residential refrigerator vs rv gas/electric refrigerator?

[Bob_Vaughn]

If given a choice of the residential refrigerator or an rv gas/electric refrigerator which would you choose? It seems like all the new 5th wheels come with the residential model. I suppose if you never drive more than 5-6 hours and never dry camp then the residential would be ok...but if you make long drives and dry camp or boon dock then the rv refrigerator would be the logical choice....

[pianotuna]

And when it fails (not if but when) the cost of replacement where I live is $3,000.00. I can save at least 1000.00 by going to a residential and solar. I no longer have to worry if I'm level or not.

To make my current absorption fridge work I've added the ARP protection, a fan inside the fridge compartment, and twin fans in a mask at the roof.

Durb wrote:
I have a button. Push for propane operation, push again for AC operation. Done, no other gear required. Ice cream is hard and the beer is cold.

[pnichols]

I don't even have to push a button. My Norcold auto-switches between propane and AC operation. :C

[Durb]

Interesting thread covering the merits of residential fridges. Let's see: Solar panels, run genset 3 hours per day, unplug TT during stops, 2,000 watt inverter, trimetrix, pure sine wave inverter, extra solar panels, pulse width modulation, 6 each 12 volt house batteries, maximum power point tracking controller and blue tooth to cell phone remote monitoring. Yep, those residential fridges sure are simple.

I have a button. Push for propane operation, push again for AC operation. Done, no other gear required. Ice cream is hard and the beer is cold.

[pnichols]

Residential refrigerators in RVs have one outstanding advantage - they don't care about how many hours you run them when camping with your RV not level. For other reasons we always level our RV at campsites, so this is not an issue for us.

What absorption refrigerators used in RVs REALLY NEED is for them to be mounted hung on self-leveling gimbals -> a larger version of the cupholders used on boats. I would have paid more for our RV when new to have it come from the factory with it's Norcold refrigerator hug in an aluminum gimbal framework.

[Gjac]

rjxj wrote:

Gjac wrote:
If you dry camp most of the time would 2 6 volt batteries(220 AHS) and 2 hrs of generator time per day be enough to run a residential refer? Or would you really need 2 more batteries just to supply voltage to the refer and solar to keep the batteries charged?

My 10.7 resi pulls 8 amps and uses 30 Amp Hours overnight and that includes .5 amp of inverter draw so a 24 hour number is about 70 AH. From there you would need to add up all the amp draws of other devices and the amount of time they are used to get your other additional amp draws.

This could turn into a book if I go on. You need to figure out your total energy use. If you were to give us a sort of list of all the stuff you want to run we can give you more input.

Where will you be while solar powered? Yuma or far north?
Do you use the house furnace?
How big of Television, lcd or led?
LED lights?
Laptops, how many hours?
Vent fans, hours.

There is no one size fits all. Some run a generator for part of their early charging because generators and good converters do well at socking the big amps in during bulk charging. Solar can then take over as the sun rises and do the slower finish charging.

You know I read all these residential refer threads because my Norcold is 21 years old and ask my self if it goes would I replace it with a residential. I dry camp 95% of the time in NFS CG's that are heavily shaded, have minimal electrical reqs(a few lights and water pump no TV, radios etc. My 2 6V GC batteries last 7 days before reaching 50% SOC, so to me solar never made sense. I look for ways to run my genset so I just don't have to exercise it each month. My friend has a residential in his newer Tiffin DP and when we dry camp he has 4 6v GC batteries and the genset runs for at least 2 hrs a day. From reading previous threads I concluded that I would need 2 more batteries to run the refer plus at least 2 hrs of genset time each day.

[pnichols]

I hope the RV manufacturers are happy(ier) ... it looks like they and the almighty dollar won again. They now get to deliver RV's at the same ever increasing prices but with much cheaper and easier for them to install residential refrigerators instead of absorption refrigerators that they, IMHO, have been improperly installing. The RV manufacturers also get to reap the additional profits from selling some of their RV's with large solar systems factory installed ... or the buyer has to go ahead and install large after-market solar systems on their own dime.

