Replacing Norcold 1211 Refrigerator w/Residential or Amish Cooling

We've never been impressed with the performance of our Norcold 1211 refrigerator.  On the coldest setting we see temps of 40-44 degrees and nothing stays even remotely frozen in the freezer.

So as I started to investigate pulling out the Norcold and putting in a residential refrigerator I came across info about Amish Cooling replacement units.  The Amish replacement systems cost around $1200-$1300 including shipping.

I'd like to hear some comments about the Amish unit and your thoughts on just changing over to a residential refrigerator.  Also, our 1 year Winnebago warranty is quickly approaching...should I bring this topic up on my trip to Forest City in a couple weeks?

CakeEater

on the warranty- the fridge should absolutely be on your ''punch list''.
i have read good things about the amish units and will probably go that way when my unit fails rather that installing a residential fridge.
is there a thermistor on the cooling fins in your fridge?
turn the fridge off before moving or troubleshooting the thermistor.
to make your fridge colder you can move the thermistor up on the fin. you can also move the thermistor to the right on the fins to make the fridge colder.
with the thermistor unplugged, the resistance should be 9.5K ohms at 70 degrees f, 24K ohms at 38 degrees f.
with the thermistor unplugged, turn the fridge back on. the temp should go to full cold.
my refrigerator section is supposed to defrost automatically every 48 hours. my freezer compartment does not defrost automatically.

We have a dometic 2652 that failed (leak in the stove pipe) over Christmas.  The remanufactured cooling unit from the Amish (Pines RV) has the same 3 year warrantee as the new unit.  We bought the reman.  Took me 3 days cleaning and what not and got it installed.  11 days later it failed.  I was not to happy.  On the plus side, for those 11 days it was about 5 degrees cooler than the old unit. 

I emailed them and got a response that same evening.  This was on a Saturday.  I was less upset after getting such a prompt response.  I decided to call them on Sunday to leave a message on how to switch to the new Unit.  They picked up!   I asked them to invoice me for the difference between the reman and new, and send me the new cooling unit.  I had a new unit by the next Friday.  Took no time to swap them out after doing it once before.  It's been a month now, and so far it cools even better.

However, the freezer in this unit has always kept stuff frozen hard.  The fridge has always been adequate.  We really won't know unitl we get through the Phoenix summer as to how much better this one cools. 

The Amish cooling units do have a very good reputation,, They are still absorption cooling units though and theory has it performance should be not much different. But as others have said, Might do better.

Residential units eat electricity, roughly 100-200 watts running a whole bunch more during the start phase, You need at least a kilowatt of inverter to power one and they draw on the engine alternator goign down the road.  10-20 amps, close to headlights not that bad.  They may be larger and may cool better.

Norcold and Dometic both make a high effiency compressor driven unit, this is like a residential unit, with one major difference.. Power draw is LESS THAN 50 watts. I have a small chest freezer that uses this same technology,, Works great.

They do come with price tags however.

If your Norcold fails to cool properly, it is almost surely a faulty installation and replacing the cooling unit won't help except that it involves removing and re-installing the fridge (another chance to get it right). A properly set up fridge will provide 0 degrees in the freezer and as low as 32-33 in the fridge section (mine does that even without using a high setting).

The Norcolds are very sensitive to the spacing on the sides and top and also the effectiveness of the seal around the backside and unfortunately the factory personnel are rather cavalier about the install specs. Definitely report this as a warranty defect immediately and insist that the dealer or factory techs work with Norcold to bring the unit into spec.  Norcold tech support is likely familiar with the issue - it is not just Winnie that occasionally fails to get the install right at the factory. Dealer techs have an even worse track record.

If it comes to replacing a cooling unit or getting a new residential unit.  I vote for the residential.  Cools better, safer for fire prevention.  I planned to change ours on our old Winnebago but traded for a new RV with the residential unit already installed.  I will never go back to a Norcold refrigerator.

John From Detroit said:

Residential units eat electricity, roughly 100-200 watts running a whole bunch more during the start phase, You need at least a kilowatt of inverter to power one and they draw on the engine alternator going down the road.  10-20 amps, close to headlights not that bad.  They may be larger and may cool better.

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The modern residential units being installed by many RVers use roughly 100 watts on the average over a full day of operation.  They obviously don't run 100% of the time.  The Samsung we have is rated as having a starting draw of up to 11.6A which means you need at least a 1kW inverter to handle it.

However, what is often overlooked in comparing residential to absorption refrigerators is that the Norcold's are rather inefficient electrically when they are operating on propane and can consume nearly half as much energy for their electrical control systems as a residential fridge will in routine operation. 

