Hello and welcome back to the channel
in today's video we are going to talk about
RV refrigerators
How they work
and tips for how to pack your RV fridge
so stay tuned
we're Charity Ben Dakota and Trinity we decided we didn't want to wait for a life of adventure
so in 2017 we bought our first RV and set off to live a life of travel in the USA
we've visited over 38 States in three years and have many more to go follow along to learn all
the best places to see RV and travel tips and much more
so now whether you've been an RVer for a while or you're a new to RVing
You have probably either learned or heard about how an RV refrigerator
is a whole different on how a residential refrigerator works
now if you are so fortunate and have a residential fridge in your RV
well then you just kinda skip forward a little bit
into the packing tips part
But if you have a traditional RV refrigerator that runs both of propane and electricity
in other words if its in an absorption refrigerator
you gonna want to make sure that you pay close attention here and take some notes
because
it does not work like a typical residential fridge
the way an RV refrigerator is designed to operate
is it actually designed to remove the heat from the inside of the refrigerator
versus a residential type of fridge
that's like pumping cold air into the fridge
to cool things down
so it's kind of reverse
of how a typical residential fridge works
and because of that
we need to pack and loaded up differently
than we would in a residential fridge
so we're gonna get into that here in just a few minutes
now because an RV refrigerator
works of actual liquids
that then are turn into gas
there are some important things to know about
the operation of your RV refrigerators
first and foremost
is your RV need to be leveled
for the fridge to operate correctly
now let me tell you the short version of a long story
we knew this where we bought our very first RV
we made that first mistake
we had it parked in front of our house
it was sloped, the fridge wasn't working
We thought there was something wrong
and we find out no, operator error
It wasn't leveled, and so that liquid ammonia couldn't circulate
because it needed the gravity to be able to operate properly
fast forward, RV life three years in
We were mudge docking in a friends driveway
that was anything but level and didn't think about the fact
that, that is not good for the fridge
it's 2am, the fridge starts alarming
letting us know it's not cooling
and I foolishly hit the reset button and went back to bed
and that started the whole chain of events of the fridge going into lockout mode
and a whole other long story for another video
But, let's just say remember, your RV needs to be leveled to have that fridge work correctly
If you're going to be parked in one place for more than say a couple of hours
Now travel days that's great
Because there are all sorts of movement and things are moving and shaking
And so, you don't have to worry about that unlevelness when you're traveling because it's constantly shifting
So during travel days, you're just fine
another thing to remember is that these RV refrigerators that run on both propane and electricity
still need a little bit of electricity to run even in propane mode
because it needs that electricity to ignite the flame for the propane
so even if your planning on pume docking for in the next period of time or something like that where you won't have access to short power
you are still going to need to make sure that you have enough power in your batteries to turn on the igniter to ignite the flame for the fridge
so now we've talked a little bit about how it works, I'm going to give you seven tips on how to load up your RV fridge
and make sure you'll stay till the end cause I have a bonus tip for you on how to make sure that you're not having anything damaged on your fridge on those travel days
So let's dig into those tips
Tip number one
you will want to make sure to turn on your RV fridge the day before that you are wanting to load it up
So this needs a good like 8 to 12 hours to be able to fully cool the eon to operating tempt
before that, you start loading food in it
and then a good way to check the temperature and this is regardless of the night before or where you're already on your trip
is with one of this one of these handy laser temperature pointers
[Music playing]
now this is from Amazon I'll put a link in the description below
this is coming so handy for RV life for so many things whether we've wanted to check the fridge tempt
or check the temperature of the air coming out of the AC vents
or anything that you just might need that for this works great
so you can just point this inside the fridge and I see that
right now more about fortyish degrees
so I know that my fridge is cool
I can feel cool air coming out of it right now
So we can go ahead and put food in it which I've already done
but you just wanna make sure that it's cool before you start loading it up
So tip #2 is to go ahead and check your fridge seals just to make sure that everything's on the up in up
a great way to do that is to take a dollar dollar bill ya'll
and just put in the seal of the fridge
and when you go and tuck on it's not that it should be a 100% tight where you can't remove it
but you should feel a little bit of resistance
and if there's not much of resistance there
then that just means that the seals are worn out and that you should replace the seals on the fridge so that your not losing any cooling through those seals
tip # 3 be sure to to "Pre-chill" your items
before that you actually put them in the fridge
so the last thing that you wanna do is have things like bottles of water or cans of sparkling water
