How do YOU utilize your little fridge

[Vista]

I am posting this specifically in the light trailer section to get responses from folks who have a similar fridge to me: Namely, a tiny 2 way Dometic with internal freezer compartment.

I want to know how you USE your fridge. Let me add a few notes:

Pre-cooling is a must of course, but frankly after traveling, it seems a lot of my pre cooling is probably lost. I am in the desert. It is hot. Thats how it is. It does not seem to keep cool while traveling, for whatever reason. (gas goes out, just too hot, who knows).

But, my fridge actually works, near as I can tell, properly. The freezer compartment will hold ice. I have a hang thermometer that shows well under freezing in there. If left for 8 hours or so, it seems the fridge compartment gets to 36-37 when empty pretty reliably. I just checked now, and it is happy and 36.

But, the fridge seems super sensitive to temp swings, whether from adding food or just opening the door. Again, I understand this is somewhat the nature of the beast ... but it has me hesitant to put perishables in there, and is inconvenient to have to wait until the next day to do so, especially if I will be traveling again soon thereafter. Plus, I have opened the door sometimes to see my thermo reading well over 40 ...

So ... how do YOU use your fridge? Drinks only? Wait a day before putting perishables in? Not concerned?

Disclosures: I know not to overload it. I know I could add a small fan to even out and improve performance. I am more curious how other people USE the fridge, especially if they are on a trip that has them moving every couple days.

Thanks .. hope it makes sense.

[brwarrior]

I currently store my trailer on a friend's parents' property. I usually leave from work on Friday afternoon. So...

Wednesday I gather up non-perishable food, clothes and other stuff and take it to the trailer. I also take ice blocks. I use the 2 lb equivalent blue ice packs. 4 will fit in the freezer. One or two i. The fridge along with 3 half gallon milk or juice jugs.

Thursday I pick up the trailer. I bring along the perishable foods. I stock the fridge (freezer I'll take a pint of ice cream sometimes.) I usually keep a couple ice packs in there.

This weekend I actually used the fridge for canned soda. It worked well. Including turning one can into a slushy. Usually I'd bring along a small cooler and I swap the ice packs between the cooler and freezer. I will make ice in the freezer. I have the small camco ice trays. I can still keep ice packs in the freezer, but not much room for the ice cream too. I could probably play tetris and make that work.

You need to keep the fridge as full as you can, but still leaving room for airflow. I use one of the blue Valterra cube fans. If there's roo. I keep ice packs/jugs in there. The fridge regularly hits 28 overnight for me. The fridges are only good for 50, maybe 60 degrees under ambient. So at 100 it starts getting dicey. I really wish more trailers would make the move to DC compressors.

Also to note I'm a solo traveler so I'm not trying to manage food for a family. My buddy (family of 4) has a 174BH and they bring a big 100qt Igloo. Im headed 1000 miles in 2 weeks to camp with them. I think I'll be bring an ice chest. Pack the fridge with drinks and other non-perishable stuff just to keep it cold for the 2 day trip.

[TaftCoach]

When I was dealing with the smaller fridge in my pop up we used the fridge for things we wanted to stay cold and dry and an ice chest for stuff that could be cold and wet.

[DocBrown]

When we had a small fridge we found it worked better when packed.

Any reason you would not use the propane on longer trips?

[WeRJuliian]

WE find it helpful to pre-freeze some gallon or half-gallon jugs of water, and put them in the fridge for the pre-cooling period, it drops the temperature faster, and, once they are taken out and thawed, we have jugs of drinking water.

[RogerR]

I plug in the trailer a couple of days ahead and start the cool down. In 24 hours the freezer is at freezing or lower and the bottom is cool. I have a battery fridge fan running then and for my whole trip. 2 D cells last for a week or more. When we are about ready we put in the cold stuff from the house and 2 or three freeze packs in the freezer but we rarely take frozen food. We also have an ice chest in the car with 2 or 3 freeze packs. Every day we switch them and they keep drinks and picnic stuff plus meltable snack cool in the car. We switch to LP and rarely switch back unless we stop for several days. LP is cheap and lasts a long time.

