Fridge normal?

[DinTulsa]

Getting ready to head out on our 2nd trip this year, first since feb due to a newborn. I've had the rv hooked to shore power the last couple of days with the Norcold fridge set to the middle temp, it has 3. The refrigerator was 40° inside on that second setting and the freezer was cold. I bought hamburger and chicken and sausage are not placed it inside the freezer all of the meet was not frozen at the time.

I set the temperature to the third setting which is the coldest setting and came back and hour later And look inside the fridge and the temperature was 50° inside the refrigerator but the freezer was cold. So I took most of the meat out with the exception of a couple packs of chicken breast that were partially frozen and some sausage, when I checked it this afternoon three hours later the freezer is cold chicken was freezing everything is getting harder in the freezer but the refrigerator was still approximately 42°. Isit normal for an empty refrigerator to lose that much temperature and take that long to recover when the items in the freezer when the items in the freezer aren't frozen?

Sorry if it's a little lengthy I'm speak texting.

[Old-Biscuit]

DinTulsa wrote:
They were chilled, but not frozen. I figured the freezer would eventually freeze them since I'm not leaving until tomorrow. What I didn't count on was the effect it would have on the fridge section.

Hard to cool dead air.....nothing to absorb/retain the cold

Then you put unfrozen items in freezer......they begin sucking the cold up.

Freezer is FIRST in the cooling process so when more cooling affect is needed in freezer less absorption is available for food section so it can warm up a little bit.

Then as freezer temps go down food compartment can get cooler because the ammonia vapor has more ability to absorb the heat from it.




And that ping-pog ball analogy is perfect.
Open a rv fridge door and the cold air falls out. Takes awhile to recover. Cold 'MASS' inside helps in recovery...but still have to replace all the cold that was lost before temps return to normal

[opnspaces]

I always pre-cool in the house refrigerator before loading the RV fridge. But after that I don't worry about putting pulling out a can of soda and replacing it with a warm can.

Do you remember the refrigerator commercial from the 70's where they open the door a a bunch of ping pong balls (representing the cold) fall out? That's kind of the effect you get when you open your RV refrigerator. But unlike a household refrigerator your RV fridge has a slow recovery rate.

What the commercials don't show though is that when you close the door all the items in the refrigerator start releasing ping pong balls back into the compartment. So as long as air can move around the food, the more cold items in the refrigerator the less the opening of the door affects the temperature.

[rbpru]

My frig is set at "2" the freezer is +5 degrees F. Outside it is 72 degrees. That is the temperature I worry about.

I have not measured the frig part as it always seems cold enough. Just so the milk is cold. 🙂

It takes a day to cool down before we put anything in it, then we usually transfer goods from our home frig before leaving.

[westend]

Grateful Camper wrote:
Running mine on propane always kept it cooler for me (as others have said). We always take a couple one gallon jugs of drinking water with us camping. We save the bottles and freeze them. We put a few in the fridge when we are getting ready for a trip and cooling it down, and it helped tremendously. I also would keep on or two in there while on the road. (Of course this was in a pop up camper) still new to the TT world. But the principles should be the same. Without doing this it would take about 2-3 days to get to a good temp. This cut it down to about 12 hours.

X2

I have a 120V fridge and the effect of having frozen water inside works the same.

[DinTulsa]

Thanks for the tips on keeping the fridge cool. Gotta love this site for the knowledgeable responses and quick feedback.

[Grateful_Camper]

Running mine on propane always kept it cooler for me (as others have said). We always take a couple one gallon jugs of drinking water with us camping. We save the bottles and freeze them. We put a few in the fridge when we are getting ready for a trip and cooling it down, and it helped tremendously. I also would keep on or two in there while on the road. (Of course this was in a pop up camper) still new to the TT world. But the principles should be the same. Without doing this it would take about 2-3 days to get to a good temp. This cut it down to about 12 hours.

[SidecarFlip]

Little heads up for cheap... The air in the fridge tends to stratify itself in layers because there is no movement. A set of inside fridge fans (or a battery operated one) will go a long way toward normalizing the inside temperature.

[midnightsadie]

I put a half gal jug of frozen water in the frig on start up. cuts down on cool down time.

[SidecarFlip]

MitchF150 wrote:
Run it on propane.. I find mine cools much better, especially when it's hot out, on propane. Once I figured that out, I never run it on electric now.. Just what works for me..

Good luck!

Mitch

Thats because on propane, the boiler temperature is higher than on 110.

[SidecarFlip]

DinTulsa wrote:
They were chilled, but not frozen. I figured the freezer would eventually freeze them since I'm not leaving until tomorrow. What I didn't count on was the effect it would have on the fridge section.

Nope. Not normally.

[MitchF150]

Run it on propane.. I find mine cools much better, especially when it's hot out, on propane. Once I figured that out, I never run it on electric now.. Just what works for me..

Good luck!

Mitch

[DinTulsa]

They were chilled, but not frozen. I figured the freezer would eventually freeze them since I'm not leaving until tomorrow. What I didn't count on was the effect it would have on the fridge section.

[SidecarFlip]

Never, never put unrefrigerated items in an ammonia fridge, always pre-cool or pre-freeze. They don't have the recovery to freeze or chill room temperature food. If you want to go that route, I suggest a portable cool box like a Dometic or an Engel with a built in compressor.

[Lwiddis]

Fresh food battery operated fan will help too.