Community Forums

chunker · 05-04-2019, 08:00 AM

This the second promised tread about my 1200 woes. Brief recap, poor cooling, freezer mid 20s, refer mid 30s. Thermostat full cold. Good a/c heating element, good LP flame, no bugs, fans work. I have off and on researched converting to a residential refer and 2 years ago started a thread and such looking for suggestions that wouldn't require removing windshield, slides or windows.

2007 Itasca Horizon 40FD and refer in curb side slide. My reading shows many put in the Samsung 18 but that requires some cabinet work due to height. We have a pan drawer below the refer and would like to keep it. Others mentioned the Fisher paykel but commented is was very expensive compared to Samsung or other "apartment" model refer. Yesterday I checked and the FisherPaykel model RF170WDLUX5 supposedly required virtually no cabinet changes was $1500 on Amazon and eBay and have not researched any other residential refer that would fit with little to no modification.

Samsung, reading a lot of negative posts about deteriorating quality. Since in reality there are very few different actual manufacturers, many competing brands are just rebadged and I have not researched who is who in that respect.

FisherPaykel, in spite of the additional costs, how many have installed this model and what has been the high and low spots for it? Other models who has good and bad experiences. I know there are a lot of threads on this subject but since appliances change frequently what has changed in this area?

The motorhome has a 2000W modified sine wave inverter that I would rather not change since all features work well and everything else in the coach is compatible with it.

Ray,IN · 05-04-2019, 09:45 PM

IMO, the single best thing you can do to improve cooling is to repair the existing condenser fans near the top of the cooling unit, or just add 2 new blower-type fans which is what I did. I installed mine just above the lower frig opening to suck in fresh and push hot air out the top door/vent. Yours may work better installed near the OEM fans in the slide, mine is roof-vented.
This is especially helpful with the frig in a slide.

153stars · 05-05-2019, 07:23 AM

Fans are good.
Get to your burner blow out gas air mixing venturi . Spiders are attracted to propane. Blast some air up the chimney pipe as well. I got a used Dometic for TT. I removed burner removed spiral from top chimney blew it out and ran a wire bore brush down it. Probably a shot glass of rust came out. Ill bet I got 30%more efficient . Hard to find exact brush had to use a grinder to shrink it. They are made to go through and come back not part way and back . Think finger cuffs. When you burn fossil gases byproduct is water and nitric acid . At Work.We use this boiler flue gas and compress it as inert gas . That gas will eat through a piece of black pipe in a month , where the water get evaporated out and leaves concentrated acid.

astrnmrtom · 05-06-2019, 10:28 PM

I replaced my 1200 with a Fisher Paykel and it was a great fit. I did have to lower the shelf the Norcold sat on by a couple inches but I lowered it as low as possible so my wife could reach the back of the top shelf on the new refer. I've only used it one weekend so far and that was while plugged in, but I did run it on our 20 year old Heart 2000watt modified sine wave inverter as a test and it seemed fine. When researching I read about others who have run theirs off a modified sine inverter for years without problems. The F&P has a built in inverter to run the DC compressor. Another bonus is it came through our narrow front door after removing the doors and drawer and it was actually lighter than the Norcold it replaced.

The main reason we removed our Norcold was my wife's fear of fire. Our Norcold struggled in hot weather until I properly baffled the top vent and added a couple muffin fans to the top vent run off our solar panels during the day. That, along with making a fan and bracket that blew air across the interior fins had it cooling much better.

The Fisher Paykel a great refrigerator with shelves that adjust every inch. Doesn't hold a gallon of milk in the door though, and the crispers are side by side in a slide out shelf with a lip which requires both doors to be open to access the crispers. Can't pull out the crispers individually. Both are minor nits. A big milestone for me will come at the end of the month when I boondock for 4 days.

Here's the post with photos of my install:

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f115/out-...-386374-5.html