12v fridge-replace 120/propane with 12v

[SilvaStreama]

I want to replace my existing fridge with a 12v one for numerous reasons. The existing one takes forever to cool down after arriving at a campsite. I don’t feel comfortable traveling with the propane on. There is so much more space in the 12v fridge! I currently have 10 100 amp solar panels, 4 lithium batteries and a 3000 watt inverter. I currently do some boondocking and hope to do more as my schedule frees up bigger chunks of time. And hoping to be able to use it during travel.

I have a 2020 33’ classic and it is always plugged in at home to 50 amp.

Has anyone changed theirs out and what is involved and was it better for your use and why or why not? Thank you!

[field & stream]

I have not changed out, but researched a bit. I am hoping by bumping this you might get a better answer.

Perhaps the only disadvantage of electric only fridges is the amount of electricity they consume. You mentioned a number of their many advantages, all of which are significant. Because you already have made the investment in lots of solar and lithium, you are ready to go with the fridge. There will probably be a modest amount of cabinetry work to get it installed neatly, but that is not a big deal.

Still, an electric fridge the size you will have will consume 50-80 Ah per day. Along with typical other uses that will add up to the storage capacity of about one of your four 100Ah lithium batteries per day. With above average or better solar conditions you should be fine for an indefinite period, but under poor conditions you will have to keep an eye on your state of charge. A generator might be required.

[LNBright]

You're correct, it takes awhile for a fridge to cool down. I start mine colling down the week before a trip, so it's well-chilled by departure. I do run mine while enroute, tho'.

Possible thoughts is, get it cooled down, then pack it with ice-packs while on the road, then get it going once on-site?

For me, a 12v would be okay if I was 'only' camping in full-hook-up campgrounds, but we do a lot of NP campgrounds that don't have hookups; as such, I'm much happier on propane. FWIW....

[richard5933]

Granted, we live in Wisconsin and not Texas, but our propane fridge will cool down completely in less than 24 hours with no problem. I replaced the cooling unit with an Amish-built unit a couple of years ago and I think that it works better than the fridge did new. We typically turn on before bed the night before departing, and by departure time the next day it's cold enough to load with groceries and be on our way. We do run the fridge on propane while underway, but I know not everyone does this.

Back to the 12vdc fridge question...On our coach we had a Vitrifrigo 12vdc compressor fridge and loved it. All the positives which were pointed out in the opening post were true for us. One modification we did was install an additional fan on the compressor unit to help dissipate heat which was especially important on days the a/c wasn't kept running in the coach.

Our 5.7 cf fridge consumed about 75 Ah on the hottest of days and we had no problem running indefinitely from our three 180-watt portable solar panels along with all the usual electrical demands inside the coach.

We chose Vitrifrigo because they had a size which almost replaced our Dometic fridge without modification - the only thing we had to do was have a steel adaptor bezel made to bridge the small gap between the new fridge's mounting flange and the opening. Nova Kool also has a number of models which are nearly directly replacements for RV size fridges, but we found a Vitrifrigo which fit size our needs better.

[Sparr]

We changed ours to the current Airstream Classic model 12 volt fridge at the mothership last year, one of the best upgrades we've done.

[SilvaStreama]

Thank you for your responses. For clarification-currently fridge is always plugged in. When going on trips it has cold food and 1 gallon frozen water bottles in the the freezer and fridge. I am not starting from a warm fridge but even on short trips fridge goes down to 42 and takes forever to cool down.

Regarding usage, wouldn’t I be constantly charging during the day, assuming it is a sunnny day? With 4 lithiums I believe I would still be ok at night to draw from batteries as well as cloudy days?

Last question: what size to I get? Is it just based on what fits in the existing hole?

[richard5933]

Originally Posted by SilvaStreama

Thank you for your responses. For clarification-currently fridge is always plugged in. When going on trips it has cold food and 1 gallon frozen water bottles in the the freezer and fridge. I am not starting from a warm fridge but even on short trips fridge goes down to 42 and takes forever to cool down.

Regarding usage, wouldn’t I be constantly charging during the day, assuming it is a sunnny day? With 4 lithiums I believe I would still be ok at night to draw from batteries as well as cloudy days?

Last question: what size to I get? Is it just based on what fits in the existing hole?

You can do the math on this to determine how long you'd be okay on cloudy/rainy days.

If you have a shunt-based battery monitor (or its equivalent) installed you should have a good idea of your daily power consumption. Add to that a calculation of the extra power the fridge would require for a day of running and see how long you can go. For us in the coach we averaged about a 50% duty cycle meaning that the compressor ran about half the time the unit was on after the initial cool-down period.

With 400 Ah of lithium you will likely be okay for at least a couple of days during pleasant weather. Where you might get into difficulty would be in cooler/colder weather where you'd also be relying on the batteries to run the furnace. That extra load might push you over the edge of your capacity if you had to rely on batteries for more than a day or so, depending on what else you're running.

