On the subject of your Refrig. This is what I did before we went fulltime.
If we were going on a weekend trip and leaving on Friday evening, I would connect an extension cord to the house receptacle on Thursday morning. A 15 or 20 amp circuit is ok. You normally won’t run you’re A/C at this time. Turn on your Refrig and start letting it get cold. If you have any frozen food put it into the freezer, if not load a few bags of ice from the house and place in the freezer.
About letting the refrig run 24/7. We are fulltime and run ours 24/7 and defrost about every 3-4 months.
Now the other part that has come up in this thread. I am not a firefighter. I did fight fires in the Navy. I am not educated in fire safety and do not claim to have credible knowledge about fires. So I feel that I need all the information I can get to make a knowledgeable decision. I am not a mechanic so I go to a mechanic to repair my truck. For knowledge about a fire I go to someone that is educated and knowledgeable about fires.
I went to Life On Wheels (LOW) conference in Bowling Green Ky. At the conference I took a course taught by Mac McCoy. This is an impressive course. He had local fire fighters at the class because of local fire laws. After the class he showed how to put out fires and what not to do. He showed the local fire fighters information about specific fires and extinguishers that would put out fires that they had not seen. Below is a URL to his website. You can check it out or not. Your call.
http://www.macthefireguy.com/Home-old.htm
Mac teaches the following and I follow it. Before you take off on a trip turn off your propane. Your food in your refrig will not spoil. It will loose very little cool. If you leave it off for 48 hrs yes it will start to get to warm. But while your driving down the highway and stay the night some where, then turn on the propane or connect to electric.
Actually the big debate really is not about food in your refrig. It is that if you are involved in an accident or the line on your propane is damaged, a leak could make the propane into a blow torch. Something else I did not know, is if your rig catches fire get away up wind from the rig. It has nothing to do with propane. It has to do with fiberglass. When it burns the fiberglass smoke carries small particles of the fiberglass. If it gets in your lungs it won’t come out and in the near future you will have a problem breathing. Firefighters are required to use breathing devices when fighting a fire involving any type of fiberglass vehicle, boat, RV or whatever.
Also, many people take the latches off the propane doors and replace them with locks. This is a no no.. A firefighter will not have a key to open the door and turn off the propane. If you do have a fire, when/if fire fighters arrive tell them where your propane tanks and cut offs are located.
OK.. Remember I am not the expert, so no flaming.. Make up your own mind.
FWIW
BC