oldduffer
Rapid City, SD
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I have a 76 Itasca, it has a coleman gas/110 volt fridge in it, model W6E/G-A. I have been wondering why not run it on an inverter WHILE underway, driving down the road in other words. reason being you are supposed to shut your gas fridge off when refueling so why not just use an inverter and not have to fool with lighting it till I stop for the night.
question being now is i dont have any paper work with the fridge so i dont know have many watts it might draw.
i understand that an inverter would have to be cabled for the draw and so on.
I wouild put a 3-gang switch that is accessive from inside to switch it over from inverter to house power and a remote inverter switch at same location.
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Golden_HVAC
Fulltime, CA, USA
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Joined: 08/19/2003
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Hi,
Many people have been running their refrigerators on gas for years, without problems. Yet if you do have a collision, it is possible for propane to leak if the tanks are on.
I run my refrigerator on gas while driving, and have a electronic ignition to shut it off while refueling, so it is really quick to turn on and off. My guess is yours is a little more difficult to shut off and turn on while refueling?
Anyway you "Can" run your refrigerator on electric, and a inverter will certainly be better than using the generator, and it is possible. But there are drawbacks.
The 350 watt electric heater only puts out about 1,000 Btu's while the gas burner will put out about 2,200 Btu's, with a output rating around 1,800 - so it has 80% higher cooling capacity.
Abd the inverter feeding that 350 watt heater will consume about 35 amps - about 1/2 the output of a 1976 Dodge alternator. You will add a lot of load to the alternator belt too - as well as taxing the alternator to keep up with the heavy load. You will need a 40 amp circuit breaker and #8 or #6 wire from the batteries to the inverter - just for this load.
A 500 watt inverter might need a 50 amp circuit breaker and #6 wire (to use the maximum wattage).
Your Dodge engine (if that is what you have) will probably have a 65 amp or perhaps a 70 amp alternator. You can replace it with a larger one - I think they came up to 90 amps in the larger frame size.
Some people go a simplier way - they add blue ice containers to the freezer, and take them out while the refrigerator is off, and place them in the refrigerated section, so it will stay cool.
Fred.
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smkettner
Southern California
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How many hours do you drive? Do you plug into utility power at most destinations?
If the inverter draws 40 amps to run the electric fridge heater you will need twice that in battery amp/hrs to run it. So a five hour drive you will need 400 amp hours of battery or about four golf batteries or four group 27 12 volt. You will get some power from the alternator but as said above you may push it beyond capacity if you are trying to get all the power from the alternator. You could put a limiter in the alternator charge wire to limit the current to about 5 or 15 amps extending the range with less chance of overloading the alternator. Then once you arrive you plug into electric power and let the batteries charge back up. Engineer it right and it will work fine.
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wa8yxm
Wherever I happen to park
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Fridge runs about 350 watts when on 120vac so as someone said the 500 watter (I'd say 400-500) should do it. In a motor home with a truck type alternator that should work.. In a 5'er make sure your tow vehicle's alternator is up to providing 40 amps more or less constant to the battery, not all are
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2oldman
WA
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Why not? Because if that's all you use the inverter for, it's a lot of work for very little benefit. As mentioned, takes a lot of battery power.
You must do an awful lot of refueling to be considering this. Just turn it off when fueling if that's your concern.
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wa8yxm
Wherever I happen to park
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Gee, i see all you folks are worried about his battery when he is UNDER WAY
What's wrong with worrying about his alternator? (OH, I did that in my first post)
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Listermann
Cincinnati, Ohio
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I used to run the fridge on our old Toyota from the inverter all the time. If I tried to run the fridge on propane, it usually blew out. Nwever had a problem.
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smkettner
Southern California
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wa8yxm wrote:Gee, i see all you folks are worried about his battery when he is UNDER WAY
What's wrong with worrying about his alternator? (OH, I did that in my first post)
I suggested limiting the charge current. Trik-l-start would limit it to 5 amps and Echo Charge would limit to 15 amps.
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liborko
Surrey, B.C.
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I run Dometic RM-2852 with Prosine 2.0 inverter/charger. I have two 6V U2200 house batteries. The Prosine draws 33A of DC current when fridge runs on 120V AC. This is no problem with F53 135A stock alternator at highway speeds but at idle the alternator does not produce enough current to cover 33A needed by Prosine. My next project is to design a speed or RPM or voltage sensitive switch to turn the fridge on or off automatically so the charging of the house batteries does not suffer while driving. I would not run a fridge on propane while driving. Period.
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ScottnSherrie
Augusta, GA
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First, I did some Googling and found that a square wave inverter is fine for use with heating elements. That was my first concern.
Second, I usually run the fridge on propane while travelling and have never had a problem.
Now for my two cents. I did something similar to what you are looking to do to power my 13 inch TV and DVD/home theater system up front.
What I did works really slick and I do recommend it for ease of use. I used a pair of 3PDT 120VAC relays configured this way. The relays are energized by the coach 120 and the supply wires are such that the 120 from the inverter is cut off when the coach has 120. I also took the switch out of the inverter and ran that through the relays as well so that the inverter can't be turned on when the coach has 120V.
Here is a wiring diagram I did to help me keep it all straight. Hooking everything up was easy for me since everything, coach batteries, inverter installation and 120V wiring, are all up front under the dash.
PM me is you would like to have a dialogue on this.
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