[field & stream]

Originally Posted by SilvaStreama

Thank you for your responses. For clarification-currently fridge is always plugged in. When going on trips it has cold food and 1 gallon frozen water bottles in the the freezer and fridge. I am not starting from a warm fridge but even on short trips fridge goes down to 42 and takes forever to cool down.

Regarding usage, wouldn’t I be constantly charging during the day, assuming it is a sunnny day? With 4 lithiums I believe I would still be ok at night to draw from batteries as well as cloudy days?

Last question: what size to I get? Is it just based on what fits in the existing hole?

Regarding usage, see post #2 above. Starting with a decent state of charge on 400Ah of lithium I can’t imagine any problem lasting overnight. Yes, if it is cold the furnace will use additional power but the fridge will run less.

Regarding size, that’s your call. Not likely anything will fit perfectly but maybe the less cabinet work the better. Maybe your style would be better served by a larger fridge, maybe the one you have is more than you need and you want to add a bit of storage.

[bcoffel]

We swapped our propane fridge with a Dometic 12v fridge soon after living full time in Texas during months of consecutive 100 deg days and will never go back. We have a 24v solar system that easily keeps the new fridge up and running for days, and we have a small Honda 2200 generator for the days we need to fill-up if needed.

[dsatwork]

Originally Posted by SilvaStreama

Has anyone changed theirs out and what is involved and was it better for your use and why or why not?

We live fulltime in our 2015 30RBQ and removed the 3 way fridge a year ago and absolutely love it. The performance has been reliable in all weather conditions, the 2 cubic foot extra space has been a great benefit and now we can even have space for an ice cube tray and storage.

We have similar solar setup to yours and have been up and down the West Coast and out to Albuquerque and Denver and across Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. We boondock and dry camp wherever we can, as we need very little accommodations with our composting toilet.

The install is not a slam dunk, as you are replacing a vented system with a zero clearance system and so there is a need to create a zero clearance compartment. The power requirements are such that you should have the new 12 volt fridge on it's own 12V fuse. However the zero clearance install gave us a great new storage compartment where the previous refrigerator access door was located.

We sold the old fridge for $500 which offset the cost of the new fridge.

Please let me know if you have other questions.

Thank you,

Dave S

[OrangeCrush]

Originally Posted by SilvaStreama

I currently have 10 100 amp solar panels, 4 lithium batteries and a 3000 watt inverter. I currently do some boondocking and hope to do more as my schedule frees up bigger chunks of time. And hoping to be able to use it during travel.

We have same battery, inverter, and 1/2 your solar which is useless in the trees. We boondock a lot in the mountains and I would not trade our absorption fridge for a compressor fridge boondocking. If you want to do boondock more then I would think twice about switching to absorption fridge. As far as traveling, we go with propane on which works fine (flame on replies.....).

[Boxite]

I wonder if it’d be useful to have a combination type reefer…. an absorption unit with a compressor unit also in the same refrigerator….?

Also a site I visited (Mortons on the Move) makes the following claim regarding all RV refrigerators : “ An unused RV refrigerator is more susceptible to damages. Using your RV regularly will extend the life of many components, especially the fridge. ”

This statement was made towards absorption as well as compressor types. While I can understand some compressor types (non screw drive for example)…I cannot imagine how an absorption type would suffer if stored in a dry environment to avoid corrosion of the stove area.
Does anyone have any evidence or reason for this?

[Mike1997]

Interesting at the number of owners who said their frig did not run well on propane. That sounds like a control issue with a bad module, or maybe a dirty orifice where the propane flame burns.
I agree with the owner who said he did not like to drive with the frig in use with propane. I dont either, in fact, my frig in auto mode does not allow that to happen. It switches automatically to 9v power and runs off the engine. When the engine is turned off, it switches back to propane unless we have the generator on. That puts it into electric mode just like being on campsite hookups.
As far as cool downs, 8 to 10 hours is about average on the frig but the freezer is about half that time.
Keep in mind none of this operated correctly when I bought the Airstream and brought it out of 8 year storage. Control modules on all of my propane appliances needed replacement because of malfunction due to non-use.

[Eric 26 Argo]

When we were restoring our 1977 Airstream Argosy, we had to make a choice on what type of unit to put in because the PO had thrown out the old unit. Having experience with absorption fridges we opted for a 12V compressor unit. Love it! We have a 7.0 cubic foot unit, and it pulls 4 amps when running and since it cycles about twice an hour it is only pulling about 2amp hours of power. With our 100amp lead acid batter it will run about 4 days before shutting off for low power. It has built in protection to prevent it from damaging the motor. It can't completely drain a lead acid battery. With a lithium battery it would run several more days, and with 4 lithium batteries it would probably run for weeks.
That doesn't even factor solar into the equation.