or drinks that you don't have pre-chilled that you just go pickup at the store and throw the whole case into the fridge
That is going to absorb a lot of the coolness that's in there right away
remember this refrigerator works of that absorption system
and that's going to make that environment inside of your fridge warmer than what you really ideally want
So when you put items in make sure that they are already pre-chilled
If you're out traveling and that's not an option when you go to load up those types of items
just put in a few at a time, don't load it up with the whole case
So, tip #4 you want to make sure that there's space in between things in the fridge
and you don't want to pack it so where it's so full and everything is close together
so there needs to be some room around things for the hot air to be able to escape
and so that things stay nice and cool so leaves some gaps on the sides and in between things as much as you can
now if you have a super large family or maybe you need to shop in bulk and you just don't have the fridge space that you need
in your RV
there are ton of different options for portable type coolers that run of electricity that you can plugin to an inverter
or even the short power wherever you are camping at
I'll put a link in the description below
we actually carry one of these with us, not for actual fridge space, but as a backup
because these RV refrigerators have been known to be fenegy
and I don't want to be caught in a situation where this happens to go out and I'll lose all my food
so we just carry it with us now as a backup, but then it's also kinda handy for those grocery store runs if where we're staying is further away from the grocery store
so, there will be a link in the description below for the one we use
So, tip#5
if you're having some trouble with the efficiency of this, especially if you're camping somewhere where it's super duper hot
using a battery-operated fan, like this one and I'll put a link in the description below, we got this in Amazon
but it just takes to the batteries, it's battery operated you can really easily just put this in the fridge
and it will move the air around in there which will just help the efficiency a little bit of these type of refrigerators and keeping things cool
tip#6, you're going to need to defrost the freezer from time to time
now, I have just recently defrosted this so we don't have much frost build-up in here at the moment
but, these things will frost up and you're going to have to defrost them from time to time
not so much for a performance team point, but just tryna space standpoint
you're just going to lose space if you trying to shove things
in an area that's all frosted up
so, you just gonna have to defrost in from time to time
it's the nature of the beast
and you have to let me know in the comments below
I have never ever been able to get my RV freezer to keep ice cream
so, that is probably my biggest complaint about RV life is not having ice cream in my own freezer
so you have to let me know in the comments below if you ever had any luck with actually getting ice cream to freeze in an RV freezer
So in addition to beans in the fridge
you can find these kinds of spring-loaded rods on Amazon and I'll put a link in the description below
I've also seen this at some RV specific stores like Camping World or Lazy Days
But this
oh please
This works great because for things like your freezer
you can set this up and it just creates another barrier to where nothings going to kind of fallout when you open the door
after traveling
of all of our travel days, I always think about that thing that flight attendant say when you open the overhead bins about
contents can shiftering flight
seems like that that's a chronic thing
regardless of if that's your fridge or your cupboards
so these types of tools come in handy in both the fridge and the cupboard space to just keep things secure
So you are not getting flooded with the borage of items when you go to open these doors after traveling
so tip#7
make sure that the backside of your refrigerator unit is clean and clear from any debris
So one thing that can be a big problem with these particular units and the backside of the unit
because of how it's vented is things like wasps nest or spider webs creepy crawlies
that just can get up in here and can inhibit the airflow
that comes in through the backside of this
So, it's important to pull this off every once in a while
and just come in here blow it out checking, make sure that everything is on the up and up
then that you don't have anything in here that shouldn't be in there
so here is that bonus tip that I was promising you about packing up an RV refrigerator
So how to keep things safe
on travel days
this is my super-secret inside tip
So I use a ton of these types of bins
now these particular bins are from IKEA you can find bins of the dollar tree
you can find them at HomeTpolos Target Wallmart
you name it you can pretty much find bins
but putting things in bins especially things like
sparkling water cans
or these protein drinks anything that's kinda of like liquid
these helps to keep it from banging around, from moving around on travel days
and so using bins in your refrigerator space wherein, when you can definitely helps to keep those things secure on travel days
So you'll have to let me know in the comments below what sort of tips or tricks, hacks that you have for loading up your RV fridge
whether that's just how to pack it or maybe how to make it a little bit more efficient
and get better use out of your fridge
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Thanks for watching and as always we'll see you on the road