I agree that fridges are not batteries friends. Normal practice for me is only to use the battery when on the move to keep a cold fridge cold. I always camp at places with electric hook up. My fridge is an oldie Electrolux 3 way, which I suspect dates from the 70s. Last weekend we camped Saturday night in a field and the battery lasted less than 15 hours. Won't do that again, will have to have another go with the gas, but that struggles to cope.
Im always intrigued what it is people need to keep super cold? I sold my fridge as i found once i stopped drinking lager and moved over to beer there wasent that much i needed a fridge for
Mine lasts about 7 hours on a 110ah leisure battery. Unless I'm driving a long journey (say 3 hours or more), I'll pre-chill the fridge on the mains from the house beforehand and then use the leisure battery to keep it topped up whilst driving en-route to my destination. When parked up I switch it off after two hours to conserve battery until I drive off again. Works great for me as I do a lot of wild-camping so continually top the fridge up whilst on the move.
After a bit of investigating I've come up with the following with regard to my Waeco fridge: The Fridge is 45W It consumes 3.75A constantly running to get itself down to temperature then 1A/hr to keep that temperature. So my 100AH battery in theory could have: 100/3.75=26.6 hrs running flat out or 100/1=100hrs running just keeping a pre-chilled temp. Obviously opening the door messes this all up but in theory at least have i got my GCSE physics right? If I have, my 100W solar panel, In Theory, could recharge a battery after 12.5hrs of perfect sunshine! W=VxA 100=12xA A=110/12=8 100A/H=12.5hrs 8 Please feel free to shoot me down in flames if i'm wrong, i'm off to find some perfect sunshine....................
My waeco has a similar rating. mine is a chest/box type. I have the optional insulating cover. I have gone 4 days (96 hours or thereabouts) on a 110aH battery, I also have LED lights, water pump, stereo, phone chargers. After 4 days the voltage on the leisure battery had dropped to about 12.2v, whats that about 30% remaining? 1A/h is equivalent to running for 16minutes/hour I know that mine does not run for that much, ambient temperature obviously has a bearing on it. Another trick I use is to set the fridge very cold, almost freezing beers, before I go then when I arrive i change the thermostat to not so cold so the compressor wont need to run for some time
A couple of 2 litre milk cartons pre-filled with water frozen at home give a camper fridge a big headstart. Fridges are well insulated and the cartons will still contain ice at least a couple of days even in a hot summer
Dont forget if you pick up a fridge and take it off vertical the coolant may take a day of running to end up back in the right place. My compressor fridge (portable type) gets cold immediately in the van but when I carried into the house it didnt really get cold for an entire night. Didnt keep the frozen stuff rescued from the broken freezer in the kitchen as frozen as it should have.