[OrangeCrush]

Originally Posted by Eric 26 Argo

When we were restoring our 1977 Airstream Argosy, we had to make a choice on what type of unit to put in because the PO had thrown out the old unit. Having experience with absorption fridges we opted for a 12V compressor unit. Love it! We have a 7.0 cubic foot unit, and it pulls 4 amps when running and since it cycles about twice an hour it is only pulling about 2amp hours of power. With our 100amp lead acid batter it will run about 4 days before shutting off for low power. It has built in protection to prevent it from damaging the motor. It can't completely drain a lead acid battery. With a lithium battery it would run several more days, and with 4 lithium batteries it would probably run for weeks.
That doesn't even factor solar into the equation.

Your numbers don't add up. Even at a low 2Ah average, which is about 0.5Ah lower than most reports, you would still chew through 50% discharge on a 100Ah flooded battery in 1 day. With 2 flooded batteries you would get maybe 2 days, and that is just running the fridge.

[field & stream]

Originally Posted by OrangeCrush

Your numbers don't add up. Even at a low 2Ah average, which is about 0.5Ah lower than most reports, you would still chew through 50% discharge on a 100Ah flooded battery in 1 day. With 2 flooded batteries you would get maybe 2 days, and that is just running the fridge.

Yes. And in addition the estimate that “with four lithium batteries it would probably run for weeks” is equally flawed. The fridge consumes 50Ah per day all by itself, which would drain four 100Ah lithium batteries in eight days or less. With other electrical usage in the trailer one would be lucky to last five days.

[carl2591]

We had a 2005 RM 3862 LP/120v refrigerator experience the yellow puddle of death recently.

Our first reaction was to figure out what to do to with all the food that was slowing getting warmer. so we got the old one out, went to walmart to get a two door large dorm size 120V unit put it in the opening and put the food in.

So next to get new or what unit or what.. there are the LP unit Amish cooling kits you can get adn replace the bad stuff or look at the new 12v unit from dometic.. why dometic.. there seem to be a lot of stories about them from the year for sure and they have been doing a good job..

So we called the usual,, camping world, not in stock, local RV supply store , not in stock,, Seem NO one keep stock any more. One place did have a unit whos name escapes me now but in doing some looking the comments were not all positive like the dometic..

At camping world the Dometic DMC4101 run 1600 with 100 shipping to home but was going to take 15 days.. Happend to see it on amazon and they had a 4 day shipping date at same price so we gave that a try.. Well 4 days turned into 14 day,, AMAZON lied, and we finally get it installed.

I fits right in the existing 8 cu ft space but give 10 CF space,, YEAH... I used the solar prewire 10 ga to provide additional volts to system with the 12 ga..

amp draw was around 6.5 up to 9 at times during startup cooldown.. now its usually around 6 amps unless it in defrost mode then it goes to 12 amps for a bit..

I have 230 ah lithium with 560 on roof to MPPT 20 amp,, I know too small,,, charger which is doing great job..

the items to think about is blocking the air flow from louvered door and vent on roof.. I used some seat foam to block on top vent and some 1" thick sheet foam from Joann to fill the lower door to block the cold air flow.
when you install there are two metal brackets one on top and one on bottom both with slots to allow for airflow so no reason not to block them..

will be putting out a full video on rivetingjourney.com soon..

we had to switch the door from right to left which was a bear.. need to be able to order left or right hinge to prevent that.

[nwdave]

That’s one of my to do on my list. I call the factory yesterday abd the customer service gentleman was very concerned about how difficult this job can be. I understand but I love a challenge. Can anyone give me some pointers on their own experience? Thanks. Ps: I’m going true my water system as this unit sit in a building for 15 years.

[carl2591]

can you change the oil in your truck, change the spark plugs for instance.. then you CAN do this.. it all about time, and some help.. I with my wife did ours in 3 hrs overall..

you need a plug for the LP line and maybe some 12 ga wire to extend the wire a bit.. I used butt splice and ring terminals on the other end.. If you can,, I would suggest running a 10 ga wire from main elec breakers back.. I used the solar wire they put in which is yellow and green.. (yellow sun or plus and green for ground or Neg.) that gives you 1/2 volt more power..

it no harder that removing the LP type.. I am working on video we did of installing in 2005 classic last month. it more in depth on the install..

Originally Posted by nwdave

That’s one of my to do on my list. I call the factory yesterday abd the customer service gentleman was very concerned about how difficult this job can be. I understand but I love a challenge. Can anyone give me some pointers on their own experience? Thanks. Ps: I’m going true my water system as this unit sit in a building for 15 years.

[rosmuck3]

Thank you for sharing your experiences with this fridge swap!
If you all post videos about the installs, please share here.

Thanks.