12V Fridge or Residential Fridge: Which is Better

[dryfly]

Dometic & Norcold have no one but themselves to blame for the upcoming reduction in their 2 way Refrig products. Most overpriced, unreliable, un repairable, over engineered, finicky crap ever foisted on the RV consumer.

Ammonia based refrigeration has been around 100 years and these companies still can’t deliver or service a quality product.

Nobody could have said it better! I do believe the ones produced 20 years ago cooled better than recent ones. Seems they have gone out of their way to make them inferior. Hopefully the new 12vdc fridges are a success..

[Bamaman]

Dometic & Norcold have no one but themselves to blame for the upcoming reduction in their 2 way Refrig products. Most overpriced, unreliable, un repairable, over engineered, finicky crap ever foisted on the RV consumer.

Ammonia based refrigeration has been around 100 years and these companies still can’t deliver or service a quality product.

The biggest problem with the ammonia systems is that they sweat water, and they're not designed to drain the water efficiently. The coils rust out. It's almost like they're designed to be rebuilt every 10 years of use. And they can be rebuilt many times. They're all very expensive to purchase--$1,100 to $1500.

Thankfully we have a RV refrigeration dealership close to us. They rebuild all brands.

[my12by60]

OP here. I am still reading and checking around on these 12v options. The Everchill seems to get better reviews than the GE, but the Everchill is $1300 vs. the GE at $875 (including extra freight charge). As far as I have found, both the Everchill and GE are made in China and have similar power consumption.

https://www.recpro.com/rv-refrigerat...ainless-steel/

This recpro unit is apparently an Everchill marketed as a recpro brand.

Here is the GE from Camping World:

https://www.campingworld.com/ge-9.8-...B&gclsrc=aw.ds

[Jims94vmx]

Just noticed a nice 16cu french style. 1st one I have seen that large. I have the double door dometic and looks to fit. Something to keep in mind....

[Linndoren]

Is there any way to put a 12v compressor on the GE? If you could mod the residential to 12v wouldn't that be the best of both worlds? I don’t know if this can be done but it may be an option you could look into.

[Hoopy Frood]

I don't know the name of the company, but there is one that will convert a regular RV fridge to a compressor-type.

[mostad]

We just bought a used 2017 29RS that came with the standard 8 cu ft 2-way fridge that GD was using in 2017. Our prior fifth wheel (2007 Cedar Creek) had an Amana residential fridge with a dedicated inverter for the fridge only (mounted in front compartment). We had 4, 6-volt batteries and an Onan 5500 gas generator. The residential Amana worked great for 9 years without a single service issue. So we are fans of the residential fridge option. We love the larger interior space, quicker cool down, auto defrost, extra safety (no gas burning) and reliability.

So we are thinking of switching out the 2-way for either a residential + inverter set-up or going with one of the new 12V options that are out there. This GE 12V on sale at Camping World seems like a nice deal for only $800:

https://www.campingworld.com/ge-9.8-...E&gclsrc=aw.ds

As far as I can tell from my reading, the upside of the 12V fridges is that they don't require an inverter to be running all the time. The negative is that most? all? of the 12V models don't have auto defrost like a residential fridge. Also, I see more than a few folks reporting problems with their 12V fridge. Some of the 12V issues seem to relate to inadequate wire gauge between the fridge and 12V system.

What are the thoughts from you folks as to which direction is preferred: 12V or residential?

I know some will be tempted to mention that 2-way is the way to go. But since we have already lived with residential and loved it, I don't see us wanting to return to the 2-way fridge. Thanks for any comments.

Also, is the Reflection 150 door width from 2017 wide enough to take the existing fridge out without any drama?

I went thru something very similar, I however replaced the guts of my RV fridge with the JC refrigeration compressor system but in 120 volts. I did this because of the 12 volt wiring was to small and my fridge is in the slide out. I put in a 800 watt inverter and isolated the 120 volt fridge circuit so that was the only circuit running off the inverter.

Fast forward about a year and I’m now full time RVing and I noticed my Norcold would go into a shut down mode every 24 to 48 hours and I was seeing temps in the fridge reach 50 degrees. Apparently it’s normal for these units to do this. Well I did not like it, I also wanted self defrosting. So I swapped out the RV fridge with a Frigidaire 13.9 cubic foot residential refrigerator. This fridge is 1.9 cubic foot bigger but took less space, so I had to put in some trim pieces to fill the gaps. Also the bottom feet/rollers hung out past the bottom of the floor and I needed to come up with something for them to sit on. I ended up with some 4x4 post hangers, painted them and screwed them down. The fridge is screwed down in the back and one through the right roller mount into the hanger I installed.