Our 2-way propane/120V AC absorption refrig has been operating superbly for over 11 years. It's mounted in our no-slide motorhome with a large cooling air vent in the roof right at the top of it's straight up air chimney, with no obstructions in the length of the air chimney, and a large outside cooling air intake down low in the air chimney. It has 5 coldness settings, and we need only use setting 3 most of the time. We sometimes use setting 4 in scorching weather, but have to remember to eventually turn it back down to setting 3 to keep milk in the fresh food section from having ice in it. Food stays frozen solid in the freezer all the time whether we use setting 3 or 4.

Our first RV was a 1969 motorhome and it's absorption refrigerator operated superbly too - for decades.

It seems like residential refrigerators in RVs run counter to the many complaint posts in the forums against use of generators when RV camping. It's too bad that absorption refrigerators have been getting a bad rap from mostly such a simple thing as -> bad installs.

[azrving]

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[Dutch_12078]

Gjac wrote:
If you dry camp most of the time would 2 6 volt batteries(220 AHS) and 2 hrs of generator time per day be enough to run a residential refer? Or would you really need 2 more batteries just to supply voltage to the refer and solar to keep the batteries charged?

A couple more batteries would be a good idea in that case, depending on what other loads you're using. Lights, water pump, other appliances on an inverter, etc., all contribute to the amp hour capacity needed for your situation. And more is better... Solar recharging is great since it costs nothing to operate and is of course silent. Solar is expensive up front though, so that needs to be weighed into the mix as well when deciding your generator/solar choices. We seldom boondock anymore, and when we do it's in an area where our onboard generator bothers no one except maybe the critters in the area, so running it is better in our case than solar as far as a cost/benefit ratio goes.

[MrWizard]

Our residential fridge, had been on and running and moving for 7 years
I have never seen a 'won't hold up to travel' comment on this board until now
Whoever told you that, does not know what they are talking about

[Gjac]

If you dry camp most of the time would 2 6 volt batteries(220 AHS) and 2 hrs of generator time per day be enough to run a residential refer? Or would you really need 2 more batteries just to supply voltage to the refer and solar to keep the batteries charged?

[Dutch_12078]

tinner12002 wrote:
I wouldn't purchase one myself, one because I've heard the res frig doesn't hold up well to the transportation part of RVing, two because of the quick battery drain.

So far over the last few years, the only residential fridge complaint in an RV I recall reading on several RV forums was a rant about the lack of shelves in the freezer section on some models. There have been some complaints about the lack of door locks also, but I see that as an installation issue. The compressor in every residential fridge I've ever looked at was shock mounted and could handle the vibrations associated with road travel. Our two batteries easily handle our fridge/inverter setup with just a couple of relatively short generator runs daily when boondocking. Not much different than we ran it even when we had the Norcold fridge. If we boondocked more, I'd install enough solar to handle it. While underway, our alternator is more than capable of keeping up with the battery discharge rate.

[tinner12002]

I wouldn't purchase one myself, one because I've heard the res frig doesn't hold up well to the transportation part of RVing, two because of the quick battery drain.

[MrWizard]

the Grape Solar Controller
shows the amps going to the battery
shows the volts from controller to battery when charging
and the battery volts at night

there is NO external shunt
it will NOT read load that is NOT going thru the controller
there are load connections, and it will show that load
but that is limited possible max 40 amps, might be less, need to check the book
for the specs
its not going to read charge from your converter or discharge to a 1000w inverter

[ol_Bombero-JC]

There *is* a safety issue (fire) due to failure/s of RV propane fridges.

Not so with residential.
(Anything can happen - but in 30 years as a F/F, I never responded to a fire in -or caused by- a residential fridge!)

*If* you prefer AC/Propane - you should have a fusible link activated extinguisher installed behind the fridge (in the compartment).

If/when my AC/propane fridge dies or I buy a new RV - the choice for me would be real E-Z.....residential..:W


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[azrving]

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