[Boooker]

Like most folks we start the fridge about 24-36 hours before a trip. Our freezer stays frozen all the time - no worries there. The fridge portion swings temps same as everyone else says. It is just us two so we try and be both simple and intelligent when planning food. We just got back from a 9 day excursion from central PA to Colorado and back. 4 nights in Colorado and 2 nights on the road each way going and coming back. It was over 94 degrees every day we were out.

We have a Coleman 5 day cooler we kept drinks and highly perishable items in such as milk and cheese. 10lb bag of ice each night kept things really chilled. We took frozen burger patties, hot dogs and steak, they stayed frozen until the day we used them.

Fruit and condiments did well in the fridge. and we had no spoilage.

it is seemingly an art form, have fun finding your own system.

[Kim Gass]

Just plug it in the day before. We keep a 2 liter bottle of water frozen in the fridge at home so we just add it to the fridge while it cools. Never had an issue of spoilage. We have had food freeze. We have learned not to keep eggs by the fins.
We don't live in the desert and yet have even this year to have 90 degrees but we have traveled in the desert. Keeping fridge full seems to help keep it cold and never never peek.. Just like you are supposed to do in a power outage.

We don't keep the fridge on during transit as the soda bottle seems to cool quite nicely.

Everyone is going to have a different system. I don't mind losing what freezer room I have to an ice container as I don't rely on frozen food.

We have had five cross country trips with this system.

[SouthCo]

I assume your talking about the little single door fridge some units have in an external compartment and not the main fridge inside? Our first camper had one but not the second. We always used it for drinks only. Like water and things that didn’t matter how cold they stayed. Just like the main fridge we’d turn it on a day or so before a trip and just load it with cold drinks. Then once on site, it wouldn’t take long to be cold again...

[Kim Gass]

Originally Posted by SouthCo

I assume your talking about the little single door fridge some units have in an external compartment and not the main fridge inside? Our first camper had one but not the second. We always used it for drinks only. Like water and things that didn’t matter how cold they stayed. Just like the main fridge we’d turn it on a day or so before a trip and just load it with cold drinks. Then once on site, it wouldn’t take long to be cold again...

Second fridge? Not on the little units. We have one fridge.. a 2.7 cu foot Norcold. Yes it is a single door. It is in the kitchen inside.

[Bob K]

2015 185RB, Norcold N305 2-Way Refrigerator

We've really struggled with this fridge, too. Very disappointing quality and technology. Can't say I've gotten it figured out yet, but here's what we've tried so far.

• Trying to keep it cool while underway is a nightmare. We can't keep the propane lit consistently. Even if we do keep it lit for longer periods of time (say, several hours), the fridge temp still rises into the 60s. Even hit 70 once with 95° outdoor temps after a few hours.
• We've tried using ice packs in the fridge area and stuffing the freezer full of ice. Heck, we even bought 10 pounds of dry ice once. It wasn't sufficient to keep the fridge in the low 40s or below when the outside temps climbed into the 90s while underway.
• Bought the little Camco fridge fan. I'd say it helps only marginally to keep fridge temps lower.
• Installed cooling fans in the exterior refrigerator bay.
• All maintenance checks and cleaning accomplished.

The freezer does seem to get extremely cold after sitting on propane or 120v for a day or so. I've seen mine down to about -10°F. Temp 1 is the freezer. Temp 2 is the fridge.


The problem is getting this cold from the freezer circulated throughout the refrigerator. Even when packed with thermal mass like raw ice or ice packs, the freezer just won't absorb heat fast enough or long enough to keep the fridge area cool.

