traveling with fridge on

[cvodave]

we will be leaving for our first trip soon. I have a 2017 Minnie Winnie 31G and want to know when I turn on the fridge is it running of the battery? and when I arrive to camp site and plug in will it run off outside electric automatically. Thank you

[creativepart]

In general, the answer is Yes. You want to run your fridge while driving. If you have a 12v compressor fridge the motorhome’s alternator will keep your battery charged while the engine is running.

If you have a dual fuel gas absorption RV fridge you will want to run the fridge on Propane while driving.

Which kind of fridge do you have in your 2017 Minnie Winnie 31G - 12v compressor or dual fuel AC/Propane RV fridge?

[cvodave]

specs say electric/propane. I would think safe on electric

[creativepart]

The Electric in this case is 120v AC current. If you drive with your generator running then yes, you can run your fridge on AC from the generator.

However, if you are not running your generator you have no 120v AC to operate your Fridge on electric while driving and would simply run the fridge on Propane while driving.

Even if your motorhome has an inverter to power 120v outlets and appliances on battery power it is not likely wired to power your fridge. See the fridge uses a lot of power when operated on electric. So, it would be uncommon for any provision to be made to power the fridge off of inverted power.

The wiring can be changed to permit the fridge to run on inverter, and yes the alternator could keep the batteries charged while driving to replenish this big power draw but, it is not advisable since the potential for quickly depleting your batteries anytime you are not plugged in, on generator or driving the motorhome is too likely.

[BobC]

If running off propane, you should turn it off while filling up with gas so there's no open flame.

[creativepart]

Originally Posted by BobC

If running off propane, you should turn it off while filling up with gas so there's no open flame.

While that may be a best practice... it's one that 99% or maybe even 99.9% of RVers ignore. Same with Tunnels.

If you do follow this advice, your fridge does not have a pilot (unless it's a very, very old model), only a main burner that's lit on demand by an electronic spark ignitor. As said, just turn off the appliance switches, not the propane valve.

It's a great concept, but has it ever been shown that an RV fridge has caused any fire or explosion at a gas station during fill-up? I sure have never seen it detailed anywhere.

[Brooks]

Your frig runs on propane when not hooked to shore power but we have been full-time for over 6 years and have found we can drive up to 6 hours with the frig off and it is still cold

[cvodave]

thank you

[Wakullabob]

When ya buy an RV with propane/electric frig ya put it on " auto " and NEVER touch it again . AUTO is smarter than all of us !

[Phil G.]

Originally Posted by Wakullabob

When ya buy an RV with propane/electric frig ya put it on " auto " and NEVER touch it again . AUTO is smarter than all of us !

Yep - that's what we do - except for one small thing we do manually because "AUTO" doesn't know about it and cannot do anything about it anyway:

We turn OFF the 12V coach power (which of coarse comes from the coach batteries) when we are gassing up ... since the refrigerator outside vent opening is near where we refill the chassis gasoline tank, and ... we don't want the refrigerator's propane powered flame to maybe cycle ON and ignite gasoline fill-up fumes during the refueling process.

After filling up, I turn back ON the 12V coach power so that the refrigerator's control circuitry can operate the refrigerator on propane while we're traveling. When we first used our Class C a few times, I forgot to turn this 12V power back ON after gassing up so that the refrigerator was not operating while traveling. To "prevent" this error ... I installed a digital voltmeter on the dash that monitors coach 12V power ... so if I glance at the voltmeter when driving and see it reading zero instead of 12-13 volts ... then that means I forgot to flip the coach's 12V power switch back ON back at the gas station after refueling so that the refrig could operate on propane.

[Marine359]

For absorption fridges, they will stay cold while traveling without the propane on by simply carrying a bag of ice in the freezer and a frozen 1gal jug in the fridge. That was our modus operandi back in the day of pilot flame fridges.