Refrigerator won't cool down

Quadna71 wrote:
We bought this travel trailer about a month ago, this weekend was to be our first trip trying it out. It's a Crossroads Slingshot 23CK and has a refrigerator with a separate freezer door. It was working great up until last week. I had unplugged from the house and then plugged it in last night and now it doesn't work. The battery had been a little bit low so I disconnected everything and hooked up my regular automotive battery charger to the deep cycle until it was charged using the two amp setting.

Here's where I'm at:
The battery is fully charged up, connected, and the camper is plugged in to our power in the garage. All the lights and the power and the air conditioning in the camper work great, except the refrigerator will not seem to cool down. The light inside turns on when you open the door, and I think I have the switches on top of the refrigerator in the correct positions. First button is pushed in so the refrigerator is turned On and the second button's pushed in so that the refrigerator is in Auto - not gas.

The camper is perfectly level, I have two full bottles of propane, and they are connected but both valve turned off. Am I missing something???

ummm. . .

Both valves are turned off? Really? And you are expecting the PROPANE refrigerator to cool at all? Go home at lunch time, and rturn on both bottles, then start the water heater. Run the water heater for a max of about 1 minute to clear the propane lines of any air, then try the refrigerator on gas. This will start the cooling process, and you will need to wait another 6 hours for it to get cold. If it had been running on electric, then it might have changed from 70F to 50 F overnight, but not really gotten cold, unless it is in the 50's where you live.

The 2 amp charge setting is not nearly high enough to fully charge a RV battery in one week. Set it on 10 amps or higher if you got it. (do not use the 'start' setting, it is not designed for charging a battery, but instead applies full capacity beyond the charger's ability to run more than 30 seconds). You are really better off with the RV's 45 amp + charger running things. I wonder why it is not charging the battery - a bad fuse or circuit breaker not resetting? You probably have a 85 amp hour group 24 battery, or better would be the group 27 battery with 105 amp hour capacity. Notice that it would take a minimum of 40 hours to recharge either battery, yet if the lights are on inside the RV, that can consume much more than the 2 amp charger can put out in 24 hours. . . Just the CO meter and propane leak detector can use 35 amp hours per day, and discharge a full battery in 3 days.

Check for power at the RV battery charger's receptacle. Check for tripped GFI or something. . .

Once you have the battery meter inside the RV reading "Full" and then turn on the refrigerator for a while, say 24 hours minimum, then let me know if the freezer is starting to cool. Yes it can take that long to cool off, especially when it is warm out.

Run it on gas, not electric, as the gas burner is 2,200 Btu's while electric is only about 900 Btu's. When in a campground, at night, you can run it on electric, but during a warm day (above 80F) then change to gas, and it will cool better.

Fred.