We turn ours on about 24 hours before departure. Then we load our fridge with all normal foods and drink: dairy, bottled drinks, meats, veggies, etc. We try to position things for adequate convection cooling. We've only kept ice in the freezer. Then we try to keep the propane lit while underway, stopping every couple hours to check and relight as necessary. We switch to 120v right away if we're headed to a place with shore power.

Next steps are:

• See if the N305 can be converted to add 12V in order to use electric while underway.
• Put a better DC-powered fan inside the fridge that blows directly on or in the freezer.

[SouthCo]

Originally Posted by Kim Gass

Second fridge? Not on the little units. We have one fridge.. a 2.7 cu foot Norcold. Yes it is a single door. It is in the kitchen inside.

Oh, I think I need to stop posting lol. Second time this week I’ve responded and was mistaken. I think if that was my main fridge it would still be drinks only and a cooler with ice for perishables... maybe once in a site and plugged in transfer a few perishables to the fridge...

[Vista]

I do appreciate each and every response in the thread, good stuff.

But guys, I gotta tell some of ya, 104 (like today) is not the same as "hit 90s".

I am going to be honest, I can perform whatever mods, tweaks, and pre-cools I want, that fridge compartment is not going to reliably be under 40 for a large part of the day.

[Vista]

Originally Posted by Boooker

Like most folks we start the fridge about 24-36 hours before a trip. Our freezer stays frozen all the time - no worries there. The fridge portion swings temps same as everyone else says. It is just us two so we try and be both simple and intelligent when planning food. We just got back from a 9 day excursion from central PA to Colorado and back. 4 nights in Colorado and 2 nights on the road each way going and coming back. It was over 94 degrees every day we were out.

We have a Coleman 5 day cooler we kept drinks and highly perishable items in such as milk and cheese. 10lb bag of ice each night kept things really chilled. We took frozen burger patties, hot dogs and steak, they stayed frozen until the day we used them.

Fruit and condiments did well in the fridge. and we had no spoilage.

it is seemingly an art form, have fun finding your own system.

So Boooooooker, you have described pretty much what I have settled on for now. I use a Coleman Maxcold Marine as well, and it does as good as possible for a non roto molded cooler.

[Gesper]

We have a small refrigerator outside on our trailer. We keep our water and pop in there so we can get something to drink with out opening the trailer, especially with our grandkids constantly in it. Love it

[Newbieowner61]

I have a dematic in our RV and packed both the fridge and freezer and have no problems so far on 4 and 3 day trips. Next trip is a 6 day trip to Tahquanemon Falls. We will see how it goes.

[sullivanclan]

One of the best things I have installed in two previous RV's fridge is a fan behind the unit near the coils. Huge difference. Just Google them. Inexpensive and easy install.

[GABob]

We use the little blue fan in the fridge to circulate the air when in use, seems to help. We just started running a line out to plug in (with a 15A/30A adapter available at WalMart) to start the fridge cooling down the night before we leave. We also freeze a ton of regular water bottles to pack in the freezer as well as the fridge to keep things cool during travel (wifey doesn't like the propane option). Seems to work well enough.

[kluza2786]

If you're talking about the little electric fridge that's in the front pass-through storage compartment - I took it out. As far as I was concerned it was pretty much useless since it's just my wife and I normally at the campground. The first few times we used the TT I put some bottled water in it, but decided that I'd rather have some additional storage area for other items. If it had been a 2-way or 3-way that could be kept cold going down the road, I'd have probably left it in there, but to have something that only worked when hooked to electric didn't seem like a good use of space.

[us71na]

We start our fridge at least 24 hours in advance so it starts to cool. The freezer cools very quickly and keeps stuff frozen for as long as we are camping.

I added a remote reading thermometer inside the fridge compartment so I can monitor the temperature.

We try not to add anything when we are at home that isn't already cold.

I've found it helps to park so the fridge side faces north where the sun can't get on the side of the trailer.

Ours cools better on propane than on electric.

We try to keep the door open for as short a time as possible.

I recently added a 3" fan under the second shelf to blow air around. This has reduced the temperature swings.