Traveling with residential refrigerator

**wjpatter** · 10-25-2020, 10:00 AM

I'm trying to evaluate the pros and cons of a residential refrigerator. I've always had the electric/propane and would like the cooling power of the residential. The GD sales lady was brutally honest. Before sales, she was in parts. The largest part ordered was the refrigerator inverter.

**orbiker** · 10-25-2020, 10:35 AM

Originally Posted by wjpatter

I'm trying to evaluate the pros and cons of a residential refrigerator. I've always had the electric/propane and would like the cooling power of the residential. The GD sales lady was brutally honest. Before sales, she was in parts. The largest part ordered was the refrigerator inverter.

Our Solitude had a bad inverter for the residential refrigerator at the PDI. I had GD send a new one to me.

Traveling is no big deal because the truck will be putting some power back into the battery / batteries.

Our rig will consume almost 100 AH overnight with phantom draws, furnace and the frig.
KEN

**Redapple63** · 10-25-2020, 11:02 AM

Here is the low down on different styles of refrigerators. It all.bpils down to usage.

How you use your rv, trailer or fifth wheel.

If you dry camp or boondock, a residential fridge may present more of a challenge to be effective for you, while if you go from full hookups to fill hookups, it may be a much easier transition.

Installation also provides a bit of a challenge as there may be some internal modification to the box the fridge lives in.

Residential refrigerators need 110v to operate, so if this becomes your choice, you will need an inverter and enough battery to meet that application, which is either going from one location to another or full time.

You may want to include a way to keep the batteries charged if you boondock with includes some kind of solar, more money.

Lots of hard choices, and, each comes with additional choices that could complicate a decision.

For us, we do a fair amount of dry camping, so we have made the choice to keep our two way fridge, it works for us.

Recently, there have been new alternatives which include 12dc compressor style conversions, and these do provide a simpler set of options, but it does mean you will need to beef up your batteries and potentially solar, but may be saved from potential interior modifications requied with a res unit.

Good Luck!