A fridge for the caravan

[Gullible]

Hi,
We need a fridge for our caravan.

There is space for an 80-110 lt fridge with the paneling/door for the rear of a fridge and we have a couple of big batteries.

As we tend to go to one spot and stay there for a couple of weeks we were thinking of getting a 3 way fridge that ran on gas when were stopped.

Is there anything I should watch out for, any brands to avoid?

[Blknight.aus]

most of them are pretty good now even the aldi fridges are worth looking at but as its a van and most people want to save their bench space and have the fridge like a house fridge...

Engel have just come out with a set of uprights that run 12/24/240. (I spent today perusing their new catalog..

if you mainly stay near power or have a semi decent solar /wind turbine/VAT to charge 12V I personally adovocate going a DC/AC powered fridge over a three way.

if you tend to leave the van but go driving around a bit a good multi battery system in the vehicle with a dc/dc charger to rob the vehicles aux battery to charge and run the van is also not too bad an idea.

[Chucaro]

I lived in a motorhome for 2 years touring the east of Australia with a Waeco 12DC/240AC 140 lt upright fridge and a Waeco 50 lt chest fridge.
The motorhome was fitted with 2 80w solar panels and 2 Trojan 225 batteries.
If you are going to fit a gas fridge and there is not a existing gas on the van make sure that it have done by a licensed gas fitter to be legal
Ventilation is a very important issue.
If the 3 way fridge was going to be keep outside, then it is ok.

Cheers

[130man]

HI , I run a three way fridge in my camper and find the gas is good when parked up, but you must be near dead level for the fridge to be efficient. They are useless while travelling and running on 12 volts, mine doesn't even maintain temperature. The compressor style fridges run quite well on the road and are not nearly so sensitive to being level when stationary. I believe they will chill down to colder temperatures than the gas fridges but you will need to monitor battery levels and have a recharge strategy for when they run the batteries down. Largish solar panels are good, or a generator will do, although many places discourage generators and you need to carry the fuel for them. Driving around to recharge batteries that are well down is a longer task than many will admit. Cheers, 130man.

[Gullible]

Hi 130man,
We were running a 50 lt 3 way and found the same thing. In the car on 12 volt it didn't maintain temperature. On gas in our shed it was great once we'd put a bag of ice in it - mind you there was a heat wave with an ambient temp of 38 - 41 C. It used very little gas and held temperature well.

We are looking for an upright for the caravan. We only have 2x 100 batteries, so I think we would need some serious solar panels to stay bush for a couple of weeks.

[BMKal]

We have an Electrolux upright 3-way fridge in the camper trailer, and my parents used to have the same model in a Toyota Hi-ace camper van.

As others have said - pretty useless on 12V when travelling (really struggle to maintain temp, especially in hot weather). Need to be parked on level ground when running on gas - but if you get it right, it does work very well on gas. Works fine on 240V.

I'll probably end up ripping it out of the trailer and using it as a beer fridge in the shed, permanently running on 240V. I wouldn't buy another one.