste of valuable refer space.

Since I bought a trailer with things like a toilet, holding tanks, water pump and other conveniences I consider using the refer normally just a matter of what I bought the "entire package" for and don't see why I need to do anything special for it. I guess this is sort of like those that never do a #2 in their black tank for whatever reason they give, it's their preference and that's O.K, but don't suggest others do the same for some actual real reason.

Larry