frig left on

I leave it on between trips. Haven't really noticed an impact to my electric bill to make me question it.

Mike

Mine stays on all season as well. I am able to park it in my yard and we use it for beverages and other things. We have a fire ring in the yard as well and have the neighbors down for cookouts from time to time. Very convenient, and the beer stays cold for the man cave too.

"I really think it does not matter which way you do it. It's really all about how convenient you want the refrigerator for your use."

Agreed. Like all appliances, they wear out eventually. As previously mentioned, heat/cool cycles wear things out. If you choose to afford it, the year round energy usage is minimal. I consider the life cycle cost substantial though, especially when I replaced my 12 year old Dometic 2652 to the tune of $1,350.00.

Leaving the absorbtion fridge on does keep most gremlins at bay but leaving it off with the door open and the inside clean can also. IMO, Dometic hints at shutting the system off when not in use since they provide wedges to keep the door ajar with every unit.

Then there is the potential fire danger.

Your choice.

Chum lee

We run ours during the camping season 7x24, as we camp every weekend. Don't forget, if you own an RV with a residential fridge and icemaker, empty the ice bin if/when you shut down, or you will have a nice water puddle on the floor in a few hours.

Only you can decide if it's better for your situation, but there is nothing wrong with leaving it on as long as your RV is reasonably level while doing so. We do have our rig plugged in all the time stored at home in our side yard, we usually have fridge running during the camping season but when there is a few weeks of gap between trips we will power off the unit. I've noticed about a $12-$15 increase in our monthly electric bill which wouldn't have any affect on my decision to keep our fridge on or off while we weren't camping.

An RV fridge uses about 4-5 kWh per day, very roughly, depending on the outside temperature and many other variables. For me, that would be somewhere around $300 a year in electricity if I left it on all the time. I don't think it's worth anywhere near that amount of money for whatever small convenience there may be. (If one needs an additional fridge for overflow, it would be fairly quickly cost-effective to purchase a simple domestic compressor fridge and stick it in the garage or wherever; it would pay for itself in a couple years in electric savings over running an RV fridge.)

As far as the fridge itself is concerned, I don't think it makes any real difference. There's nothing in the water, ammonia, and hydrogen gas that wears out with use or fails with non-use. The cooling system on modern RV fridges is cycling on and off (and hence heating and cooling) continually when it's operating based on the thermostat controls, so the argument of avoiding thermal stresses by leaving it on is hardly applicable in my opinion. (It may have held a bit of validity for older fridges, at least on gas mode, where the temperature control is simply a valve adjusting the flame.)

Of course, if you do leave it on, it is important to have the RV somewhat close to being level.

"Is it better to leave the frig on all the time or turn it off when stored?"

I really think it does not matter which way you do it. It's really all about how convenient you want the refrigerator for your use.

We also plug in at home, 24x7x365 and the refrigerator is on all the time.

We use the camper all year round too, when not camping, in the driveway. We sleep in it almost every night. Our house is really just a spot to plug the camper in! Really.... the house is a convenience for the camper! That's why we chose this place.

We keep food items and drinks in the camper, pretty much, all year round. Except in the coldest of the months, when temperatures reach zero or below, and we're not heating the camper.

Does it hurt anything to leave them on 24x7x356? No. Does it hurt anything to turn them off 24x7x356? No.

But if you use your camper a lot, it's much easier to just leave the refrigerator turned on and keep it cool, rather than trying to cool it every other day.

I have no clue what the electric usage is on the refrigerator. I really don't care. When we hang out in the camper, we're not air conditioning the house. The cost of cooling the refrigerator, and even running the air conditioner for a box that's 380 square feet is definitely cheaper on the electric bill than attempting to air condition a 2800 square foot box!

Either way, on or off, it's your choice. How much do you want to use it? FYI, the RV refrigerator is a great over-flow and a secondary refrigerator option for your house too! Works great. We keep extra meat frozen there almost all the time too. Besides, the refrigerator is pretty much always stocked this way, and ready for us to pull out in a heart beat if we decide on the spur of the moment to go somewhere..... works for us!

skipro3 wrote:
My unit uses 300 watts per hour averaged over a 24 hour day, so call it $1.30 a day to run.g.

At a 50% duty cycle it's about 50c a day. Not exactly breaking the budget. Even at 24/7/52

I leave mine off, open and unloaded between trips. It gets HOT here and once the outside air is above 90 or so, the little fridge can't keep it's interior cool enough during those warm hours to keep food safe for weeks. Plus consider if there is ever a breaker trip or other power issue, you aren't checking daily and could really end up with a stinking mess if something went wrong. My unit uses 300 watts per hour averaged over a 24 hour day, so call it $1.30 a day to run.
I'll power up the fridge the night before to cool it down, then load it up just prior to leaving.

A thread from 6 years ago on this forum said an RV fridge uses 4.8kwh per day. YMMV. Here we pay about 30 cents / kwh by the time all the taxes and delivery charges etc etc etc are added in. For me, a buck and a half per day is not worth the slight convenience of leaving it on.

Also, (microscopically) less CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing.