Fridge underpowered?

[jerrybeaird]

[quote source="/post/12850/thread" timestamp="1435702235" author="@charliem"][font size="3"]OK. Good info. If I understand what is happening I'm going to guess: With the LED in place and the door closed I'm guessing the LED is partially illuminated and the fan is NOT turning or only turning slowly. Correct?
[/font][/quote]Yes, closing the door, (actually depressing the door switch), the LED is partially illuminated and the fans are spinning as normal, as far as I could tell.

Since the LED was still on, I went back to the original 10 watt bulb.  It might be that the 10 watt bulb gets juice, but not enough to show any light, but the LED, being real efficient, shows some light....just guessing.

[charliem]

[font size="3"]OK. I understand what's happening and how it's wired. That's actually a fairly ingenious way to wire it. I would have expected the fan to be running slower, and I think it really is if you could measure it, but the fan must not require much to run it either. Either way, if the shoe fits, wear it. Won't hurt if the LED stays on a bit. Gives the roaches some light with the door's closed  .  On the other hand the 10W bulb won't hurt much either since it's use is infrequent. Your guess on why the bulb doesn't light is correct because it is a very low resistance.

Camp on!
[/font]

[swbc150]

One very important step that really needs to be done is at the Campsite is to be sure the Frig is level. Not the Trailer, the Frig.
Use a Bubble level (they have them for RV Frigs), you need to place it in the Freezer section, then level the trailer so the bubble is right in the center of the "O".

During pre-cool my Frig can't be leveled with where I have it parked and it doesn't seem to matter too much for the 24hr pre-cool. If I did level it I'm sure it would pre-cool even better.

Camping up in the nearby Mountains this week with day temps staying in the mid-70s/low 50's at night I didn't need more than the #3 position to keep the Frig at 38F on propane (Dry Camping).

[oprlrt]

I had the same problem on my first trip, got the book out and found out I had it set on auto. When using gas it has to be on gas. Just got back from a week trip to Oceano dunes in central coast California and it worked fine.
Lee

[dh50]

Most RV refrigerators work on the absorption principle, there is no compressor, for that matter, no moving parts! The unit in my AXXESS is a Dometic, runs on LP or AC. Dometic says that AC is the more efficient mode. Another critical design difference is that the fridge needs good ventilation at the rear of the unit. Most LivinLites I've seen have two plastic vents on the exterior wall. Air must enter the bottom vent, rise and flow over the cooling coils and exit the top vent. Inadequate airflow will limit the fridge cooling capacity.

We just returned from a 3-day trip in central FLA ( 90+ degrees). After running the unit on AC for almost a full day prior to leaving, we started out at 35 degrees, loaded cold food, all was well the first day. Next day however, the unit got so warm ( running on AC shore power) my wife was afraid to keep meat inside, so we used an ice chest. After returning home, fired up the fridge on AC; sure enough, after about 20 hrs. temp was down to 35 degrees. After digging into the Dometic manuals, discovered that, for my particular model, when installed using upper and lower side vents, Dometic recommends installing a vent fan in the rear to help air flow in removing heat from the cooling coils. Not all fridges need one, but evidently LL either didn't know or chose not to install a vent fan in my AXXESS.

Putting a fan inside will help circulate the internal compartment air, but all the heat load is discharged through the rear cooling coils, especially the finned tubes in back of the freezer. Having the fridge perfectly level is not as important as it was on previous generation units. As long as moving around in the trailer is not impaired by the amount of off-level, the newer fridges will work fine.

[swbc150]

On my Dometic I find the Cooling works best on LP, I cool down 1st with AC here at my home, then switch it to LP. Leveling the Frig does work best for my unit as I gain roughly -3 to -5 degrees cooler when leveled.(after leveling I do use stabilizer jacks on all 4 corners)
Just got back from dry camping for 5 days, day temps were in the mid-80's, nite temps in the mid 40's, elevation was 8,200ft. I left the Temp set at Number 5 for coldest during the day with the Trailer in direct sunlight the Frig stayed at 42F, around 7am the temp was 37F for a avg reading. The Freezer Temp stayed anywhere from -5F to -10F.  
Will be returning to the same area next month but this time the Trailer will be parked more in a shaded area during the heat of the day so I can compare the temp readings and maybe drop the temperature setting to a lower number.

When I 1st fire up the Frig to pre-cool my Dometic doesn't take 20 hrs to cool down, it starts cooling in a short 4 hrs and by 8 hrs later it is cooled enough to add food. Maybe the low Humidity here in NM helps in cooling down the Frig.(right now it is 9% Humidity @ 7PM, the highest we had today was 11% and on this campout it was never higher than 20%)

Also helps not to overpack the Frig even if the food you put in is cooled 1st, I've tried a in-frig cooling fan but wasn't impressed with it, all it did was take up some needed room inside the frig and I saw no reduction in cooling. I try to leave the top rack in my frig lightly loaded with food, that is where the inside cooling fans are, seems to help for air-circulation.

My 2000 Apache pop-up overhead camper had a Dometic Frig/freezer in it but it had a outside cooling fan installed(with a on/off switch), it cooled way better than my current Dometic in my Bearcat.