Refrigerator

[Rroberts3421]

Full side LG refrigerator, Will it stay cool during transport with propane and being plugged into the 7 prong connection at the truck.

[CHICKDOE]

LG is a residential refrigerator that runs on 110 vac power, same as in a house. There should be an inverter installed to convert your 12 vdc battery power to 110 vac power needed to run the refrigerator. Whether it will run while towing primarily depends on your battery capacity.

[richp]

Hi,

The short answer is that it will not operate on propane and 12 volts from the truck plug.

FWIW.

Rich Phillips

[formerFR]

I suppose you're meaning full 'size' residential LG fridge, which plugs into a 120v outlet?

[Flybob]

Your fridge runs only on 120VAC. While you are traveling or anytime you are not connected to shore power, it will run on the 120VAC output from your inverter. Note that the inverter is drawing power from your 12V batteries so there is a finite amount of time you can run on inverter. This will be determined by the type, number and state of charge of the batteries. The 12V aux line from your TV will provide a very small amount of current to the 12V system in the RV, however because of the length and gauge of the wire in the TV you will most likely not be able to keep up with the demand when the fridge is on so technically the answer to your question is no.

[emoney]

Yup, it’s a “one way fridge” I’m afraid. Plugged in or off

[CHICKDOE]

i'll expand a bit further. we were also new to this a couple of years ago and had questions about how to run the residential refrigerator. as stated this type of refrigerator only works on 110 vac electrical power (they type you have in your house). there are typically three ways to get this power into a rv: the shore power cord connected to a power pedestal, an external generator with the shore power cord plugged into it or an internal generator with a transfer switch, or and inverter. we don't know if you have a generator or not but there is almost certainly an inverter installed to provide power to the refrigerator.

the inverter takes power from the 12 vdc batteries and changes it to 110 vac power that the refrigerator needs. if you had unlimited battery power you could run the refrigerator through the inverter without any problems.

but none of us have unlimited battery capacity. read the posts here and you will find all kinds of discussion about how to manage battery power.

the question about whether the residential refrigerator will run while towing. you have to have your inverter on and it will draw power from the batteries and use to to run the refrigerator. so yes the refrigerator will run. at least for a while until the batteries get discharged and the inverter shuts down due to low battery voltage. you will get a minimal charge through the 7 pin connector that will help the batteries a bit, but not enough to run the inverter by itself. we cannot say if this will work for you. obviously the larger battery capacity you have the longer the refrigerator will run. how long you tow will have an effect. towing two hours requires less battery capacity than going ten hours. it also matters whether you refrigerator has been cooled down prior to towing. if it is already cool it takes less energy to keep it cool than it does to initially cool it down.
nobody can tell you how it will work in your case. you'll have to give it a try and see what you get. in our case we only have a couple of group 27 batteries and they have kept the already cold refrigerator running during our longest day of towing. when doing this you have to ensure that your batteries are fully charged.

it is the first day out that has the problems. we store our trailer at a place without electricity available and we cannot bring the trailer to our house. so it is not cold whenever we start a trip. we do however have an on board generator. so we start the generator as soon as we arrive at the trailer to start loading it and hooking up. we turn the generator off and go. we stop every couple of hours and at each stop i check to ensure that the inverter is still running and the refrigerator is still running. if we stop for any length of time i turn the generator on and let it do whatever battery recharging it can. we have found that the freezer compartment will reach freezing temperature in about 2 - 3 hours. it takes a couple more to get down to the final desired temperature. the refrigerator section takes a while longer. we generally leave with the refrigerator and freezer pretty empty and we let it cool down during our first day of towing by the time we get to our destination is it cold and we then buy whatever we need. i have at times also towed with the generator running in order to recharge batteries and run the refrigerator.

one other comment. we learned that we cannot run the refrigerator overnight solely on the batteries we have. that was when we were still learning. perhaps we should try again now that we have much more knowledge of how things work.

sorry this go so long winded, but we were right where you are not so long ago. you'll have to give it a try and find you how yours reacts.

[formerFR]

if you get your fridge down to temp before you leave, and you have fully charged house batteries when you do, the inverter should have little problem providing battery power during your trip... it's doubtful that even if you had a very long day of driving, that your fridge would not be at a good temp, even if the batteries were too low - it's a big cooler!

[tomkatb]

Do the math.

Refrigerator Watts/12.5 + 15%. =. Amps per hour.

See how many each of your batteries supply. Only 50% of the total or you damage the battery.

That tells you how long you can run.

Really depends on outside temp.

Good advice. Pre cool everything.

Plug in every night. Do not open it.

[jimla]

First and foremost, shame on dealer. Tech should have went over everything about TT when you did your walkthrough with him. We have the same ref., I think. Ours is the double door with freezer on the bottom. The tech explained why the TT had 2 batteries and that they were paralleled to provide 12 volts to converter. Yes they work well while travelling. Tech did mention pre-cooling before starting trip.

[tomkatb]

I do not think technicians explain the residential fridge thing.

I believe in most cases you have to plug in after .24 hours unless you have lots of batteries. Or a generator.

I thought being able to boondock now and then without a generator was right for us.