We have a 2kW inverter and 4-6V batteries and have had no problems keeping the fridge cold while traveling.  Although we tend to stay where there are hookups we can easily go overnight on the batteries and use our generator to recharge them the next morning.

As for high efficiency DC refrigerators we did consider those, but they simply don't come in sizes as large as most residential fridges.  The increased capacity of our fridge is more important to our full-time lifestyle than any other attributes it has.  The huge increase in freezer space was by itself worth the conversion in our opinions.

docj said:

We have a 2kW inverter and 4-6V batteries and have had no problems keeping the fridge cold while traveling.  Although we tend to stay where there are hookups we can easily go overnight on the batteries and use our generator to recharge them the next morning.

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We have the same setup and have had the same experience on our Maytag 20 footer. Our refer has not moved one degree in either department, freezer or refrigerator, ever, regardless of how it is powered.

And it will brick ice cream, which is my measure of freezer performance.  8)

Our 18 cu ft Samsung that fits the Norcold 1200 installation perfectly except that it needs 3 1/2" more headroom has two compressors, one for fridge and one for freezer. Since it settled down after installation and partially filling the shelves it very seldom runs both compressors at once. With one compressor running it seems to be drawing 3-3 1/2 amps at 12v or 40-50 watts And it seems to have a compressor running about 50% of the time. If this continues I believe we will be using 20-30 watts an hour with temps at 38 and -2 degrees


Temps are now in the high 70s to low 80s here in PHX.

I changed mine out last year for the Amish unit. It took my son and I about 7 hours to do it. We took our time to do it right and to get lunch. It really isn't that hard to do. I spent the most time on cleaning, making sure the new unit fit right and making sure that the fridge was installed correctlly from the dealer. It was installed correctly, but I still ordered the plate to make it seal better and pull the air through the unit.

I also installed a few extra fans that I put on a switch. I did it because I ordered the unit complete with new fans and 110 elements. I also went with the new unit and not the remanifactuered.  I have not used them yet.

Went to Vegas and it was 85 to 90 degress, freezer was 0 and fridge was 36 with setting at 3.
I also had know warming while travling.

Wow!  Thanks for all the comments!  I was hoping to get one or two people's opinions. 

It's nice to hear that I should expect better results temperature wise.  I'll be in Forest City in two weeks for scheduled repairs and one thing on the list is the refrigerator.  Hopefully they can get it working better or at least I have choices!

I'm curious if Winnebago would pull out the Norcold (if it's not working properly) and install a new residential refrig?  Maybe I'm just dreaming...

Thanks everyone for your advice and comments!

Cake Eater

I'm curious if Winnebago would pull out the Norcold (if it's not working properly) and install a new residential refrig?

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Remember that you'd need more batteries and a bigger inverter to go with it.

We lost the cooling unit in our norcold last spring. I had planned on replacing it with the Amish unit. It happened in CT where I used to work part time at an RV dealership. I took it over there to see if anything could be done short of replacing it. There wasn't and I mentioned the Amish unit. The PDI co-ordinator, for whom I worked, took me out back and showed me an Amish unit that had caught fire. They do fail like the Norcold but probably not as often.

We replaced the refer with a Samsung French Door unit and have been much happier since. We boondocked quite a bit this winter. I would run the generator until about 10pm while watching TV. The batteries would be at 13.6V. When we got up in the morning, they would be reading 12V. Not bad at all. I do have a 2000 watt inverter with four Trojan 105 batteries.

Jim Dick said:

We lost the cooling unit in our norcold last spring. I had planned on replacing it with the Amish unit. It happened in CT where I used to work part time at an RV dealership. I took it over there to see if anything could be done short of replacing it. There wasn't and I mentioned the Amish unit. The PDI co-ordinator, for whom I worked, took me out back and showed me an Amish unit that had caught fire. They do fail like the Norcold but probably not as often.

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I've been wondering why so many people have embraced these so-called Amish cooling units as if they are examples of excellence when really all anyone knows is that they aren't made by Norcold and look a bit more rugged.  For the past couple of years I've been asking on these forums why people are willing to invest $500-1000 for a part made by a relatively unknown company with no performance history other than the anecdotal stuff posted online.  How is anyone to know that the Amish units aren't subject to the same failure risks as the Norcold products?  Since there are far few Amish units in use, the actual number of failures will be very small compared with the much larger installed base of Norcold products.  If there were to be problems with the Amish units how does anyone know if the company is financially strong enough to withstand the costs of recalls, etc?  At least Norcold has had the financial strength to stand behind its recalls.

docj said:

  At least Norcold has had the financial strength to stand behind its recalls.

