Residential Refrigerator or Not?

Hi All,

Looking for some guidance whether to swap out our Norcold RV refrigerator for a residential. I know there are many, many posts on this topic and I have read most of them. But looking for some recent experiences and opinions.

Here is our situation. Our current Norcold 1200 rarely gets below 45 degrees in the refrigerator. The unit is ~5 years old having been replaced by the previous owner due to recalls and repairs. From what I can tell, it has all the proper recall items, the rear air space is clear, and does not have any obvious issues. The freezer does get cold, but the refrigerator rarely gets below 45 degrees. Being in Texas, our outside air is pretty regularly in the high 90s so suppose it is possible it just cannot get cold due to how hot it is outside.

We are typically connected to power or have the generator running, even when driving down the road. Simply to hot to not have the basement AC going. We are at times, of course, not connected to power (such as when staying overnight at a Walmart or similar) and if cool enough we do not run the generator all night. We still have the original Domestic inverter (modified sign wave) and three standard 12 volt deep cycle house batteries.

Looking for thoughts on this. For those of you in the hot south, have you found a way to get your RV refrigerator to stay at a safe cold temperature? For those of you who have switched to a residential unit, are you happy?

Not looking to debate one or the other, simply looking for some positive guidance.

Thanks.

I had a RV fridge and I took it out and installed a residential fridge. I sold the RV fridge and installed our residential fridge. We did it because when travelling from NH to FL it was always a pain to keep the fridge cold. Now we're able to run the fridge while we're traveling because I installed a inverter. When we stop for the night, I just shut off the inverter until we leave the next day.

I had a Norcold 1200 that worked absolutely great for 11 years, but when it started going downhill I went to a residential (a GE 15 cu ft model) without waiting for the final demise.  Little reason not to unless you boondock much of the time, and even then it's OK if you have a battery bank of 400AH or more.

If you are replacing it.. You have not two but THREE choices.
1: A typical RV absorption cooling unit (Fridge) this can run on propane or electric they have thick insulation and thus less interior space but you can run a long time on battery power alone.

2: Typical residential fridge. I've been hearing disturbing things about the most popular model (Samsung) but it may just be a "one batch" issue.  NOTE everybody gets the odd bad batch of just about everything.> I'd avoid LG cause I've never been LUCKY with GOLDATAR (LG means Lucky goldstar)

3: Both Norcold and Dometic make high effiency Compressor (Danfoss style if not actual danfoss compressors. there are two competitors to Danfoss that I know of but name recall is not my strong point)  These are all electric 12 or 120 volt.. Generally with the compressor running and the door closed (Seems strange to have to specify door closed) you are drawing less than 50 watts. or 4 amps at 12 volts.  Think on that a while.

Standard "Residential" is 100-500 watts. Standard RV on 120 v 300-500 watts.

But the High Effiency Dometic and Norcold. 40 to 50 watts.

I have an Engle chest freezer.  Same technology

John From Detroit said:

I have an Engle chest freezer.  Same technology

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X2. Love my Engle

John:

But the High Effiency Dometic and Norcold. 40 to 50 watts.

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Thank you for that. First I've heard of those!  Absorption fridges have their issues, but I'm not willing to go to a residential type. With some of these being 12 volt units, they are an interesting option.

John From Detroit said:

3: Both Norcold and Dometic make high effiency Compressor (Danfoss style if not actual danfoss compressors. there are two competitors to Danfoss that I know of but name recall is not my strong point)  These are all electric 12 or 120 volt..

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The largest Dometic AC/DC fridge is an ~8cu ft model and the largest Norcold AC/DC is ~7 cu ft.  That's a long way from the 18+ cu ft in my Samsung residential.  It's not to say that an AC/DC fridge couldn't be larger, but I don't think anyone makes a bigger one.  I investigated this before we installed the Samsung.

I think Gary hit on a big variable....the size of the battery bank.

