I hire a campervan when I travel and it only has a small fridge but I would not be without it. I keep milk, butter some fruit, cold meat and meat or fish and the bottle of wine( most important)
Wouldnt be with out one, When had a Camper trailer the only one i could find at the time that would fit in the trailer part under the bed was this one as most were too high.
I've got an old engel fridge. I've had it for a few years & have even taken it overseas with me. I wouldnt be without it & even in my last set-up where my load was extremely limited I wouldnt have been without the fridge. It has travelled hundreds of thousands of kilometres with me & I have never regretted it.
What do I keep in it, I keep my meat, always either cryovacted or in good tuppaware, I keep my friut and vegg, a bottle of water, butter & anything else that is perishable. I only have a 40 litre one, so it fills quickly. I have cut up a windscreen shade that I use as a horizontal divider between items in the fridge, that way when I open the lid all the cold air doesnt race out. Its very efficient on power & I even added a remote temp guage as I often wondered if it was working or not at times. Alot of the newer models these days already come with the guage built in, helps one be frugal with the settings and power use.
My engel must be about 18-20 years old, never a problem other than it tends to freeze lettiuce.
Hi, I think you'll be a bit unhappy down the track if you go off without a fridge. Some things just have to be kept cool. Imagine the butter after the sun beating on the campervan all day. But enjoy the travel. Cheers Kandagal
We have the same as you Smokey but in the Engel x two. We use one as a freezer, keeps the boubon extra cold and it pours like honey. Worth taking for that reason alone.
But we also keep any leftovers in there to heat up for lunch or dinner another day, drinks are so much better with a bit of chill on them and the butter as kandagal says, stays just right.
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I must be a binge thinker. I do it a lot at times, then, not much at all.
I have a waeco CF40lt it draws less than 1 amp hour..can be used as freezer too
I would like to see that, Waeco do a lot of that , they say a fridge draws .75 amps.. yer right , taken over a 24 hour time frame, Your waeco will use 3.5 amps when running +..If its the new chineeze one it could use up to 5.5 amps when running..
Sorry smoky, but people seeing that will think they can run their waeco on a torch batt. for a week.... very misleading my friend.....Bob
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Another thing to watch with portable fridges that we discovered when looking for one, was most only go so many degrees (think it's about 15) below 'ambient temperature' which is fine if down south somewhere, but say you were in Cairns and it was 30+ degrees, then your fridge would only go down to around 15 degrees - this is not 'cool' for keeping food (let alone the wine) at a 'safe' temperature for eating.
Forgot to add, the one we ended up getting is the Dometic 3 way fridge.
-- Edited by Pejay on Thursday 28th of April 2011 08:16:14 PM
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Another thing to watch with portable fridges that we discovered when looking for one, was most only go so many degrees (think it's about 15) below 'ambient temperature' which is fine if down south somewhere, but say you were in Cairns and it was 30+ degrees, then your fridge would only go down to around 15 degrees - this is not 'cool' for keeping food (let alone the wine) at a 'safe' temperature for eating.
Forgot to add, the one we ended up getting is the Dometic 3 way fridge.
-- Edited by Pejay on Thursday 28th of April 2011 08:16:14 PM
I think you may be getting mixed up with thermoelectric coolers, these are the cheapies that will sometimes warm as well as cool. A genuine compresser type will do much better than that, as will a 3 way (absorbtion) such as the Dometic you mention.
-- Edited by jimricho on Thursday 28th of April 2011 08:30:02 PM
The fridge in my previous post is powered by compressor & parts from a Waeco CDF-40 & draws 2.6Amps. Runing it at 0-2Deg C i doubt it would get down to 1amp hour. The Waeco specs are a bit unrealistic .87Ah@ 12V fridge temp 5Deg C @ 32Deg C ambient, For a start 5Deg C is too high for fridge temp for me. For me most fridge sales brochures tend to be on the optomistic side when it comes to power consumption figures.
-- Edited by DeBe on Thursday 28th of April 2011 08:32:26 PM
Another thing to watch with portable fridges that we discovered when looking for one, was most only go so many degrees (think it's about 15) below 'ambient temperature' which is fine if down south somewhere, but say you were in Cairns and it was 30+ degrees, then your fridge would only go down to around 15 degrees - this is not 'cool' for keeping food (let alone the wine) at a 'safe' temperature for eating.
Forgot to add, the one we ended up getting is the Dometic 3 way fridge.
-- Edited by Pejay on Thursday 28th of April 2011 08:16:14 PM
I think you may be getting mixed up with thermoelectric coolers, these are the cheapies that will sometimes warm as well as cool. A genuine compresser type will do much better than that, as will a 3 way (absorbtion) such as the Dometic you mention.
-- Edited by jimricho on Thursday 28th of April 2011 08:30:02 PM
I think you may be right jimricho & I would definately agree that those thermo eletric coolers are a complete waste of time.
I had my engle in over 40 deg heat in the middle of the great sandy desert WA and it was still managing to freeze liquids.
Before I purchased the Goldstream a few years ago I used camper trailer that was very basic (no fridge) and used a Waeco thermal-electric in addition to the "Bushman" (compressor type) in the car. I found it quite handy for keeping fruit and veg. It was connected to one of the cig lighter sockets so was only powered when the engine was running and connected it to 240v (via a power supply) when in camp at a powered site. Occasionally used it in warming mode too.
Since "coming up in the world" with the Goldstream it is now surplus to my needs.
I use my Waeco as fridge/freezer all the time. When I was paying power on a metered site in Broome and Cairns I was happy with the consumption costs in both places. The van has a 3-way Electrolux usually run on 240V with no probs, but the freezer is useless for space, and makes food icy. Trying to make ice cubes just ices up the freezer making it useless.
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