Is my refer working?

[Tin Hut]

Just tried turning on my 3 year old Dometic for the first time today on AC. I'm used the my home fridge and expected to hear some noise when I turned it to electrice and moved up the thermostat. No noise. I checked and it is getting power and some of the components in the back are hot to the touch. After 20 minutes I did not notice it getting cold. Is this normal? How long does it take and should there be fan or condenser noise similar to a house refer? Thanks

[wingfoot]

Mine is quite a bit older but, I hear nothing when it is operating on electric. 20 minutes is not long enough to test. I started mine today on gas and it took about 2 hours before I really noticed the freezer plate getting very cold. It took about 6 hours to get down below 30 degrees.

[mkeith54]

With a gas refer you won't hear any noise on start up. It can take over 24 hours to cool down so keep checking. Gas(LP) will cool faster that electric mode.

[davidz71]

jfsjr,
Since others have asked the same question previously, I wrote down times and temps for both my frigerator and freezer from startup while camping a year or so ago. I did a forum search but did not run across the statistics. I did find another of my posts mentioning that on propane I waited for at least 5 hours before the refrigerator and freezer were cold. mkeith54 is correct in that there is no noise from the refrigerator unless someone has added an auxilliary fan in the outside compartment to keep the external coils cooler thus increasing your refrigerator's efficiency.

[Dbraw]

Our 32 year old Dometic has been working good on both electric and gas. However, a week ago I turned it on electric and it worked for about a day then the next day it was warm inside. Used it on propane at a rally and it was real cool. Hated to replace it and then remembered that we had a storm the night it quit working. Lucky us, the ground fault plug on the side of the house had tripped. Reset it and now things are cool again. Hoping for another 32 years.
Dan