12 volt refrigerator

[salsa]

MY daughter is thinking of buying a 2021 Forest River RV Cherokee Wolf Pup 16BHS trailer. She does a lot of dry camping. The trailer comes with a (vibration smart 12 volt refrigerator). Are these refrigerator good for dry camping? The refrigerator does not use LP.

[Jagiven]

I'm not farmilar with that particular refrigerator, and was unable to fine the manual. I have looked at a similar sized Furrion and Norcold. For dry camping I would NOT recommend a 12 volt only frig, unless your daughter invests in a larger battery bank, solar and probably a generator.

A Norcold 12v frig, consumes between 5 and 8 amp hours. Now it won't run 100% of the time once it is cooled off. So if it is on 50% of the time it will draw 2.5 to 4 amps every hour. If she has a single cheap 80 amp hr oem battery. She will get between 10 and 16 hours of run time before the battery is depleted. That does not consider power consumption use pf other items such as any lights, slide outs awnings, and various parasite power drains.

So multiple batteries, and a way to continually recharge them will be required.

For boondocking I would strongly recommend a dual duel LP/120v electric. It sips just a tiny amount of gas and 12 volt controller.

[Pickledill]

Kind of agree with last post if trailer remains stock. A couple of 6 volt g.c. batteries will give you about 100 usable amp/hrs. So you will need to run generator a couple of hrs in morning and evening to keep batteries up. Or add solar, yet you will still need a small generator for those cloudy days. Absorption fridge will use next to nothing to run control board. To dry camp for a weekend you could easily get by with battery upgrade, longer will require charging of some type.

[Highlander73]

I hate to highjack the post but we just purchased a Jayco 24rl with a 2-way fridge and are considering swapping for a 12volt. We plan to run on 2 battleborn lithium batts. Combined will give us 200amp hrs. We intend to do a lot of boondocking. The 12volt fridge gets a lot of hype being more efficient but have no experience. Would this be a good set up!

[RogerR]

We had the three way (12, 120, LP) and it would kill the battery on the trailer on a long days travel. The car and trailer wiring just did not carry enough voltage from the car to keep the battery up. Finally found that a couple of freeze packs would freeze at night and hold the cold in the day. Now we just run with LP on switch to 120 if we are going to stay more than one night.
In short, with LP working so well, why go to 12 volt. The 12 volt is just an LP/120 volt unit with a 12 volt heating element.

[deepsea5]

Originally Posted by RogerR

We had the three way (12, 120, LP) and it would kill the battery on the trailer on a long days travel. The car and trailer wiring just did not carry enough voltage from the car to keep the battery up. Finally found that a couple of freeze packs would freeze at night and hold the cold in the day. Now we just run with LP on switch to 120 if we are going to stay more than one night.
In short, with LP working so well, why go to 12 volt. The 12 volt is just an LP/120 volt unit with a 12 volt heating element.

Some of the new 12 Volt refrigerators are compressor style (Danfoss/SECOP compressor) vs adsorption style. Compressor refrigerators draw less Amperage than the adsorption type running a 12 Volt heat strip.
The compressor refrigerators cannot be run on propane (unless your generator is propane fired).

[Pickledill]

Highlander 73, its an expensive setup your proposing to essentially do what the 2 way absorption fridge that you already have, will accomplish.

[Jagiven]

Originally Posted by Highlander73

I hate to highjack the post but we just purchased a Jayco 24rl with a 2-way fridge and are considering swapping for a 12volt. We plan to run on 2 battleborn lithium batts. Combined will give us 200amp hrs. We intend to do a lot of boondocking. The 12volt fridge gets a lot of hype being more efficient but have no experience. Would this be a good set up!

It is a lot of money to make that change. I am not convinced it is a good idea yet. The 2way LP option take almost no 12volt power to run. On my old cheap dual purpose battery (80 amp hour??), being conservative I could boondock for 4-5 nights on a single charge (no solar/generator). Where as all of the 12V frigs I have looked into so far, I would fully deplete that old battery in less than 12 hours. With a 2 way frig, with a few lithium batteries I could probably go for a few weeks, with no recharge, being a bit conservative with lights and 12V fans I suspect. With a 12V frig with a single 100 amp lithium, I doubt you could make it a full 48 hours, unless you were being ultra conservative with all other power consumptions. Two batteries, I would expect you can be comfortable all weekend. I think I would rather spend the $$ on solar.

[Duke4857]

If you boondock, propane/electric would be best. A propane frig might be a higher cost, you will not regret it.

[SloPoke]

I did a little research... Check this out: it appears to be the same unit, different labels. https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/D1Sat4JzRiS.pdf

[Highlander73]

I have the same thought in going 12v for a fridge. There are several YouTube vids where peeps have tested them out and they seem to be very efficient with little amp hours used.

[dlgerald]

I dont have all the details buy my son and his wife bought a new TT a few months ago. He didnt realize it but it came with a DANFOSS type frig! They have used the trailer several times and are VERY HAPPY with the frig. If and when my lp/elec frig konks out, I will most likely replace it with the DANFOSS type!

[rgolding]

Looked at a Travel Trailer with a MagicChef 12 volt refrigerator. Unit comes with a large solar panel on the roof and seems like a pretty good setup. It also comes with a pair of Deep Cycle Batteries. Opinions?