Community Forums

Greg5OH · 09-13-2019, 08:25 AM

Long story short, 12 Cut Ft Norcold fridge is 9 months old. I never used it as I just bought the coach few months ago and pulled everything out for an interior remodel.
I hear so many stories that the Norcolds are no good, cant keep cold this that, needs to be super level, dont use it while driving down the road etc.
My space constrains remain so I have to stick with a 12 Cu ft.
Im thinking I could sell the almost new norcold for 1000$, and buy a Frigidaire residential for like 400$.

We will likely do alot of dry camping. Coach has 150W of solar on it.

Thouhts?

cataska · 09-13-2019, 08:38 AM

150 w solar will barely keep battery charged let alone run a refrigerator .

PbdBlue · 09-13-2019, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg5OH

Long story short, 12 Cut Ft Norcold fridge is 9 months old. I never used it as I just bought the coach few months ago and pulled everything out for an interior remodel.
I hear so many stories that the Norcolds are no good, cant keep cold this that, needs to be super level, dont use it while driving down the road etc.
My space constrains remain so I have to stick with a 12 Cu ft.
Im thinking I could sell the almost new norcold for 1000$, and buy a Frigidaire residential for like 400$.

We will likely do alot of dry camping. Coach has 150W of solar on it.

Thouhts?

If you go residential you'll need adequate battery capacity - minimum of 4 GC2 6 volts and either be prepared to run the generator every day or substantially increase the size of your solar array - minimum 800 watts. Typical residential fridge will consume ~100 - 120 ah/day.

Greg5OH · 09-13-2019, 10:20 AM

Thank you. Sounds like we need to make a decison. Buy more panels and go residential or stick with what we have.
Im assuming a little 12cut would pull less than 120ah a day no?
I know its all depends on ambient temp how many times you open door etc
Regarding generator, its a propane unit. I expect to run it to run the ac units

twinboat · 09-13-2019, 10:52 AM

A 12 volt fridge ( 8 C.F. ) draws about 6 amps and runs 50% of the time. That's 3 AHs. Over a 24 hour day it works out to 96 AH.

That's about 1/2 of the capacity of 2, 6 volt GC2, deep cycle batteries wired in series..

With a set of 4 batteries and about 400 watts of solar, you should do fine.

I run a 8 CF 120 volt fridge, along with TV, coffee maker, lights and microwave use, thru an inverter with 675 watts of solar while full timing on my boat.

We only needed to run the generator once or twice a week during the shortest solar days in winter. That was in the Florida Keys. Otherwise we never used the generator.

Example of a 12 volt fridge.
http://www.vitrifrigo.com/us/us/dp26...l-cooling-unit

keymastr · 09-13-2019, 11:19 AM

Generators suck a lot of propane so I would consider a different method for running air conditioners.

Greg5OH · 09-13-2019, 11:39 AM

With no hookups i dont really see another way of running the ac?

winniman · 09-13-2019, 11:40 AM

The reality of it is, with the fridge you have, plus the 150 watts of solar, all you need is propane in your tank, and your fridge is good for weeks, maybe months. If you switch to a residential, you will need to upgrade your battery bank, upgrade your solar, possibly add an inverter, plus still run your generator every day to keep up to the fridge. Plus you still have to buy the fridge. Hundreds of thousand of these gas fridges are in use every day. I like to boondock regularly, and for me, a residential fridge just is no good. You will hear all this crap about hard ice cream. Cut back on the ice cream already. If all you do is camp at a campground, a residential fridge is great. Unless you want to drop thousands on solar and battery upgrades, I would just stick with your Norcold. Im pretty sure the newer ones have a safety device built into them that the older ones didn't have. Keep your rv fairly level if the fridge is running. That's about it. If you have to park way off level for any length of time, just shut it off until you move. You don't generally camp parked out of level. Im sure someone will add they boondock all the time with their residential fridge, but my guess is they have at least four batteries, a minimum of 400 watts solar, an inverter, and still run the genny at least every other day. I might consider a residential if I had all that, and primarily stayed at serviced parks. Good luck on your renovation.

geordi · 09-13-2019, 11:48 AM

If you are looking at running the air conditioners, dry camping may not be for you - or at least not for long periods!

LP has a fraction of the energy per gallon as gasoline or diesel, so you will be drinking a LOT of it to develop your power needs. That said... If you are already running the generator, then the power needs of the fridge are less important. My diesel genset can run both air conditioners and everything else in my coach for about 1/2 gallon an hour... I would be shocked if your LP can come close to that level of economy, just b/c of the energy content in the fuel. LP is possibly the worst option for a generator just b/c of how little energy per gallon it has. Can you run the generator off of gasoline instead?

I pulled the 12 cubic foot NotCold out of my coach and replaced it (in the same hole!) with a 23 cubic foot counter-depth Frigidaire. The limiting factor in my case was my entry door, not so much the cabinetry. You likely will be able to fit a larger unit than 12 cubic foot, if you haven't pulled the NotCold yet, you aren't getting accurate measurements for your available space. There is a LOT of waste around an RV fridge to provide fireproofing and ventilation that a home reefer just doesn't need. You should EASILY be able to land an ~18 cubic in that space.

Now about the power. An RV fridge like the NotCold when on electric uses 400 watts pretty much continuously. Oof. That's over 8KWH per day! The 12v circuitry shouldn't be pulling more than an amp or so to operate, and that is on gas or electric. You *could* investigate one of these JC cooling units

https://jc-refrigeration.com/

for a compressor-drive replacement of the existing cooling unit you already have, that will solve your problem and you don't need to replace the box that already fits. I know nothing about price, but the people that have bought that seem happy about it.

You can power that with an inverter (they say 600 watt) which would also be true for a home unit. My Frigidaire uses around 200 watts at full burn coming out of storage, but keeping that running overnight on my 4 GC2 batteries will pull them to just above 50% SoC... You don't want to drop the batteries lower than that.

I do think you will want more solar, I have over 1000 watts on my roof, but that also is limited by how much power I can store. Calculating that is for another time, if you are running the generator anyway... It will just charge from that rather than the solar.

cataska · 09-13-2019, 04:17 PM

Why don't you try what you got before you spend a lot of money my norcold works just fine I prefer to run on propane.

Gary RVRoamer · 09-13-2019, 04:24 PM

An alternative to a residential fridge is the 12 cu ft Unique fridge, which has a high-efficiency 12v powered compressor. It draws about 50 AH/day in moderate weather, so a couple batteries can handle it easily, especially if backed with 150-200 watts of solar.

You can buy Unique fridges at Home Depot and some appliance stores.

Frankly, though, you are a victim of Norcold bashing, a popular sport on RV websites. A properly installed Norcold 12xx fridge works decently and they are safe enough if an ARP Fridge Defend module is installed to monitor the boiler. I'm a proponent of residential or marine 12v fridges for RVs, but hate to see anybody throw away an expensive appliance just because the uninformed bad mouth it. You will be lucky to get $500 for the Norcold, because of the bad press and thre high cost of shipping it anywhere and re-installation.