Using a Household Fridge

[Rover All Over]

Oh gosh, how good is this, thank you all for such great replies, it has helped a lot.

Ann-Marie,
Your bus looks great really comfortable and you have done some really good work things with it, and by the way whichever way you decide to go or return from you trip south, we could fit you in on the driveway beside our coaster, no worries, so if you need a stop here just holler.

T1, Bruce and Brian,

Heaps of help there all good, and just the sort of info we needed.

Alan and Cheryl

[Boblebago]

Hi Alan and Cheryl

I can vouch for what Terry and Brian have said, the money I paid for our 230 litre Vitrofrigo 12/24 volt fridge would have paid for a F&P fridge and the 400 amps of Lifepo4 batteries that I now have. The price of solar is coming down as well so you can put as much on the roof that will fit.

Regards Geoff

[pelbo]

I feel I should mention that having checked with several manufacturers/importers, that the moment you place a domestic fridge into any type of RV, your warranty is voided.

Since most come with a 5 year warranty, this could end up costing a bit. I would love to use a domestic fridge in my next RV and save money, but do I risk the warranty?

Terry - do you know the weight of, say, a 220L domestic two door fridge compared to a WAECO same size. Mine weighs just 46kg.

Last time I shifted a small fridge it took two of us at least three hernias to move it!

[T1 Terry]

I feel I should mention that having checked with several manufacturers/importers, that the moment you place a domestic fridge into any type of RV, your warranty is voided.

Since most come with a 5 year warranty, this could end up costing a bit. I would love to use a domestic fridge in my next RV and save money, but do I risk the warranty?

Terry - do you know the weight of, say, a 220L domestic two door fridge compared to a WAECO same size. Mine weighs just 46kg.

Last time I shifted a small fridge it took two of us at least three hernias to move it!

Energy Matters list the shipping weigh for their E249T as 45kg so I'm guessing there is a bit of weight in the packing. I've Emailed Fisher & Paykel for the specs on weight of the fridge only but I know they are very light, we picked ours up in the Lakes area near Gosford second hand and put it in the back of the kombi. If it wasn't so awkward to pick up a person could do it on their own so that puts it under the 50Kg mark. I helped a mate move his Waeco 221ltr and it was a lot heavier than the Fisher & Paykel, he had to get someone else to help him, my back wasn’t interested.
Fisher & Paykel's response will be interesting.
As we only buy second hand fridges for the tests for $100 or so warranty wasn't an issue but I guess you could be risking $600 if you bought a new one and it failed and warranty was refused because you had it in a caravan or motorhome. I'm guessing Fair Trading would take an interest in the matter, after all, the fridge gets transported once it's manufactured so it needs to be robust enough for a few moves between factory, warehouse, shop and then the final delivery.
According to this site http://www.waeco.com.au/products5.asp?i ... bCatId2=72 the warranty for the Waeco 221ltr is 12 mths and 2 yrs on the compressor. At $2,050 compared to $600 I m guessing you could buy another one if they refused warranty in the 12mths should something drastic fail.

T1 Terry

[BobnBev]

The main thing with a domestic fridge is to tie down any pipeing thats floating around with zip ties( the small liquid one) and half the problems will be gone. I fix a lot of Waecos as well with the same problem of cracking pipes. Ive seen many a cracked pipe on domestic fridges when it been sitting at home just being a fridge . Weights not so much a problem in a MH as a Van..On avarage domestic Fridges are much more weighty than the RV type.. The early Waecos were 220 lt Westing house domestic converts. I think now that the LiFePo4s power has given a bigger range of fridge to them that need more space for the golden drop .. MMM. Hope this helps with the before you fit it away in the MH to have a good look see at your pipes, could save the golden drop getting warm..
with a smile..Bob..

[T1 Terry]

I got a reply from Fisher & Paykel, the shipping weight of an E249T fridge freezer is 52kg, take off the weight of the box and pallet base it mounts in and it would be very close to the 46kg for the Waeco 221ltr 2 door fridge/freezer. The lithium ferrous batteries certainly make scrimping for that last Ah a thing of the past so running an inverter 24/7 is no longer an issue but a good iverter is still needed none the less, one with a standby current draw under 1 amp is what you are looking for, the solar will cover the 1 amp for 8 to 10 hrs a day so the inverter uses under 16 Ah per 24hr period at the very worst, a good late model domestic fridge itself uses less than the low voltage fridge over the same 24hr period so it balances out. after seeing the results of the 3 way fridge in Frans' 5th wheeler with the fractured gas pipe burning the surounding framework fridges built for RV use are no better constructed than domestic fridges, just a heap more expensive. Frans and Bev were lucky the fire burnt the electrical cables and that shut the gas off, otherwise the 5'er would have been ash when the returned from their days sight seeing

The article Frans wrte for the old CMCA site, was given permission previously to reprint it so I hope that still stands

The headline is that we nearly had a major fire in the fiver.

I am posting this because it is an inherent fault in our fridge which could very well also be in other fridges. Although this happens to be a Dometic, I am not knocking Dometic as a brand, the problem may not be in all models or even others of our model and may or may not occur in other brands.

The Event
Ours is a model RM7851. When we came back from a day trip early evening, We opened the windows after being out all afternoon and Bev noticed a smell which we could not trace and was quickly gone.

Next morning hitched up, turned fridge to 12v (in hindsight, did not notice it was not operating on gas) and travelled till the afternoon.