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If you have read all the information on RV forums you would know that Norcold has not stood behind their products. They have simply provided a patch fix at best. A true recall would have been to do a total replacement of the fridge and I would really be surprised if Norcold is financially strong enough for that? To this point, it has cost Norcold nothing in regards to the lost that many RV owners have had to suffer.

As for the ruggedness of the Amish unit, then I would believe that you have seen the two units side by side. And if so, then you know the differences between them. So I won?t address that.

I am not going to say that the Amish unit is the cure all even though I put one in last year. But I will say the customer service is far and above what Norcold is when I was trying to deal with them.

In all honesty, trying to compare the units is like trying to compare apples and bananas.

I guess time will tell for sure!

I've been wondering why so many people have embraced these so-called Amish cooling units as if they are examples of excellence when really all anyone knows is that they aren't made by Norcold and look a bit more rugged.  For the past couple of years I've been asking on these forums why people are willing to invest $500-1000 for a part made by a relatively unknown company with no performance history other than the anecdotal stuff posted online.  How is anyone to know that the Amish units aren't subject to the same failure risks as the Norcold products?  Since there are far few Amish units in use, the actual number of failures will be very small compared with the much larger installed base of Norcold products.  If there were to be problems with the Amish units how does anyone know if the company is financially strong enough to withstand the costs of recalls, etc?  At least Norcold has had the financial strength to stand behind its recalls.

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Now, there you go being logical and reasonable.  Real RV owners know that you should just take "the word" that you heard around the campfire (or saw on the internet) and accept it as gospel truth! Besides, everybody knows that "Amish" is equivalent to "goodness".

Gary RV Roamer said:

Now, there you go being logical and reasonable.  Real RV owners know that you should just take "the word" that you heard around the campfire (or saw on the internet) and accept it as gospel truth! Besides, everybody knows that "Amish" is equivalent to "goodness".

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LOL; if I read it on the internet it must be true?  And since when does something made in PA automatically become "Amish"?  ;D

Gary RV Roamer said:

Now, there you go being logical and reasonable.  Real RV owners know that you should just take "the word" that you heard around the campfire (or saw on the internet) and accept it as gospel truth! Besides, everybody knows that "Amish" is equivalent to "goodness".

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Gary, I have to admit that I learn a lesson to many times by just taking someone?s "word" at not doing my due diligence.  All I can do is learn from my misfortune.

I will tell you that in the short time that I have been visiting this forum I have been very impressed with the sharing of knowledge and misfortune by the members of said forum. And I will stand with that statement because I have learned greatly from the forum. Before I purchased the so-called Amish made (could by true) I read many of your post on the very subject and I was impressed with your remarks.

Like; I don't know why Norcold can't properly engineer a simple thermostat. It's not even an adjustable one, so how hard could it be?

This one here made me check the installation; Is this a new problem or has it been that way since you owned it? If the fridge is not properly installed (spacing around the top and sides) and sealed along the edges at the back, it will never cool properly. Sadly, even the original factory install is sometimes not up to Norcold spec.

If the problem is recent, it may be the cooling unit is failing. Try the suggestions above first, though.

And one of my favorites; Note that Norcold's problem did not become apparent until a couple years ago, but they have been producing 1200 family fridges for a dozen years or more. The 1200's got very popular around 2002, both because of their large size and the fact that Dometic had numerous problems in the late 90's, and it wasn't until there were lots of 1200's installed that we began to realize they have a higher incidence of fires than other models of absorption fridges. Then Norcold fumbled the response to the problem multiple times, losing all credibility along the way.

Jeff also has some great post on the same subject as well as many others.

I sure hope that I don?t have a fire and who knows, I might end up with a residential unit down the road with the solar that I recently installed.

Lastly, there is only one Gospel that I will follow.

Thanks guys, I do enjoy this forum greatly.

docj said:

At least Norcold has had the financial strength to stand behind its recalls.

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After reading the class action suit against Norcold filed in California and Florida, I guess it remains to be seen whether Norcold can weather the lawsuits and recalls. The Plaintiffs are calling for a jury trial on every action named in the suit, so the amount of damages will depend upon the jury. The suit claims that $48,000,000.00 in damages and one death have occured since 1999. There are reports that a class action suit has also been filed in Texas but I am unable to find it on the Internet.

I am surprised that at least some RV manufacturers have not been named as a subclass in the suit, since they surely have know for years that the Norcold refirgerators are a potential problem but they continue to use them as standard equipment in many of their RVs. I purchased an Itasca Sunstar 35B last month and it could only be purchased with a Norcold 1200 series refrigerator.

Richard

Why pay $1200 for the Amish unit when the Samsung residential is around $700-$800?

Seems like a no brainer to me.