Converting to residential fridge

[Mntom]

Hm. For some reason I thought you had some solar on your coach. Guess that's what I get for thinking.............

[samcrimm]

Bob,

So what was the problem, not enough battery, inverter?
Have thought about using your inverter for other items, tv, charging your phones while you sleep?

Sam

Originally Posted by Bob86ZZ4

First time I was able to do some testing on it. I've had the fridge running solely on the 4 6volt batteries for 30 hours now. It's not been very hot here. But, I was camping so I used some 12 volt energy during this time. I never hook up to shore water. I always use my holding tank and 12 volt water pump. I took a shower, and used the toilet numerous times. I also ran plenty of water. I opened and closed the fantastic fans a couple times (motorized openers/closers). A bit of lighting use. Many times opening the fridge. It's still working the fridge fine. I'm very happy with that. I think I might switch on the Iota charger tonight though because I've got it parked in front of my house now with food in it so I don't want it to quit working during the night.

[bushpilot]

I guess the question is what was the battery voltage level like after 30 hours?

Knowing you can keep things going for 24 hours (at a track) is good but knowing the battery condition is gonna be important.

It would be helpful to understand the (generator?) shore power run time needed to recover the batteries so you can start the drain/cycle all over again.

Probably worth considering the addition of a generator auto-start (probably should have one for the pets anyway).

Originally Posted by Bob86ZZ4

First time I was able to do some testing on it. I've had the fridge running solely on the 4 6volt batteries for 30 hours now. It's not been very hot here. But, I was camping so I used some 12 volt energy during this time. I never hook up to shore water.

[Bob86ZZ4]

The inverter has a display that switches between input volts and output watts. At least I think they're output watts. At the end of that 35 hours the input voltage was showing 12.3. That doesn't sound too bad to me but I'm no expert in this stuff. I think the inverter shuts down when the input voltage falls below 10.5 volts. So I suspect my batteries won't be damaged running down to 12 volts? It looks like most of the time when the fridge is running it's showing 30-60 watts. Yesterday it was showing 125 watts for a bit. Don't know why that would have been. I don't know how to tell if the batteries are fully charged up when running the generator and the Iota charger/converter? That sounds like it would be a good thing to know so I could know when to shut down the generator. Auto generator start would be nice too. We've just got Buck, The Wonder Poodle, and we rarely leave him in the rig. I do have an alarm system that I could hook up a low, or high, temperature sensor if I decide I need to. My alarm system uses cell sms messages through a sim card. I forgot that it's always powered so that might use a slight amount of my house battery current too.

[Bob86ZZ4]

Originally Posted by samcrimm

Bob,

So what was the problem, not enough battery, inverter?
Have thought about using your inverter for other items, tv, charging your phones while you sleep?

Sam

Sam, I actually now have two inverters. The 2k one is wired up to only provide power to run my refrigerator. The 600 watt one is wired to power the two televisions, as well as the surround/dvd and satelite receiver. Those circuits also have the receptacle under the dinette on them. So I leave a phone charger plugged into that. I like this setup so far. Easy to shut off that 600 watt inverter when not needed.

[bushpilot]

The EC30-W autostart we have for our Onan QD will start the generator if the batteries go be low a certain level for a certain length of time (certain = user programable).

The Autostart will also start the generator (in the absence of shore power) if the inside (assumed) temperature is a certain temperature (ac or heat, programable set points) - this means you must leave the thermostat ON & set, since the EC30W doesnt activate anything other than the generator.

IIRC i paid about 245 for the EC30-W.
I also consider the auto start from Magnum Energy which supports ANY generator and performs the same type functions as the EC30.

Heres some charts that will be helpful for your battery charge / saturation level:

[Bob86ZZ4]

Interesting. I don't expect to ever let the batteries get down to the 10.5 volt level of auto inverter shutdown.

[bushpilot]

Originally Posted by Bob86ZZ4

Interesting. I don't expect to ever let the batteries get down to the 10.5 volt level of auto inverter shutdown.

youre generally not supposed let the batteries go below 50% charge.

[Bob86ZZ4]

Originally Posted by bushpilot

youre generally not supposed let the batteries go below 50% charge.

12.2 volts for my batteries then. Thanks!

[samcrimm]

Bob,

So did you put your first inverter next to the larger one?
Also did your coach have each 120 plug home run to the breaker panel?
I was thinking about how I could the same thing, tvs, sat, certain plugs for charging the phones.
My breaker panel is located at the foot of the bed, and I been thinking how I would set something up like that. I have a xantrex but I tryed to get it to work and no luck yet, going to trace out everthing and go from there.

Sam

Originally Posted by Bob86ZZ4

Sam, I actually now have two inverters. The 2k one is wired up to only provide power to run my refrigerator. The 600 watt one is wired to power the two televisions, as well as the surround/dvd and satelite receiver. Those circuits also have the receptacle under the dinette on them. So I leave a phone charger plugged into that. I like this setup so far. Easy to shut off that 600 watt inverter when not needed.

[Bob86ZZ4]

Sam, check post #85. There should be a picture there of the two inverters mounted in a cabinet next to the bed. My circuit breaker panel is also located at the foot of the bed. I removed the romex for the fridge. Ran that to a junction box. Then I wired in the auto switch that switches over the power to the fridge from shore (or generator) power to the inverter power. I did the same for the circuits to the tv's. All these junction boxes and wiring are done under the bed. I guess I didn't take enough pictures to show all that. Sorry.

[Bob86ZZ4]

A bit of an up-date. I think somewhere way back I might have said I first tried to power the fridge with a 600 watt inverter? And it didn't work very well. Kept overloading the inverter and shutting it down. But the inverter was supposed to allow 1000 watts of surge. So I thought it should work. Anyhow, I installed a 2k watt inverter for the fridge and it's worked great. And I wired the 600 watt one to the two tv's and a dvd player. Well it gave me bunches of problems. Beeping and error messages and shutting down. I made several calls to tech support and they finally replaced it for me under warranty. Guess what, the new one works fine for the tv's and dvd player. I would like to try plugging the fridge into it and see if it works. But I'm worried that maybe trying to power the fridge at first with the 600 watt one might have somehow damaged it? It shouldn't have though.

[Mntom]

Bob, it sounds a lot like a defective inverter. I got a new 400 watt that would beep for a low battery even while on a fully charged battery. The replcement was fine and I still use it.

[Bob86ZZ4]

Yep, so far so good with the replacement. Glad I bought a good name brand like Xantrex. With a long warranty too.