rv refridgerator

[trainguy14]

Hi everyone. Hope you are enjoying the summer camping season. A question we encountered on our recent trip. We have a travel trailer with solar panels but no generator. When dry camping we run our fridge on propane. We encountered a couple of days of rain and cloud and our battery struggled to gain charge because of the lack of sunlight. Never got below 65% but it made me wonder what would happen if we had several days of no sun and therefore no solar? We're not concerned about lights, water heater, etc because we can function without. But would our rv fridge (Dometic) continue running happily on the propane even if the battery completely died? We wouldn't want our food to spoil.

Any thoughts? Thanks as always for any ideas.

[toedtoes]

Do you have a battery cutoff switch? If so, shut it off and then see if your fridge will run on propane. If it does, then you're good with no battery. If it doesn't, then you need the battery to run the fridge.

[Sam_Spade]

Old-Biscuit wrote:
IF that Dometic is a small 'piezo light' type....no DC needed

Once lit, does the gas flow....and burn....ALL the time ?
If not, what shuts it off ??

[Old-Biscuit]

IF that Dometic is a small 'piezo light' type....no DC needed

BUT if it has electronics, circuit board, display panel....got to have not only DC but the voltage needs to remain above 10.5V to continue operating.

[Dutch_12078]

Using a charge line from your tow vehicle is a good backup plan, and you might want save your pennies for a small 1000 watt portable generator for those "just in case" times. I've found a small generator pretty handy as well sometimes, for running yard and power tools when it's not convenient to run an extension cord. That might help justify buying one... 😉

[pianotuna]

Carry a set of jumper cables for such an unusual event. I usually plan on 3 days with no sun when suggesting a battery bank size.

[janstey58]

Do you have a charge line between your TV and trailer that could be your plan B?

[korbe]

Our frig on LPG uses very little 12v power. When I measured, it pulled 0.3amps. So not much. Our frig will not operate on LPG without 12v power.

[Sam_Spade]

Turtle n Peeps wrote:

As far as I know, mine does not need any power.

I bet it does. Something has to regulate the flow of gas; turn it on and off as needed. Otherwise there would just be one "setting" and it would run all the time.

[Sam_Spade]

trainguy14 wrote:
But would our rv fridge (Dometic) continue running happily on the propane even if the battery completely died?

NO, highly likely that it would NOT continue to work.

[Turtle_n_Peeps]

It depends on the year of your trailer.

As far as I know, mine does not need any power. But it's a 30 YO trailer so it does not have a computer board to run.

All modern trailers need some power to run the board. So more than likely you will be out of luck if your battery goes completely flat.