Unique Brand Fridge for Tear Drop

[travist]

Has anyone considered installing one of these in a tear drop galley kitchen? It looks like it should work as it doesn't have traditional RV ventilation requirements, and can run DC to keep cool (ie while driving), or 110V as a backup to propane.

http://uniqueoffgrid.com/product/3-cuft-propane-fridge/

Seems like it might work well, but if someone has experience with these I'd love to know. Or if someone can foresee issues that I haven't considered.

[bmr528]

Looks nice,, Only complaint would be the size.. 32.25 X 21.25 X 25"

djl

[Aguyfromohio]

When I was a boy my father had 3 different travel trailers with propane/electric refrigerators and as an adult I did Canadian fly-in fishing trips to outpost cabins with propane only refrigerators. They work, but just barely, they are pretty weak compared to a conventional fridge. If you can run this one on shore power to cool down all the food first, then switch to propane to keep things cool it might work pretty well to keep cold food cool off grid for quite a few days. But I suspect that if you started with the fridge warm and shut off, put an ice tray full of water in the freezer compartment, then started the unit on propane, you would not have ice cubes for at least three days.

[travist]

Interesting. I've spoken to the company and they say the fridge is primarily meant to be run on propane, and that the electrical operation is meant only as a backup and in fact they figure if you ran it on electrical for a month straight you would burn out the electrical heating coil.

I'll have to ask them what they figure the cool down time is on propane.

[Aguyfromohio]

I...they figure if you ran it on electrical for a month straight you would burn out the electrical heating coil...

Oh wow that unit then must clearly only have an absorption refrigeration unit with an electric heater replacing the propane flame when running on electric. Certainly then it would work exactly the same on either energy source. My bad.

[NorthEGPhoto]

Sounds like it wouldn't be all that efficient either.. using electric heat to heat a thermocouple my guess?

Running a compressor probably uses much less power.

[Aguyfromohio]

Sounds like it wouldn't be all that efficient either.. using electric heat to heat a thermocouple my guess?

Running a compressor probably uses much less power.

Most propane refrigerators are absorption units using an ammonia based refrigerant. That style of refrigeration was the most popular in the early days of refrigeration, and until pretty recently was still installed for huge rooftop units on commercial buildings. Now they are only popular for RV refrigerators and for unusual large industrial situations where free waste heat is available. If you are curios....

A refrigerant is a liquid that can change its boiling point. Drop the boiling point and boil it over here, send it over there, raise the boiling point and condense it over there, and go back around the loop again. Conventional units change the boiling point by changing the pressure, so they have an electric motor driven compressor to do that work. A vapor absorption refrigerant changes boiling point by changing the chemical concentration of a solution, and they use a burner to do that. At one point in the loop the burner boils the refrigerant, changing its concentration and boiling point. At another place the boiled-off part of the solution gets put back in making a closed loop cycle.

In my experience they are weak refrigerators that cool down slowly and poorly. But if you don't have electricity in an off-grid situation and don't want to bother with a generator (or listen to the noisy thing running) they might be the only option. Some of the remote fly-in fishing cabins we stayed at prefer the propane fridge just because they are silent.

[GuitarPhotog]

Has anyone considered installing one of these in a tear drop galley kitchen? It looks like it should work as it doesn't have traditional RV ventilation requirements, and can run DC to keep cool (ie while driving), or 110V as a backup to propane.

http://uniqueoffgrid.com/product/3-cuft-propane-fridge/

Seems like it might work well, but if someone has experience with these I'd love to know. Or if someone can foresee issues that I haven't considered.

What makes you think it doesn't need ventilation? I see nothing in the specs about ventless, and since it has a flame it produces CO and needs ventilation for safety.

<Chas>

[travist]

I meant it doesn't need to have a vent channel through the ceiling behind the fridge, or directly through the outside wall like common RV fridges, it can vent like a house fridge up the back and out through the galley opening.

But in the end I think I've decided to go with a DC fridge instead.

[bdosborn]

In my experience they are weak refrigerators that cool down slowly and poorly.

Bingo. I started with a Dometic propane fridge and replaced it with a DC fridge. The propane fridge regularly got into food dangerous warm temperatures. Do some browsing over at RV.net forums and you'll find tons of posts where people have had bad luck with propane fridges.

Bruce

[Shadow Catcher]

Our Waeco 12V (the international version on the Dometic) just saved us a good bit of money when our refrigerator failed. It kept the frozen meat frozen. It rides in the TV plugged in.

[Andrew Herrick]

If I were building a motorhome (which I haven't, in all fairness), I would certainly choose a 3-way propane fridge. But for a teardrop, I have slowly become convinced that nothing beats a 12 VDC fridge/freezer for effectiveness. I don't know about the model you referenced, but most conventional RV fridges do not work well, when powered by propane, when they are not horizontal. On some models, a slope in excess of 3 degrees can ruin their operation. If you like to camp under the stars in remote locations, then leveling a teardrop within 3 degrees of horizontal can be a challenge

If you go with a 12 VDC fridge, though, I'd invest in a solar panel and charge controller.

[travist]

Thanks for the tip about the charge controller.