My Norcold is still relatively new, and I've run an ARP on it since almost the beginning (although there was a long period of time when it wasn't working properly).  It still works fine.  Not that I would through money at swapping fridges needlessly now, I have thought about this a fair bit, in the interest of safety.  I personally would love to go residential, EXCEPT for the boon docking issue.  A rig like mine just doesn't have a lot of room for a large battery bank.  I think that's about the only area where my storage capacity is limited.  About the only outside vented space I would have for more batteries would be to remove the generator.  We don't boondock a lot...well actually we have many times, but normally it's one night, then a day of driving and charging to another night...for 2-3 nights, then we'd be plugged in.  A few times a year I might go 2-3 nights in a row without significant time for recharge, but that's rare.

So....as it is for me, I appreciate having the LP mode in the fridge

When I swapped mine out, I went from a 7.5 cu/ft RV fridge to a almost 11 cu/ft residential fridge and it is frost proof/free in about the same space.

You guys are making me nervous! The new motorhome only comes with a residential refrigerator, and we like to boondock. We did order it with 6 six volt batteries, and we have an auto start generator. We won?t put solar on it until August, but we have a couple of trips before that to get through. Do I need to plan on turning the refrigerator off overnight? Should I just wait until the generator auto starts at 4:00 am one morning? Until August I have booked as many sites as possible with electric, but not all the trip has hookups available.

UTTransplant said:

You guys are making me nervous! The new motorhome only comes with a residential refrigerator, and we like to boondock. We did order it with 6 six volt batteries, and we have an auto start generator. We won?t put solar on it until August, but we have a couple of trips before that to get through. Do I need to plan on turning the refrigerator off overnight? Should I just wait until the generator auto starts at 4:00 am one morning? Until August I have booked as many sites as possible with electric, but not all the trip has hookups available.

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First of all, we love our res fridge. It's a 22 cf fridge with an ice maker, so it's fairly big, and even though it's pretty efficient, it likes electricity. It, and the inverter that must be on to power it, consume between 180 and 200 amps each day but YMMV.

Our coach came from the factory with a 630 AH battery bank, which would get us through the night with no problems, as long as the batteries were nearly fully charged when we went to bed. In the morning, they were always at about 60% SOC, which can take a toll on them over time. To keep them charged, I was having to run the generator about 2 hours each morning, and about 1.5 hours each evening. After installing 960 watts of solar and two additional house batteries (840 AH capacity) our batteries are now rarely below 80% in the morning, and I haven't had to run the generator at all in our last two weeks of boondocking.

Most RVers who are new to boondocking with res fridges are surprised at how much more power they consume than their lp counterparts, and a lot of them end up going solar and increasing their battery capacity. FWIW, I think your six, 6 volt golf cart batteries will get you through the night just fine, as long as the've got a good charge before you go to bed. With a res fridge an no solar, however, you will be running your generator a lot more than you have in the past.

I don't know how much power your particular fridge consumes, but if it's a big fridge like ours with an ice maker, turning it (and the inverter) off at night could reduce consumption by quite a bit. I just never thought that was a very practical solution for fequent boondocking. Depending on your RV's interior temp, your ice and ice cream will likely melt, and then re-freeze as a block when you turn everything back on, and things in the fridge do warm up (somewhat.)

Kev

Thanks Kevin. I will have to confirm the amp hours in my batteries, and we will watch the batteries carefully until we get the solar installed. I will also get in the habit of running the generator at night.

A rig like mine just doesn't have a lot of room for a large battery bank.

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If you go with AGM's, you don't need a vented location. You can put them anywhere you have space.

UTTransplant said:

You guys are making me nervous! The new motorhome only comes with a residential refrigerator, and we like to boondock. We did order it with 6 six volt batteries, and we have an auto start generator. We won?t put solar on it until August, but we have a couple of trips before that to get through. Do I need to plan on turning the refrigerator off overnight? Should I just wait until the generator auto starts at 4:00 am one morning? Until August I have booked as many sites as possible with electric, but not all the trip has hookups available.

