westend wrote:
Gde wrote:
Jeeze you propane burning fridge huggers NEED to get a life.
Now, now, we're all in the USA and the great thing is that anyone can pick his own food-cooling solution.
I agree with your assessments, compressor fridges are easier to operate at constant temps and those temps are more inline with what we want out of a cold-box. The only advantage of a typical absorption fridge is that it can be run on propane when electricity isn't available. Battery upgrades and solar charging can make that distinction moot.
FWIW, I am continuing my RV mods with the installation of a small freezer. I recently saw an owner that had modified an old, small chest freezer to operate as a freezer and partly, a fridge. The dual use was accomplished by using a barrier between lower freezer section and top-most fridge section. I'll be looking at the drawbacks of using one the same or modifying for my specific use. Ideally, I'd like an easily accessible freezer section and a separate fridge in a drawer. They do make the latter but I'm not Jeff Bezos. :B
The bolded text needs to be qualified.
The majority of RV absorption fridges actually REQUIRE "electricity" in order to operate, which makes that statement a lie. Only the very small RV fridges typically do not (1.0-2.0 cu ft). RV fridges larger than 2 cu ft typically use a ELECTRONIC CONTROL BOARD WHICH REQUIRES 12V TO FUNCTION. RV fridges with the electronic control boards also use the 12V to operate the gas control valve so when the burner is on the fridge uses even more ELECTRICITY.
Granted the control baord and valve will use less wattage than a compressor fridge, it is not all that big of a difference between the two.
In a nutshell you might be able to operate a RV absorption fridge for say a couple days longer vs 12hrs with a home fridge between charging but in reality unless you are camping like the "Amish" live (Coleman gas lamps, candles, oil lamps and ZERO phones, tablets, PCs or any other electronic device) you WILL be bringing a generator and or solar to recharge your battery.
So I really don't understand why folks seem to wish to make life so darn difficult by buying a big monster hardsided RV, then try to skimp like a cheap miser on modern electrical conveniences choosing instead to operate a RV fridge via propane with an energy efficiency of 30% or less when compared to a compressor fridge..
You may as well buy a $30 tent instead of spending $30K+ then never use 99% of the RVs capabilities.
Absorption fridges ARE "energy hogs", they ARE extremely inefficient in the conversion process. Think about it a moment, you MUST add 325W worth of heat in propane PLUS the electricity for the control board. A home fridge does the exact same work with only 90W-100W worth of electricity and it does it much faster, has faster recovery times too boot..
Propane IS expensive, no matter how you cut it.
Propane is a direct result FROM OIL AND NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY and is one of the by products of cracking the source material into other building blocks.. In theory it can "burn clean" but in practice, it does not and a lot of dirty energy went into the making of it, storing it, distributing it.
All for the "man card" of roughing it in a hardsided luxury RV without using electricity.. A pretty sad state of affairs.
My point is IF you are going to point out the "MINUSES" of 120V compressor fridges you should also point out the "MINUSES" of absorption fridges equally instead of leaving out that little tiny fact that modern RV fridges REQUIRE electricity to operate also. This fact closes the power gap between the two and levels the playing field, making that argument almost a moot point.
One can simply add 200W of solar panels and easily make up any extra energy used by a home fridge and 200W of solar now days is a mere $200.
