Preparing for Travel _ Refrigerator

How do you set up to go? My plan is to turn on the gas and refrigerator the night before I pull out. That way the refrig. & freezer will be up to temp. in the morning and I can load my food without using an ice chest.

I'm a rookie so forgive me if this fits into the "Dumb Questions Section!"

Pretzel41

Refer Travel

Some will tell you not to run your Refer while traveling, others will tell not to worry. I am on my 3rd RV, 1 Motor Home and 2 5ers. I have always traveled with the Refer on LPG and have not had a problem. The danger is that the flame could go out and the gas could build up and create a real problem. Give it a day or so and you while get many opinions, but the decsion is only yours to make.

I've traveled with mine on for over 20 years, never had it go out, nor had any problem. Opening the door and loading just before you leave is probably not the best way as it will warm up somewhat with the door open that much. Turn it on 2 days earlier, load the day or night before you leave. These refrigerators have a long temp recovery time.

We do a variation of the previous post. We back the coach up to the front of the garage doors and plug in the shore power to a 20 amp outlet with an adapter. Turn on the refig and after it has started to cool down we load in the food and drinks , which are already cold from the house refig.
Our refig is set to auto, so it runs on electric if plugged in or LP if not. I don't worry a lot about gas stations. If I remember, I turn off the refig before pulling up to the refueling area. I don't remember very often.
We have a diesel and I am more concerned about the guy at the gas island sucking on a cigarette and using a cell phone while filling up.
If a tanker is filling up the underground tanks I either go somewhere else for fuel or turn off the refig.
I seem to recall that running with the LP on in some parts of Canada is against the law.

flyfishing48 said:

If a tanker is filling up the underground tanks I either go somewhere else for fuel or turn off the refig.

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I go on too as I do not want to fill up with the crud that is floating around because of the tanker filling the tanks. I only hope when I pull in to fill up that a tanker has not recently been there and is now gone.

We leave our RV plugged into shore power 24/7 at the house, and the refrigerator is always on. And we leave alot of common things in the frig, ketchup and mayo.

This is only my second RV, but this encourages us to camp more. It is almost ready to go, 15-20 minutes to load a few things from the house. Hit Walmart for any extra groceries and head to the lake.

We have 30amp plug in on the pad at the house, leave 5er pluged in all the time.Some say not to leave the refer them on all the time but we've had no problems so far,and have done it on the last 3 or 4 units.

RV Fridges take several days to cool down when first started. They are made more to keep things cold than to cool things down. They work better by only adding a few things that are not already cool at a time. We leave ours on all the time the only time we had a problem was when it was not left on in our first trailer. We use a 20 amp circuit at home with no problem. We also set it so if we lose power it will switch to gas. We also travel with it on gas , never encountered a problem.

Good luck .

We always have ours set to auto, so when we unplug and leave it switches to gas. Never had a problem. DW is totally paroniod about it so I don't even tell her about it. Hope she doesn't read this...lol
Fred

I'm with the Jarhead, when I travel my reefer is on auto and my LP is turned on. I also turn it on a couple days prior to actually leaving while loading. I agree with cdbMidland about buying fuel (especially diesel) when the station is refueling its tanks. I got a load of water and crap once during a station refueling and they gave me one half of what it cost to drop the tank and replace the filter, but nothing to replace the diesel. Still an expensive proposition.

We can park our trailer at the house so we turn on the fridge a couple days before we leave and put everything in once it cools down. When we leave, we turn off the refrigerator. I never run the propane while on the road...no need to. We have driven as much as 10 hours in a Texas summer and I have never had anything spoil in the refrigerator. We plug in the power when we get to where we are going and turn the fridge back on.
As long as you do not open and close the fridge a bunch while travelling, there is no issue. My parents, (who have been fulltimers for several years), have always done the same and they also have never had anything spoil. If we feel that we need extra cooling in the fridge while travelling, we will freeze a half-gallon plastic milk jug full of water and leave that in the fridge. It will soak up a lot of heat.
The problem with leaving the propane on is the open flame while pumping fuel, the fact that it is illegal to drive in some areas with the propane running, and it is strictly illegal to run the propane while you pass through several of the tunnels in the USA and Canada.

Fuel vapors hug the ground, and my frig is 4 ft above that. Ther's no evidence to suggest even 1 fire or explosion resulted from running the frig. Millions of rv's on the road, year after year, with most running the frig. The vapor concentration required for an explosion is many, many times greater that would ever be experienced while refueling. Try it, I have:I placed a burning propane torch 3 ft off the ground, and tipped over a gallon of gasoline with a pole, directly under it. After 15 minutes there was not a single flame other than the torch. Tunnels do require that gas be turned off, but that is primarily to prevent a high concentration in an enclosed area because of a crash.

ct0128,
I do not disagree with what you are saying about fuel vapors...but ask any gas station owner if he minds if you let your propane fridge run while you pump fuel and I bet he would not allow it. Their rule is "No Open Flame" while pumping fuel.

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

As a newbee to RVing I am learning alot here about how things run and operate. Our dealer said that if we have our refrig set to auto and leave it there that we would be alright. He said that as long as we were hooked up to the tow vehicle and it was charging the battery on the fiver the refrig will run and keep everything cold. When we park at the camp ground then turn on the propane for the amount of time we planed to stay. Any advise here if this is not correct will be appreciated.

The regulators in use today have a safety feature built in that prevents a runaway condition like would happen in an accident. It limits full discharge, there has to be resistance to the flow. No resistance, propane flow is severely limited.

When a frig is set to Auto, as I and most others do, it runs on 110V when hooked to shore power, and when hooked to your vehicle and disconnected from shore power it runs on propane. It switches automatically.

Each has to make his or her own decision about running with the gas on. I use diesel, and when refueling my frig is a long ways from a gas pump. I guess it's possible to have a fire from doing it, you just can't find any proof though. You stand a better chance of getting hit by lightening. Stop at a Flying J or Loves and see how many RV's refuel with their frig running. To each his own...

HOSS said:

As a newbee to RVing I am learning alot here about how things run and operate. Our dealer said that if we have our refrig set to auto and leave it there that we would be alright. He said that as long as we were hooked up to the tow vehicle and it was charging the battery on the fiver the refrig will run and keep everything cold. When we park at the camp ground then turn on the propane for the amount of time we planed to stay. Any advise here if this is not correct will be appreciated.

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What your dealer told you is not true. In order for that to work you would have to have a 3 way Fridge. I know that mine only has a 2 way, meaning either 110 or gas. My previous FW had a 3 way so it would run on 12 volt power and when hooked up it ran off of the batteries. My dealer tried to tell me the same thing, but by just looking at the controls you can tell it is only a 2 way fridge and won't run on 12 volt power. If it is set to auto, once you cut power it switches to gas.
Fred

Thanks Fred, I have found out that there is so much to learn and do with the fiver that it is good to have a forum with this much information. It makes it easier for a nubee like myself to hear from those who have the experience and know how and are willing to take the time to help us. I read this all the time and will have more questions for this forum as time goes on. Thanks again!

You are most welcome. I read this forum dailey and learn something new almost everyday.
Fred