Another Residential Refrigerator

[Gary RV_Wizard]

The icemaker in the Norcold is identical to the ones used in residential fridges, so there is no difference in operation or winterizing if you swap.

And I do mean identical - if the Norcold's icemaker failed you would replace it with one from Whirlpool or Supco, who make just about all the fridge icemakers regardless of fridge brand name.

 

[Quillback 424]

Except it appears I would lose the board and the heat strip wiring which heats the icemaker's external water line and solenoid.

 

[ironrat]

Sounds like the inverter works ok on the residential refer. But without changing anything wouldn't running the Absorption refer on the inverter work also? Ok it would work but does anyone know how much power that would require, more than or less or the same as the residential unit? I guess if one needed to replace their refer my question doesn't mean to much, but if one is concerned about the fire aspect of things and does not need a new refer this may work for them just fine.

 

[Lou Schneider]

Absorption refrigerators are much less efficient than compressor models, or to put it another way they use much more electricity.

A compressor refrigerator will draw less than 100 watts when the compressor is running, probably less than half of the time.

An absorption refrigerator has a 350 to 600 watt heating element and it's on for a greater percentage of time than the compressor model.

350 to 600 watts means 35 to 60 amps is drawn from the 12 volt batteries (including inverter losses).  This is more than anything but the largest 12 volt systems can sustain for any length of time.

 

[SargeW]

After all of the change outs that have been reported lately, I think that if my Norcold ever gets flaky I would go the residential route. 

 

[John Canfield]

Absorption refrigerators are much less efficient than compressor models, or to put it another way they use much more electricity.

A compressor refrigerator will draw less than 100 watts when the compressor is running, probably less than half of the time.

An absorption refrigerator has a 350 to 600 watt heating element and it's on for a greater percentage of time than the compressor model.

350 to 600 watts means 35 to 60 amps is drawn from the 12 volt batteries (including inverter losses).  This is more than anything but the largest 12 volt systems can sustain for any length of time.

Lou's post is pretty much spot-on with my observations from owning both and watching the Xantrex inverter panel for wattage demands.  As far as I'm concerned, the sole advantage of the absorbed gas fridges is the ability to run on propane (mostly - you still need 12VDC for the control board.)  Having said that, running a fridge on propane is a really nice feature for the occasional boondocker, a serious boondocker I think would want 500+ watts of solar and a residential fridge.

 

[Jeff]

Our Samsung refrigerator seems to be averaging 45 watts (3.7 ampsDC)/hour) but since we are not living in the m/h we will have to wait until May to see what the practical use numbers are. I have found that running on our house inverter will not run the batteries down enough in 14 hours to activate the auto gen start I just installed.

We are looking forward to using it this summer.

 

[ironrat]

Well I think by the numbers the Absorption refer will run just fine on the inverter down the road, is just normal stuff running it on propane when stopped. This is just something for someone concerned about the flame going down the road and not having to go out and change a refer that does not need to be changed yet. But personally I have NP running on propane down the road my self. But it is good seeing how the residential refer is working out. My be a good thing to try if and when the gas refer gives up.

 

[Jeff]

I guess I should make it clear that we ran our Norcold (and Dometics) on LP while traveling and that was not the reason we switched.

 

[GMascelli]

We had the Norcold N611 (6.3 cf) in our Fleetwood Southwind Storm and when it acted up I replaced it with a Whirlpool 9.6 cubic foot unit.  We do not full time but we use the motorhome as our beach home for six months.  More room and a peace of mind, it works for us.

 

[Jim Dick]

Manuel,

After the last cooling unit was installed in my NoCold, they plugged the cooling unit into the inverter socket by mistake. It was drawing 53 amps out of the batteries! The most I've seen with the new residential is 12 amps and that includes additional items besides the refer.