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Old 05-06-2017, 09:51 AM   #1
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Electric fridge questions about cooling

I bought a 2017 Salem this spring and it has a larger than normal fridge that runs on electric only. The guy at the national rv told us that it would take about 12 hours to cool off.
I don't really have the option of plugging it in before we leave because I live in a townhouse. So my question is, can I turn it on while enroute to our destination and have it running in the battery power? I figured if I threw a couple frozen milk jugs inside it would help.
Anyone have any experience with this ?
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Old 05-06-2017, 09:55 AM   #2
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If you are running a residential frig then while traveling you will need to run it off your batteries thru the inverter assuming you have one. Lots of folks do that
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Old 05-06-2017, 10:12 AM   #3
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i have a residential reefer with the same problem. There is no power where I store my coach. It takes maybe 4 hours to cool down. However, in modern refrigerators the non-freezer section is cooled with a fan that blows cool air from the freezer. As a result, the freezer needs to get down to below 20 before the refrigerator section starts to cool. What I do is put everything in the freezer when I start out and then watch is cool and once the refrigerator starts to cool or the freezer gets to 40 or so, I move the stuff to the refrigerator section. Your inverter will do just find to keep it all running when the engine is running.
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Old 05-06-2017, 03:34 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ScottBrownstein View Post
i have a residential reefer with the same problem. There is no power where I store my coach. It takes maybe 4 hours to cool down. However, in modern refrigerators the non-freezer section is cooled with a fan that blows cool air from the freezer. As a result, the freezer needs to get down to below 20 before the refrigerator section starts to cool. What I do is put everything in the freezer when I start out and then watch is cool and once the refrigerator starts to cool or the freezer gets to 40 or so, I move the stuff to the refrigerator section. Your inverter will do just find to keep it all running when the engine is running.


Awesome. Thanks for that info! I'm going to put some frozen milk jugs into the freezer to speed it up and I can plug it in for a few hours in front of my house to get it going.
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Old 05-08-2017, 12:30 PM   #5
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Your Salem's residential fridge, once cold, will run intermittently to keep itself cold. Assuming your house batteries are fully charged and you have an active charge line from your tow vehicle, this should work without problems. Unfortunately, the same isn't true if the fridge isn't cold to start with.

When the fridge is warm, the cooling unit runs continuously, with a fairly large draw on the batteries. The charge circuit from your TV can't supply enough continuous current to match the drain rate so you'll be slowly discharging the batteries until the fridge comes to operating temperature and starts cycling. Depending on the length of your drive, you could end up arriving at your destination with nearly discharged batteries.

I'd strongly recommend measuring the current draw on the batteries when the fridge is drawing power to see how long the batteries will run the fridge. Also check the charge line from the TV to see how much current it will supply to the rig when you're towing it. You may want to install an additional larger wire charge line from the alternator to the rig, possibly bypassing the standard connector between them so you can effectively power the inverter from the TV's alternator.

Residential fridges are becoming more common in all types of RVs. I believe that the much lower cost than propane and the more "home like" cooling capacity are major factors driving this change. Don't forget that most current residential fridges, when full of food and cold, should be able to go at least 6 hours without warming up more than a few degrees if the doors are kept closed.

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Old 05-08-2017, 02:40 PM   #6
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we have a residential refrigerator and do not have power where we store it. I go over each month and runt he generator for a couple of hours and keep the batteries charged. I then completely disconnect the batteries. when we take a trip we turn the refrigerator inverter on, hook up, and go. our plan is to buy the refrigerated stuff either when we get to where we are going or somewhere along the way. every time we have stopped to put the refrigerated stuff in the refrigerator it has been cooled down just fine. I have also run over an hour or so before we leave and turned the generator on to get the refrigerator cooling. never had a problem. never melted the ice cream, and the beer is cold.
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Old 07-03-2017, 03:43 PM   #7
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We are looking at fifth wheels now. This seems to be a real problem if a warm electric fridge can't cool off from the vehicle power when traveling. (We have an F-350 with a heavy-duty oversized alternator) The storage lot we use has no power and we can't get the fifth wheel to our house. It nearly sounds as if power where it is stored or a $4k generator is a requirement to cool it down.
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