cooling the fridge in a hurry

[Jebby14]

I notice my fridge takes forever to cool down when getting ready for a trip. with the camper hot it takes several days for the fridge to get cold enough to stock. any thoughts on putting a block of ice in a bucket in when turning it on? im by no means great at thermodynamics but I would think the melting ice should produce enough btu to cool a small rv fridge (think just slightly larger than a bar fridge)

[rbpru]

We plug ours in the day before we leave. We also add a bag of ice in the freezer because the DW does not like to wait for ice.

[BlueridgeCoachm]

RinconVTR wrote:
GAS

GAS

GAS

Turn the fridge on GAS for the quickest cool down.

DITTO,,, Gas is the Champ for Quick fridge cooling.

[geoman53]

smkettner wrote:
Just start up a day or three before. Battery and propane should run the fridge for the start up or plug in is fine too but use propane.

I find as long as I pack full of cold food nothing gets too warm before it gets fully cold the next day.

Keep the door closed

[Georgia_Popcorn]

Keep your gallon milk jugs, add a 1/4 cup of salt, fill it with water and put in freezer at home, cap on, and freeze it solid...The salt actually makes it thaw slower, found this on Pinterest and IT WORKS, it cool your fridge down a little quicker with that BLOCK of ice!

I tried it first in my big cooler, I was surprised how cool it kept my cold stuff!

[RedDraw]

Another thing to remember is to have the camper relatively level. The fridge won't cool down if it's on too much of an incline.

[cbshoestring]

I always heard that a full fridge cools down faster than an empty fridge. Something about having objects that capture/absorb the cold.

Currently I leave fridge on...it has some water, condiments, etc... stored in it.

When I was NOT leaving it on...I would place several ice packs (or frozen food items we wanted to thaw) on the shelves. Fill the door shelves with bottles of water, beer, etc... I cooled down on electric, because propane was/is expensive, and I never notice the raise in the household electric bill due to the trailer being plugged in. Typicallly, it would be down to the desired temp within 24 hrs.

[Jebby14]

Thanks guys, she was cold when I got home yesterday. apparently my problem last time was the internel settings got turned way up and I didn't realize. cranked up it was good to go.

[dave17352]

As others said buy a bunch of 20 oz water bottles, freeze them in the house then put them in the freezer and fridge. Works great. When hot I keep exchanging them from the freezer and fridge through out a trip. When its 100 degrees out these fridges are glorified coolers:) In all fairness I should say my freezer does fine but the fridge suffers.

[K-9_HANDLER]

Can try burping it

[JWRoberts]

The key words in your post are 'several days'. You have a problem with your fridge. I've never heard of a fridge requiring several days to cool down even in our south Florida heat.

[K-9_HANDLER]

How old is the fridge?

[LarryJM]

Harvard wrote:
Like Path1 our fridge also takes 4 hours to reach the target temperature.

Same here and something doesn't sound right if the OPs frig takes "SEVERAL" days to cool down.:h

Larry

[mvpmich]

Because we don't have electricity in our storage yard we normally start the fridge on gas the night before and it's cold early the next morning.

The way have done it when there wasn't enough time to precool is to use a couple of 1 gal freezer bags of ice and only put cold items in the fridge. After the fridge cools in a short time, we put the ice in the freezer for future use.

[GizmosMom]

I also recommend freezing water bottles or "blue ice packs." Load as many as you can to keep the refrig cool. Then transfer them to the freezer if you have room. Keep frozen bottles in the refrig.

When cool enough use the water (we use our filtered water from home) for drinking and for coffee.