When setting up the fridge did not light up when turned to gas although it was a fairly new bottle and the gas stove was OK.

Took the vent panel off and noticed:

A. wires from inside fridge controls down to the back of the fridge melted. This wire loom runs from the bottom of the back of the fridge vertically up to the top of the fridge and then inside;
B. blackened area around the melted wires;
C blackened area around gas controller.

Fridge flames 1.JPG

Tried it on 12v and 240v settings with no problems.

Obviously, it was either a short in the control wires which were melted or leaking gas. Problem of course, is that it is not possible to operate the gas without turning the fridge on from inside which opens the gas controller, which was not possible because the wires were fused.

As we were in Kakadu for a few days and not many refrigeration mechanics around nor 240v power points to run the fridge, I decided to do a temporary repair on the wires to try to find out what had happened. The photo was taken after I did the repairs (didn’t think of taking one of the burnt wiring).

After connecting them all up, turned it to gas operation and lo & behold, gas flowed, ignition, and it started up OK. I could detect a slight smell of gas so turned it off and checked all connections which were tight.

Told Bev (inside) to turn it on again and stand by, me outside with fire extinguisher. Started up OK and after about a minute, a flame came out of the controller and we had a nice little fire vertically in the area of the wiring. Bev turned the fridge off which switched the gas flow off.

At this point I reckoned we may have a slight problem with the gas operation.

We ran the fridge on 12v overnight and then off to Darwin next morning.

The result and possible ramifications

The conclusion, which was confirmed by the Dometic service Agent in Darwin is that there was a gas leak at the gas controller (WHILE WE WERE AWAY) which ignited and continued to burn because there was no mechanism for it to be detected or controlled.

So we had a gas fire, with the flame at least 300mm high. The fortunate part of the event was that the flame burnt the controller wires, shorted them out which by chance, had the same result as switching the fridge off, which shut down the gas controller, stopped the gas flow and consequently the flame and fortunately nothing had caught alight. Had the controller wires not fused, it may have continued to burn.

The Cause.

When I described the problem to the Dometic service agent and showed him the photos (the fiver was in a caravan park) he picked the problem straight away as he had seen similar cases of the same event. He said to remove the pipe and that most likely there would be a failure right at one or both ends of the pipe. There was. D shows the apparent good tight connection,

Fridge flames 2.JPG

Fridge flames 6.JPG

In my opinion the fault lays in the material used. The gas goes from the controller to the burner via a small diameter aluminium tube. Aluminium, when worked, becomes hardened and brittle. Also, aluminium tube as installed in this case does not take vibrations well. The ends of the tube were flared at the connections and this combined with recent vibrations on a few dirt roads caused failure at one end as shown in the photos.

Solution

The Dometic service agent will make up another pipe from copper which will be a bit more flexible, a bit longer than the original so that it can be fixed to the bottom of the fridge instead of the waving in the breeze of the original.

How Widespread?

Don’t know but as mentioned before two others with the same repairer.

This is simply a description of a problem I (and a couple of others) had and whether anybody wants to seek advice from a gas fitter regarding their fridge is up to them, but I would if you have a similar setup and aluminium pipe.

I must find out whether aluminium pipe is allowed for gas in Australia anyway – anybody have an answer?

I will have a word or 2 with Dometic just letting them know that this particular fridge nearly burnt my house down.

Cheers
Frans

Thanks to Frans Hamer for putting this up on the CMCA forum originally and sending me a copy of it so I could keep it on file to reproduce if needed.

T1 Terry

[BobnBev]

Ive seen that before ,pulling the flare from the tubeing, One should use a little oil and that stops the swist as you tighten it up. I did the same thing with injector lines on the Leyland ONCE. it just cracked right at the end, and fuel went all over and I lost power.!!
Alli tubeing from over there is the same as their copper tube very thin walled . I would replace that with copper , and a good quality stuff as well. Lucky people....
Bob.....

ps. I should have read the whole story, fix with copper was the way to go....

[T1 Terry]

I can confirm the 240vac fridge freezers can handle the heat without any mods required. I have 2 x 250ltr Fisher & Paykel fridge freezers in our eclosed back patio running off an inverter/lithium batteries/solar, it is 43 degC out there at the moment and the freezer temps are -18.5C for the E249T and -19C for the C250T, the inverter powering the 2 fridges is pulling 8.25 amps @ 13.3v with both fridges running, gotta be happy with that there is virtually no air movement out there and the two fridges are side by side so the are sharing the heat on one side.

T1 Terry

[Craig]

The E249t was one of the fridges I was considering. What is the total power used for the day in this weather. The draw back is the height of the fridge. I would have to relocate the electrical switchboard to fit it in. Are their any other members using a domestic fridge? If so, which one and can you give us any performance figures?

[T1 Terry]

The last time I tested it the figure was around 100Ah at the highest for a 24hr period, that includes a defrost cycle, the lowest was a 60 Ah for 24hrs, that was a winter reading and I'm guessing the defrost didn't cycle in that 24hr period.
I can't recheck it now as I've maxed out my inverter capabilities so I don't have a spare one to just run that fridge and take readings. The only other inverter I have spare in a MSW and the induction motors aren't to happy running with them, although Steven is running his fridge with a MSW... don't wanna risk it.

A foot note to the fridge readings, the cabinet temp is 2.5degC in both fridges.

T1 Terry