Another Norcold story

[terry735001]

Originally Posted by StevenNSteph

PLEASE stop the unfounded fear-mongering hyperbole.

It's a shame that anyone loses a coach to fire but from what you posted we have no idea what started the fire. Guessing that it was a rupturing of the coolant lines is specious at this point. The more you investigate these fires the more likely you will find that it wasn't that reason at all.

Here are the known facts about the Norcold Fire hazard. According to the attorney's involved in the class action lawsuit there have been just under 250 PROVEN fires from ruptured coolant lines out of the over 5,000 fires that have originated near the refrigerator. That means the vast majority of the fires that people claim to have been a Norcold fire actually turn out to be something different.

Now let's consider that about 250 fires have occurred out of the 2.7 million Norcold Units that are considered to be "time bombs". That means .009% of these so-called "time bombs" have actually caught fire over a 12 year time span.

Now also consider that Maytag just has a recall of nearly 2.5 million refrigerators where there were over 1,800 fires in 20 months and you can see that the chance of having a Norcold fire is actually pretty darn slim.

The bottom line is when you look at the actual FACTS you won't be so inclined to believe that these things are ticking time bombs anymore than you will believe there is a monster in your closet.

Let's stop fear mongering and embrace a rational, fact based discourse about these events. Pretty please.

i am sorry to every one but i am with him .. the numbers are there

yes it is sad some one lost a RV

and it is all so why i added a 5 to 10 min fire wall in my refrigerator bay to give me more time if some thing like this should happen to me

[Muddypaws]

Do what I did or you're going to burn!

Bwahahahahaha..................

When did refers become a religion?

This stupid refer debate goes on and on and on and on and on and on EVERY SINGLE TIME THERE IS POST WITH NORCOLD IN THE TITLE. Give it a rest already.

Wouldn't you rather be outside enjoying the RV lifestyle? That's what I intend to do the rest of the day.

I've got back up cameras to repair, cabinet work to do, computers to fix and songs to write and practice.

[holdren]

I hope you guys don't drive any cars. Every auto manufacturer has had recalls.

[pasdad1]

Originally Posted by WesinRockies

Not to go off topic.
I read many times about people having meters to check their battery charge state.
Are they built in. I haven't seen anything in my EMS about it.
Where can a person get one?
I google it and come up with many different types.
Thanks

Sent from my iPhone using iRV2 - RV Forum

This is one of the best available. Trimetric

http://www.bogartengineering.com/products/TriMetric%20

[Robin_M]

Originally Posted by Winepress

Robin,
There was a Samsung Q&A forum a while back. It was something corny like "Ask Mrs. Samsung" I don't know if it is still up on the web.
There were questions posted pertaining to RV use, MSW use, and installation. You might be able to find it via Google. I am on the road and have a slow connection.
If I remember correctly, Mrs Samsung said MSW was OK. I printed it and kept it in my Samsung file, but it is at home.

The refrigerator debate is entertaining. I am waiting to see the first post where someone says "I removed my Samsung RF197 and installed a Norcold 1200 series"

Winepress,

Dr4Film beat me to it, but I found it also. Attached to this post, in PDF format, are all five questions on the Samsung forum that deals with this issue.

Note that the answer to the first one (asked 4 years ago) is rather interesting. Although, as previously discussed, I now believe that the DC rectified power is only for the control board and does not affect the compressor. But it is an important "clue" to this issue. Also interesting is that even in this forum, Samsung never answers the question directly. In some they didn't even answer the question at all, but when they did, they just say "it should work", rather than "yes, it is fine to use a MSW inverter".

But I suspect we have reasonably arrived a Samsung's "official" answer to these issues (or at least as "official" as they are ever going to be)....

1. The RF197 "should" work fine with a MSW inverter.
2. Samsung does NOT recommend the RF197 for use in an RV.

Yes, the "debate" is entertaining. But I suspect not so much for those Norcold aficionados who have no intention of ever converting to a residential unit.

[HD4Mark]

Interesting discussion or maybe debate. We are in the "replaced due to frustration crowd". No fire and I did not see anything that looked like a fire starting. First the cooling unit went. We were lucky to have an extended service policy that paid $1200 for that plus a new board and labor. They would not authorize an Amish unit. The next year both fans on the cooling unit and we had cancelled the ESP. OEM replacements were $50 each, four PC fans from Amazon that were about the exact same thing $17. Did the work myself. Same year another alarm beeped for the last time. I told DW we get back home, out it goes.

The Samsung (RF217) about twice as big as the Norcold cost less than the service work on the Norcold. The only issue has been the sensor on the (much larger) ice maker and Samsung was happy to send a tech to repair it in an RV. Our third year on it now without any more issues running on the MSW inverter, generator or shore power. We rarely boondock.

