We hate our RV refrigerator

[IDguy]

In 50 years of RVing with propane/electric fridges only had one problem requiring maintenance. It was expensive but far less than replacing fridge. May have been Dometic or the other one.

Go to a local RV maintenance shop…not dealer or Camping World.

[RedRoverComeOver]

So far so good with Magic Chef 12V in Geo Pro G16BH.

I leave the fridge and freezer doors open when not in use so that way we don't get that stale fridge stench. Have small thermometers in each compartment and don't use any of those fans.

The last time I loaded for a trip the starting temperature was 68° F. Went from 0 (off) to max and in 15 minutes the freezer was already at 38° and fridge at 55°. An hour and half after turning on, the freezer was at -4° and fridge at 43°. Two hours passed and the freezer slowly went down to -7° and fridge at 36°.

I adjusted to a little under the 5 setting and keeps the fridge under 40°. Not really worried about the freezer and wish there was a separate setting to keep it off since that would save some power.

Looking at my battery level and after about 15 minutes of having the fridge blasting away, it was at 70%. After about an hour and a half it was up to 85% thanks to solar.

[dieseldodge]

I'm feeling a bit better about things now. After looking things over and trying to make some sense of it, I came to the conclusion that the way our Dometic was installed pretty much sucked, thus causing the poor performance. Why Dometic doesn't do something about these obviously inadequate installations is a mystery to me. We weren't cursing Flaggstaff (at first) for our poor refer performance. We felt our Dometic unit was garbage.

I ended up mounting two 200MM fans to the upper vent grill (after removing a piece of wood paneling that Flaggstaff installed. apparently in an effort to help direct the air movement up to the heat sink). That said heat sink is literally at the very top of the upper vent, making air circulation to it very difficult.

With the new, large fans running and yes less food inside the refer, it is doing......okay now. It seems to me that if the manufacturers want to continue mounting refers on slides they need to MAN-UP and come up with a REAL solution to this serious problem. PS....they might also stop putting the stove and refer side by side.