Standard vs Residential Refrigerator

You need to find the amp draw on the refer to figure that out

It is my understanding that the residential refrigerators are 110V only and do not run on battery or propane. If your trailer has multiple batteries, like maybe 4 or 6, and an inverter to change the 12v to 110v, then you can take that route to power the refer.

Two batteries will not last long. This was from a day or two ago and will answer some of your questions. One person has 4 ea 8D batteries. An 8D battery is equivalent in physical size to 4 std batteries.

Res vs std refer clicky

Bill

Im looking to buy a Columbus 320rs with the residental fridge also. So you cant load the fridge up and roll down the road with your groceries?

The refer should be able to stay cold for the run down the road, so long as it's cold to begin with and can get back on 110v in a few hours.

The coach I am looking at is setup with 2 deep cycle batteries and an inverter so the fridge will run off the batteries.

Sounds like this may not be the setup for me... Would love to hear more opinions.

cgaskins wrote:
The coach I am looking at is setup with 2 deep cycle batteries and an inverter so the fridge will run off the batteries.

Sounds like this may not be the setup for me... Would love to hear more opinions.

This set up would generally be for camping with hookups only.
Battery may last for an overnight stop or stopped for lunch or refuel etc.

If you want to be off grid you will be running the generator a lot or need six batteries and 800 watts solar.

So what are your expectations?

rsbabson wrote:
So you cant load the fridge up and roll down the road with your groceries?

Nah, you gotta buy em when you get there.

smkettner wrote:

cgaskins wrote:
The coach I am looking at is setup with 2 deep cycle batteries and an inverter so the fridge will run off the batteries.

Sounds like this may not be the setup for me... Would love to hear more opinions.

This set up would generally be for camping with hookups only.
Battery may last for an overnight stop or stopped for lunch or refuel etc.

If you want to be off grid you will be running the generator a lot or need six batteries and 800 watts solar.

So what are your expectations?

We are mostly weekenders with a one or two longer trips during the summer. We are always camping where there is shore power so that is not my concern. Where I store my camper, I have no power available. I usually go over on Thursday night, turn on the gas powered fridge and it is nice and cold by the time we load up stuff on Friday afternoon and head out for the weekend. So the fridge is running on gas for 18 to 24 hours typically before we leave.

My other concern is maintenance of the water system in the fridge. It has an ice maker and water in the door. When we get back from a weekend trip, I always drain all water from the coach. I suspect draining water from the fridge and ice maker is going to be a pain. Thoughts?

-Chris

We have a Samsung RF197 residential fridge in our Winslow. It doesn't have ice and water in the door but does have an icemaker. It has 2 6 volt batteries and a 1000 watt pure sine wave inverter. We have had it for 2 years and put about 20K miles on it and the fridge has never missed a lick. We have driven all day and the lowest I have ever seen the voltage on the batteries is 12.3 and the temps never budge. We have an automatic transfer switch which changes from inverter to shore when you plug in and vice versa. Very handy. This is our second residential as the motorhome we sold a couple of years ago also had one. It was a replacement for a Norcold 1200 which had a big problem keeping things cool and frozen during the five years we had it despite all kinds of mods and fixes. The Samsung gets to 38 and 2 below in just a few hours and stays there. When we shopped after selling the motorhome anything that did not have a residential fridge as an option was eliminated from consideration. We do not drain the icemaker but instead let the water pump feed it rv antifreeze until we get pink ice and shut it off for the winter. For storage during warm weather I would simply let the icemaker work for a while and dump the first few loads of ice.

This works for us because we never dry camp. I have computed that we could get a couple of days running the fridge if we were careful with battery usage. I would think a couple more 6 volt batteries and a generator would be necessary if you did long term dry camping. Solar charging would be another consideration.