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Your six 6V batteries most likely provide 600-660AH of battery.  If you discharge 25% (75% full) you have about 150AH of usable battery capacity.  If you discharge to 50% you have about 300AH of usable capacity. 

However discharging  50% instead of 25% reduces your battery life by about 50%.  A typical golf cart battery provides about 2200-2500 discharge/charge cycles at 25% discharge.  Trojan batteries claims about 3000 cycles and still 50% fewer at 50% discharge.

These battery life figures are based on getting your batteries back to 100% full every few days.  Getting to 100% charged is difficult with only a generator.  It takes 6 to 10 or more hours of charging to get the battery to 100%.  Some of this is based on how far discharged your batteries are when starting the charge cycle.

Assuming you have a smaller fridge than Kevin's you probably can count on using 150AH of battery in 24 hours for just the fridge.  That AH figure does not include any other power usage you will have such as lights, TV computers, microwave, coffee maker.  Another 100-125AH of daily usage in a large RV is not uncommon. 

If your new Tiffin RV doesn't come with a battery monitor which shows how many AH's have been used since last charged to 100%, you really need to have a battery monitor installed like a Trimetric:  http://www.bogartengineering.com/products/trimetrics.html

Here is a bunch of reading you can do to educate yourself on battery charging/discharging and solar:

http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volt.htm
http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volta.htm
http://www.jackdanmayer.com/rv_electrical_and_solar.htm
http://www.jackdanmayer.com/Batteries_and_charging.html

UTTransplant said:

You guys are making me nervous! The new motorhome only comes with a residential refrigerator, and we like to boondock. We did order it with 6 six volt batteries, and we have an auto start generator. We won?t put solar on it until August, but we have a couple of trips before that to get through. Do I need to plan on turning the refrigerator off overnight? Should I just wait until the generator auto starts at 4:00 am one morning? Until August I have booked as many sites as possible with electric, but not all the trip has hookups available.

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When you do have Solar installed, be sure to do your research.  There are quite a few (a lot maybe) of solar installers who scrimp with materials in various ways or do poor quality installs. 

Here is a link to Handy Bob's website with good advice.  Yes he rants more than necessary, but he provides lots of good info about what anyone considering solar needs to be self educated about.  You don't have to agree with everything he has to say.  However you should do follow up research to confirm the things Bob has to say.  http://handybobsolar.wordpress.com/the-rv-battery-charging-puzzle-2/

There is more info about solar installs in the links I gave earlier.

My Bus came with a RR and a house battery bank of six 6 volt Interstate batteries. When I boon dock I will usually run my generator 2 hours in the morning during breakfast, and 2 hours at night during dinner. That will power the whole rig for the day, using basic lights, a TV and Direct DVR for 2-3 hours, and 2 computers going all day. Most of the lights in my RV are LED's.  The generator will get the battery bank back to about 80-85% SOC using that charging routine.  I usually don't dry camp for more than a week at a time at the most. 

Don't be afraid of a RR and dry camping.

Frank B said:

If you go with AGM's, you don't need a vented location. You can put them anywhere you have space.

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you know, i never considered this.  Good point!
....Not that I'm looking to do the project, but still.....

blw2 said:

you know, i never considered this.  Good point!
....Not that I'm looking to do the project, but still.....

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A concern when you?re locating a second bank of batteries is the distance from the first bank to the second. Will probably take very large cables

....Not that I'm looking to do the project, but still.....

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Chicken!  ;D

Sun2Retire said:

A concern when you?re locating a second bank of batteries is the distance from the first bank to the second. Will probably take very large cables

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Or, you can just move the whole battery bank!


If one is replacing FLA batteries with AGM's, chances are good you're going to replace them all anyway.


Depending on the layout of the unit, it is quite possible that the location of an AGM battery bank will be much closer to the converter than previously. The wire run may end up being much shorter. That is most certainly the case with our unit.