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Old 02-27-2018, 02:39 PM   #1
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Dry camping with residential fridge?

Hi, new owner of a 2018 Sunova 36Z. We have a residential fridge and would like to get some feedback from others that may have a residential fridge and have dry camped. What did you do to keep the battery from draining quickly. Looks like it pulls a lot of amps and the battery discharges at a high rate. We unplugged at the RV park just to see what happened and turned on the inverter. The battery began discharging fast. Don't think it would last the night with other appliances, etc on too. Did you supplement with solar? Did you turn off the fridge at the breaker at night? Would really like to do some dry camping but afraid of what might happen to batteries and being able to start the engine, etc. Thanks for any input you can give.
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Old 02-27-2018, 10:38 PM   #2
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Usually, with the residential fridge they provide more batteries, a 2000 watt inverter and optionally one solar cell/controller etc. You did not mention what equipment you do have. Can you detail that for us?

Also on my RV the inverter runs a number of things not just the fridge. For example, was the electric hot water heater on by any chance? That would use many times more power than the fridge.

Also, when you did this test were your batteries fully charged? That would make a big difference too. As well as the heater running, maybe a satellite receiver, etc???
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Old 02-28-2018, 03:32 AM   #3
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We have the same requirement. We just went up to 4 solar panels(we have always had one fofr battery charging when in storage) and are using a Kill-A-Watt to determine all our "real" usages. We are finishing up the Kill-A-Watt phase this week. Then we need to digest what we have learned and what changes we need to make for boondocking. We are finding that what is on the label of a component vs. the actual usage of power is quite different.

We have upgraded our battery monitor so we could measure actual amperage in/out on the batteries. We feel that is much more accurate than looking at voltage. We also switched to AGM batteries , they supposedly charge faster. Our batteries were not on a slide-out and we were very negligent in maintaining them. None of the auto watering systems would fit our batteries so we switched to the AGM. Just bought Sams Club for now.

We have heard of people who out in an inverter just for the refrig but haven't researched the benefits of doing that.

As much as I love the residential refrig boondocking with one is a challenge.

We don't plan to become serious boondockers but also don't want to kill the batteries every night we do boondock.
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Old 02-28-2018, 07:24 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by creativepart View Post
Usually, with the residential fridge they provide more batteries, a 2000 watt inverter and optionally one solar cell/controller etc. You did not mention what equipment you do have. Can you detail that for us?

Also on my RV the inverter runs a number of things not just the fridge. For example, was the electric hot water heater on by any chance? That would use many times more power than the fridge.

Also, when you did this test were your batteries fully charged? That would make a big difference too. As well as the heater running, maybe a satellite receiver, etc???
The water heater was off and the batteries fully charged. May have had the sat receiver plugged in. We have 4 12v dual purpose deep cell batteries on the coach and a 2000watt inverter. No solar. We think the immediate draw was from the fridge compressor when we unplugged because the draw reduced quickly to about 0-2 amps and held at about 12.4
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