Residential refrigerator yeah.

[nbargolf]

After band aiding a norcold 1210 frig for several months we made the move to a Samsung 18 cu ft vs the 12 cu ft old one. you may ask the cost well it was less than putting a new cooling unit on the old frig, a no brainer. If your around the St Augustine, FL area Ocean Grove RV on Hwy 1 south of the city did a great job. It took them only 5-6 hours, one day in and out. We love it. :C

[CA_Traveler]

rjxj wrote:
It was a positive experience with someone who isn't a jerk and we have made the rv'ing world a better place for all 😉

Now that's nice!

[azrving]

jwmII wrote:

rjxj wrote:

jwmII wrote:

rjxj wrote:

Executive wrote:

rjxj wrote:
/snip/ but I'm guessing /snip/

THIS ^^^ says it all....:S

Unless and/or until you do your research, don't guess.

That said, we don't boondock very much but we've enjoyed up to a week without external power. We run the genset in the morning while making breakfast and in the evening while watching TV. We've had ours for over a year now and wouldn't go back to a Notsocold ever again.

For those thinking of changing over, HERE are pictures of my installation. I did it myself, in a campground. Took me two days and several trips to the local Home Depot, but it was well worth it....Dennis

By the way, how much calculating did you do to figure out that you could run a residential on shore power or annoy people by running it for a week while on generator. What did you have to figure out or guesstimate? Oh you had to use a tape measure. Got it. 🙂

Why do so many folks think that running a generator is annoying to people? Mine doesn't bother me at all.

Most puzzling is when they park in the generator area and run it absolutely every minute of generator hours when for $8.00 a day more they could have full hook ups. Can you really run a noisy gas generator that's built into a class A for 12 hours for less than $8.00 a day. :R it wasn't heating or ac weather either. I was guessing dry batteries, junk converter or maybe a hamster on a cpap machine thingy.

So! Who cares?? Their business if they want to run their generator all day. It doesn't matter if they can run their built in generator for less than $8.00 a day. Their business. Mind yours. Stay home. Good grief!!

Lol. I cant stay home!!! I just got done yesterday helping a fellow RV'er work on his Class A. I didn't even hold it against him that he was a class A owner. He asked me if I knew anything about generators. His was running hour after hour and surging which made the noise even more annoying.

We ended up pulling the carb off the Generac and blowing it out as good as possible. Some horses rear who worked on it before he owned it destroyed the main jet tube slot by using the wrong screwdriver trying to get it out. We then looked at the reason his batteries were dead and found that he had somehow shut off the inverter charger??? The battery specific gravity was about as low as it could get and his frig was cutting out maybe around 9.5 volts? We also connected my 30 amp Meanwell power supply to speed things up.

We also repaired the rotted wire ends for his small poorly wired solar system. After that it was a couple Corronas with lime and discussion about energy management and how to consolidate his heavy 120 volt loads during the morning and evening and let the 150 to 200 watts of solar work during peak sun. With a small solar system and a converter that does 13.6 max he realized that he shouldn't be baking cakes on his inverter for 30 minutes. It was a positive experience with someone who isn't a jerk and we have made the rv'ing world a better place for all 😉

[jwmII]

rjxj wrote:

jwmII wrote:

rjxj wrote:

Executive wrote:

rjxj wrote:
/snip/ but I'm guessing /snip/

THIS ^^^ says it all....:S

Unless and/or until you do your research, don't guess.

That said, we don't boondock very much but we've enjoyed up to a week without external power. We run the genset in the morning while making breakfast and in the evening while watching TV. We've had ours for over a year now and wouldn't go back to a Notsocold ever again.

For those thinking of changing over, HERE are pictures of my installation. I did it myself, in a campground. Took me two days and several trips to the local Home Depot, but it was well worth it....Dennis

By the way, how much calculating did you do to figure out that you could run a residential on shore power or annoy people by running it for a week while on generator. What did you have to figure out or guesstimate? Oh you had to use a tape measure. Got it. 🙂

Why do so many folks think that running a generator is annoying to people? Mine doesn't bother me at all.

Most puzzling is when they park in the generator area and run it absolutely every minute of generator hours when for $8.00 a day more they could have full hook ups. Can you really run a noisy gas generator that's built into a class A for 12 hours for less than $8.00 a day. :R it wasn't heating or ac weather either. I was guessing dry batteries, junk converter or maybe a hamster on a cpap machine thingy.

