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Trackrig's avatar
Trackrig
Explorer II
Feb 23, 2015

And speaking of better refrigerator cooling.

I have a four door Norcold 1200 refer in a 2005 Fleetwood Excursion 39S. It generally works OK, but could work better especially when we have to park with the refer in the sun. Need to keep that ice cream properly frozen.

I recently installed a three fan unit from Smart RV Products.

I have a new thermistor on order from snip-The-Tip.

I'm about to install four fans in the roof vent. When I ordered them, I order ten of them. Four for the roof vent sucking hot air out of the refer, two spares, and I wanted to install four in the lower vent pushing cool air into the bottom back of the refer.

I was discussing installing fans in the lower vent to push cool air into the back of the refer with someone and they recommended not doing it. His reasoning was it would pull outside exhaust fumes into the refer and possibly also push them into the MH.

I don't understand his concerns. In an RV park there isn't a lot of exhaust fumes. When we're boon docking, the gen set is on the other side and at the front of the MH. I wanted to send this question out to a wider audience. Have any of you installed fans on the lower vent to push cool air into the reefer? Do you see any problems with this idea?

Let me know what you think.

Bill
  • navegator's avatar
    navegator
    Explorer
    Mar 01, 2015
    Use only the fans on the top vent, that will be enough to pull hot air out, the other fans will not really do much, I have four fans on the top and have four separate switches to control which and how many fans are going to run and we have been in desert heat of 120 and the fridge was cooold.

    navegator
  • sarhvac1's avatar
    sarhvac1
    Explorer
    Mar 01, 2015
    just remember sucking air in or out your bringing in dirt dust particles ever look under your fridg. at home a lot more maintenance that dirt could be worse for it like the OP said why not run on gas see if that helps they were designed with out why add
  • rrev's avatar
    rrev
    Explorer
    Feb 24, 2015
    From an airflow stand point, we'd always painted in a exhaust fan only booth until recently. Now,we have a forced intake and forced exhaust booth. The combo make a world of diffenence in the cfm of air that moves. Im going to assume it would be the same with this application as well.
  • Ivylog's avatar
    Ivylog
    Explorer III
    Feb 23, 2015
    I agree that four is overkill so eight is....... I added one at the bottom of the cooling coils and it's enough when it's hot out to help the two which come on the 1200.
  • pianotuna's avatar
    pianotuna
    Nomad III
    Feb 23, 2015
    Hi,

    I run two fans in a mask at the top of the chimney. They are thermostatically controlled. Four would be overkill.
  • Halmfamily's avatar
    Halmfamily
    Explorer
    Feb 23, 2015
    My dealer installed 2 fans on our slide mounted refer and that made a huge difference. These were mounted near the top vent. Four fans would seem to get annoying after awhile listening to them. Good luck.
  • Golden_HVAC's avatar
    Golden_HVAC
    Explorer
    Feb 23, 2015
    You probably do not need more than one fan on the back of the refrigerator.

    Do you know that on electric, the heat output is only about 300 watts, or 900 Btu's? While on gas, the input is 2,200 Btu's and 80% of that stays in the boiler to separate the water/ammonia mixture. So about 1,800 Btu's for heating the boiler.

    About twice as much heat from running it on gas.

    So are you getting poor performance on gas or electric? I always run mine on gas when it is over 85F outside.

    As for the 'push or pull' situation. If you are pushing in air, it can go anywhere. It could in theory push the flue gas past the refrigerator into the inside of the kitchen. With a 'pull' situation, it will pull air out of the refrigerator behind area, and pull all the air into the rooftop vent. It might also be pulling air from inside to the outside, but likely not to much.

    Good luck,

    Fred.
  • Grandpere's avatar
    Grandpere
    Explorer
    Feb 23, 2015
    My knee jerk reaction was "EH? What fumes?" I will be putting a 2 or 3 fan setup on the bottom of our refer to see if it will cool better. If that doesn't change things much I will then be replacing the thermostat. If that doesn't work then I will ditch this residential piece of garbage and go with either a Norcold or a Dometic gas/12/120 fridge. We like to dry camp and this residential fridge does not do what we want, listening to the generator 24/7 gets real old real fast.

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