Back to the fires. According to a few of the law firm web sites I Googled there have been 2000 Norcold attributed fires since 1999. That works out to be about 133 a year. Sure sounds like a lot to me since the 1200 series are the big culprit. The recall was performed on our unit in the garage where it still sits if anyone is shopping for one.

BTW Samsung claims on the energy star label to use 445kW per year for an RF197. If my math is correct that works out to about 50 watts/hr not including any loss from the inverter of course.

[holdren]

For the people that spend most all there time in an RV PARK the residential is probably a good choice. But for people that like to boondock alot, not a good choice.

[Robin_M]

Originally Posted by holdren

I hope you guys don't drive any cars. Every auto manufacturer has had recalls.

True. But when an automobile recall is issued, more often than not, the issue is actually fixed with the recall.

Actually for me, it wasn't the Norcold, but the Norcold recall that drove me to install the Samsung. My Norcold 1210 has worked reliably well for the past 7 years. No signs of any problems with the cooling unit and the boiler looked fine. Only thing I ever had to replace on it was a light bulb. But THEN Norcold came out with the fire recall thingy, and that was the end of reliability for the fridge. Every time that little box got a little damp (like while driving through a rain squall) it would shut the refrigerator down. Then, according to Norcold, I was supposed to wait for them to ship a new "recall box" to some dealer before I could use the refer again.

The magnet reset trick never worked for me, so I made up a little 'jumper wire" to bypass the stupid box. But I felt uneasy continuing to bypass the recall box. After this happened twice on a long trip with a fridge full of food, I pulled into a dealer in Florida who just happened to have an extra recall box in stock. But this dealer also had a Monaco Dynasty he was working on that had suffered the Norcold fire, even though it had the recall installed. After looking at the burnt Dynasty, my now unreliable 1210, and a beautiful new Samsung RF197 he also had in stock, the decision to swap out the unreliable Norcold recall box for the shiny new Samsung seemed like a no-brainer for me.

No "fear mongering" here. Just stating the facts.

[holdren]

For people like you,your choice works. For me it's a choice I prefer NOT to make. That doesn't make you or me a bad person.

[Robin_M]

Originally Posted by holdren

For people like you,your choice works. For me it's a choice I prefer NOT to make. That doesn't make you or me a bad person.

I hope not. Like I said... No fear mongering here, and certainly no value judgements. Just stating the facts, as they applied to my situation.

In fact, before I actually got the Samsung, and then went boondocking with it for a week, I would have agreed with you. Just last year at the Hershey RV show I remember wondering why there were so many residential refrigerators in the new units. I thought it seemed like a rather odd choice for an RV owner to make.

[Ernie Ekberg]

I hardly think that giving information about a cause of fires is to be called a stupid debate. Those of you that love your Norcold, should just bypass this discussion. There is always the delete button. Just out of curiosity: are there any discussions about anything positive on Norcold?
let the battle begin

[StevenNSteph]

Originally Posted by HD4Mark

Back to the fires. According to a few of the law firm web sites I Googled there have been 2000 Norcold attributed fires since 1999. That works out to be about 133 a year. Sure sounds like a lot to me since the 1200 series are the big culprit.

The devil is in the details, here is a quote from one of the class action attorneys website.

"These refrigerators have caused OR CONTRIBUTED to at least 2,000 fires since 1999." [Emphasis added]
http://www.seegerweiss.com/news/norc...#ixzz34BitAcV3

If you call the office and get to actually talk to someone knowledgable about this they will tell you they have about 250 proven fires caused by the splitting of the cooling tubes. There are another 900 or so that are suspicious but the actual cause is not determinable but the bursting of the cooling tubes, wether it happened first or later on contributed to the fires. There have been another 900 or so that the fire started in or around the refrigerator before the tubes burst. The susquentant fire caused the cooling tubes to burst which contributed to the intensity of the fire.

So those 2,000 fires can NOT be attributed solely to the Norcold. But this is how all of those internet rumors get started and blown out of porportion.

[Ernie Ekberg]

"new cooling unit from norcold is still working like a champ, I cannot believe it's so dang cold down below now. The class action lawyers told me norcold has finally changed the cooling unit construction some to make it more corrosion resistant and the new heat safety sensor was already installed in mine. But Dang it's working so good I'm a waiting for the fire HA
Wayne Correll"

[dezolen]

Lets do a study on BBQ fires. I'm sure more people have been burnt by these appliances yet you never hear any complaints.
I've had 4 rv's with amonia charged 2 way fridges and never had a problem. Wonder how many people have ever had theirs inspected annually by a competent person.
There are many more pull trailers with these so called time bombs than rv's that will even fit a residential fridge yet I have yet to see a "fire bomb" .