For those collective minds, to give their view. Fridge freezer combination, compressor type, verses fridge only in the van and a separate freezer behind the seats in the ute. I'm thinking of free camping situations, and the battery/solar usage in the van.
With the fridge freezer combo, the unit has to work to keep items at -12, but a fridge could be set at just keeping contents cool, say +10. So I think the demand on the van battery power would be a lot less, without the freezer.
With a portable freezer in the vehicle, fed off an auxiliary battery, re-charging would occur during tripping away from base, a solar panel could be mounted on the ute so when its stopped re-charging would still occur, and if the battery went below minimum, the food stuff could be transferred to the fridge and the disaster would not be so great.
Of course if at a powered site in a park this is not a problem.
What are your thoughts please.
-- Edited by iana on Saturday 27th of June 2015 09:27:43 AM
We have a Waeco RPD175 from new in the 5'er and an Engel 40ltr on a slide in the side, we use the engel mainly as a freezer when outback, but if around civilization then it becomes our cold drinks fridge.
We buy meat on special and split up and re vacuum pack in smaller portions. Works out really well for us.
The Waeco inside has a 30 ltr freezer too, that we use for everyday frozen items like veggies ice cream etc.
Never ran short of power yet, but we do have 560W of solar and two 120AH batteries, we only off road though for a max of 2-3 days at a time.
We are looking at fitting the new Samsung inverter fridge/freezer in our rig, and running it permanently from a 300w inverter. I know someone with this set up and it works brilliantly and super efficient.
The household fridges are far better insulated than the RV ones and with the inverter model far more efficient. And to the naysayers, the one I mention has been in full time use for around 18 months now with no issues at all.
We run a simular setup with a 120ltr Waeco compressor fridge but the freezer is too small for free camping for any length of time,we also have a 45ltr freezer which we run at -5 which is pretty efficient. The fridge draws 2.6 amps and the freezer 3.1 .we have 380 solar 210 Ah batteries and I am going to add another battery .