All in all I’m much happier with this fridge, I do however have 1050 watts of solar and 400 amp hours of lithium battery storage. So boon-docking shouldn’t be an issue.

Something I noticed without the 12 volt fans on the cooling fins and the fans inside the fridge the new one uses less watts running off the inverter then the RV one did after I converted it to 120 volts.

[Overtaxed]

Dometic & Norcold have no one but themselves to blame for the upcoming reduction in their 2 way Refrig products. Most overpriced, unreliable, un repairable, over engineered, finicky crap ever foisted on the RV consumer.

Ammonia based refrigeration has been around 100 years and these companies still can’t deliver or service a quality product.

When one of the fans failed on my 2018, taking all the food in the fridge with it (because, of course, let's wire the 3 fans in such a way that if one dies, it'll take out the whole fridge), digging into the back of that device was honestly laughable. It looks like a kids high school science project. Wires run here and there. Fans on z-clips. All the fans are basically computer fans, the 2018, which is in my unit, is a 4,000 dollar refrigerator. 4000 dollars! That's getting into low end build in/custom home fridges. There are 3 fans on the back of that fridge (again, computer fans) so, for 4,000 dollars, I'm sure they are good quality, right? Especially since changing them could be a day's long task depending on the mounting. Nope, the cheapest computer fans on the planet. When the best computer fan you can buy (a Noctua) costs about 40 bucks, retail.

So, yeah, they deserve to take it on the chin, no question about it. Wildly overpriced for what you get. If I knew then what I know now, I could have saved the ~2K option price and gone with a residential. Live and learn, I guess. I'm on the list for a refer kit from the Amish to install on mind, turning in into a compressor based fridge vs heated.

Never again. I can tell you that much, never again.

[fez111]

OK...Our two cents... Driving from Michigan to Florida in winter and back each spring is usually a two day trip. We have always and always will drive with the fridge on propane. I understand that the tow vehicle can keep the batteries charged and the fridge cold, but we usually spend at least one night in a rest area or a truck stop. Would a residential fridge make it through, probably so. But, since we bought our 2016 Solitude we have broken down three times: Once when the oil cooler died, once when our turbo charger blew the intercooler, and once when an injector leak caused a cracked head (expensive, that one!). Not one time did we have to worry about food going bad. Then there was the near tornado in a Michigan State park. The power was out for 24 hours before our fridge started beeping because our single 12 volt battery was dying. I would really like to have hard ice cream every night, but not at the expense of worrying about battery life. The generator is a completely different story, except for the neighbors complaining about the noise... OK, 3 cents worth...

[my12by60]

I went thru something very similar, I however replaced the guts of my RV fridge with the JC refrigeration compressor system but in 120 volts. I did this because of the 12 volt wiring was to small and my fridge is in the slide out. I put in a 800 watt inverter and isolated the 120 volt fridge circuit so that was the only circuit running off the inverter.

Fast forward about a year and I’m now full time RVing and I noticed my Norcold would go into a shut down mode every 24 to 48 hours and I was seeing temps in the fridge reach 50 degrees. Apparently it’s normal for these units to do this. Well I did not like it, I also wanted self defrosting. So I swapped out the RV fridge with a Frigidaire 13.9 cubic foot residential refrigerator. This fridge is 1.9 cubic foot bigger but took less space, so I had to put in some trim pieces to fill the gaps. Also the bottom feet/rollers hung out past the bottom of the floor and I needed to come up with something for them to sit on. I ended up with some 4x4 post hangers, painted them and screwed them down. The fridge is screwed down in the back and one through the right roller mount into the hanger I installed.

All in all I’m much happier with this fridge, I do however have 1050 watts of solar and 400 amp hours of lithium battery storage. So boon-docking shouldn’t be an issue.

Something I noticed without the 12 volt fans on the cooling fins and the fans inside the fridge the new one uses less watts running off the inverter then the RV one did after I converted it to 120 volts.

So you hit on what I was asking about. That is the 12v wire being too small. Did JC say that running a new 12v was a big project with the fridge being in the slide? If so, then I may need to look at a residential myself instead of a 12v since the 120v plug is already in place in the slide. We are also considering getting either 200 or 400 amp hours of lithium batteries, an inverter/charger, and the small Honda generator.