So! Who cares?? Their business if they want to run their generator all day. It doesn't matter if they can run their built in generator for less than $8.00 a day. Their business. Mind yours. Stay home. Good grief!!

[Bill_Satellite]

I don't have any interest in the math so I won't go there but I can tell you that my RR is *21cf, *frost free, *huge ice maker, *filtered ice and water through the door and ******a happy wife. Try arguing that last bullet!

[John___Angela]

One of the guys at "appy time" mentioned that I should probably mention the power savings as well by going to a residential. A residential fridge uses about one fifth of the power of an RV absorption fridge. SO extrapolating at 11 cents per Kilowatt hour (British Columbia Rates) it would save you about 150 bucks a year in power. Depending where you are that may be higher or lower.

Please feel free to pick my numbers apart as I kinda suck at this. Our fridge is rated at 366 KWH per year so roughly 1 KWH per day or 11 cents per day. If an absorption fridge uses five times the power then lets say 55 cents per day or 44 cents per day more. So roughly 13 bucks per month or 155 bucks per year. That offsets some of the costs of the change over. Of course we are full timers so if you are not these numbers won't apply.

Honestly for me the savings wouldn't sway me either way. For us it is all about having double the space in a unit that just works better with pretty much zero maintenance year after year. Our Norcold was a money pit and a maintenance nightmare.

Again, no idea how accurate the numbers are although I wouldn't think they are too far off from measurements I have taken on residentials and absorptions. The "appy group" just thought it would be worth mentioning. 🙂

[nbargolf]

CA Traveler wrote:
On another board a poster measured his Samsung RF 197 power with a Kill A Watt and found that it uses 1820 watts daily. That translates to about 150AH from the battery which can be significant for dry camping and is a huge drain on the common 4x GC 460AH battery bank. For dry camping, recharging via alternator, gen or solar has to be considered. And the battery bank capacity is a factor.

Many campers are satisfied with the refer conversion and don’t make any additional equipment changes and rely on utility power, gen or driving/alternator.

This frig uses 1687 watts daily or around 136 AH. No problem for us with the auto mode on the Genset. The pluses far outweigh the minuses. For one no more propane hazard to worry about and we gain 6 cu ft in the frig.

[azrving]

dahkota wrote:

rjxj wrote:

Most puzzling is when they park in the generator area and run it absolutely every minute of generator hours when for $8.00 a day more they could have full hook ups. Can you really run a noisy gas generator that's built into a class A for 12 hours for less than $8.00 a day. :R it wasn't heating or ac weather either. I was guessing dry batteries, junk converter or maybe a hamster on a cpap machine thingy.

You would be surprised at the number of people I have met in the last year who do NOT know what an inverter is. They are usually (but not always) in a fifth wheel and are running the generator to watch tv. I have stories...

I know. I'm parked in a boondocks place with a great couple next door who have a extension cord run through a window in a class A to run the a 24 inch TV on their honda. I told him to use an adapter and just plug the shore cord into Genny. He said do you think that will work. On the other side of road is a couple in a 1984 fw that someone gave then. He said the toilet was full and the hose that was running to the dump Port at the RV park where he picked it up was so heavy he could hardly lift it. He said the pipe was solid poo. There is no battery in it so they run an old honda 3000 to have the lights or anything on. No propane. I bought a fitting so we could cobble a garden hose and suck the water out of an equally raggedy class C that is ready to scrap. They were happy just to see the water run so they could take a cold shower. It smells when you get near it as the last owner had a bunch of cats. Last place we bd at had a guy with a fw that he paid $500 for. Nothing in it worked. I stayed away from him and the guy we befriended next to him split early because he was bugging him. They had a ton of cops out to do a body recovery search the day before we left. I keep telling DW that I only take her to the nicest places. She just laughs.

[dahkota]

rjxj wrote:

Most puzzling is when they park in the generator area and run it absolutely every minute of generator hours when for $8.00 a day more they could have full hook ups. Can you really run a noisy gas generator that's built into a class A for 12 hours for less than $8.00 a day. :R it wasn't heating or ac weather either. I was guessing dry batteries, junk converter or maybe a hamster on a cpap machine thingy.

You would be surprised at the number of people I have met in the last year who do NOT know what an inverter is. They are usually (but not always) in a fifth wheel and are running the generator to watch tv. I have stories...

[dahkota]

pianotuna wrote:
Hi,

You do not know what make, model, or size of the converter, so you can not state a run time for the recharge via generator.

Personally, I'd opt to add some solar panels with a decent controller.

dahkota wrote:
Because people typically drive for 4-6 hours and then park for about 72+ hours. The coach would need to be plugged in or the generator would need to be run fairly often. If the fridge uses 150A per day, the generator will need to be run at least 4 hours a day just to keep up, if parked in a dry camping situation.

No, I don't. But I can guess pretty well based on the responses here and in other threads. The common response seems to be two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. Four hours total.

However, as most everyone knows, it takes much, much longer to get them fully charged - 100% - though 90% is achievable in 2-4 hours. Which is why having solar is better than just a generator, especially if dry camping for long periods of time.

[azrving]

jwmII wrote:

rjxj wrote:

Executive wrote:

rjxj wrote:
/snip/ but I'm guessing /snip/

THIS ^^^ says it all....:S

Unless and/or until you do your research, don't guess.

That said, we don't boondock very much but we've enjoyed up to a week without external power. We run the genset in the morning while making breakfast and in the evening while watching TV. We've had ours for over a year now and wouldn't go back to a Notsocold ever again.

For those thinking of changing over, HERE are pictures of my installation. I did it myself, in a campground. Took me two days and several trips to the local Home Depot, but it was well worth it....Dennis

By the way, how much calculating did you do to figure out that you could run a residential on shore power or annoy people by running it for a week while on generator. What did you have to figure out or guesstimate? Oh you had to use a tape measure. Got it. 🙂

Why do so many folks think that running a generator is annoying to people? Mine doesn't bother me at all.

Most puzzling is when they park in the generator area and run it absolutely every minute of generator hours when for $8.00 a day more they could have full hook ups. Can you really run a noisy gas generator that's built into a class A for 12 hours for less than $8.00 a day. :R it wasn't heating or ac weather either. I was guessing dry batteries, junk converter or maybe a hamster on a cpap machine thingy.

[John___Angela]

We are power hogs as far as computer, tv's, microwave, freezer in basement etc. Our residential fridge is the least of our woories. LOL. We run our genny at meal times to mitigate the generator use but we did that before we got our residential fridge so nothing changed there. When we put our residential in a few years ago we threw an extra 480 watts of solar on the roof which pretty much covers off all the power the fridge uses. Solar is cheap in the big scheeme of things. We dry camp reasonably often. The residential fridge hasn't made any difference to how we dry camp.

Throw some solar on the roof and be done with it.

[jwmII]

rjxj wrote:

Executive wrote:

rjxj wrote:
/snip/ but I'm guessing /snip/

THIS ^^^ says it all....:S

Unless and/or until you do your research, don't guess.

That said, we don't boondock very much but we've enjoyed up to a week without external power. We run the genset in the morning while making breakfast and in the evening while watching TV. We've had ours for over a year now and wouldn't go back to a Notsocold ever again.

For those thinking of changing over, HERE are pictures of my installation. I did it myself, in a campground. Took me two days and several trips to the local Home Depot, but it was well worth it....Dennis

By the way, how much calculating did you do to figure out that you could run a residential on shore power or annoy people by running it for a week while on generator. What did you have to figure out or guesstimate? Oh you had to use a tape measure. Got it. 🙂

Why do so many folks think that running a generator is annoying to people? Mine doesn't bother me at all.

[Bill_Satellite]

I had a guy at a Wal-Mart approach me the morning after an overnight stay and he told me now I did not understand the rules related to running a generator in a Wal-Mart parking lot. It was something like 1000 degrees outside and I need A/C so I ran the genny all night. While laughing out loud, I tried to, nicely, explain that he had no idea what he was talking about. I was in the lot pretty early and at the very far edge. This guy came in late and was actually parked on the other side of another 5th wheel at least 4 parking rows away. If dry campers have an expectation of solidarity they should park where they have complete solitude. If I am parked somewhere and you park anywhere near me, you cannot complain. You had options. You simply did not choose to utilize them!

[nemo45]

nbargolf wrote:
After band aiding a norcold 1210 frig for several months we made the move to a Samsung 18 cu ft vs the 12 cu ft old one. you may ask the cost well it was less than putting a new cooling unit on the old frig, a no brainer. If your around the St Augustine, FL area Ocean Grove RV on Hwy 1 south of the city did a great job. It took them only 5-6 hours, one day in and out. We love it. :C

We did it two years ago and couldn't be happier.