Residential fridges

[Defiant]

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but the burning question of the day is....why is it I can never find a Mobile Suites with a residential fridge all ready installed ? I know they can be ordered when you order from factory. I peruse many dealer sites and have yet to find one, I despise the Norcold/Dometic fridges they are nothing but problems.

[hitchup]

Have you ever checked the inventory @ Southern RV in Jonesboro, GA (just south of Atlanta).

They seem to have sold most of their DRV inventory, but usually have some models that have upgrades like Wolf stovetop or Residential fridge.

[sprehoda]

Would any of the people who have these residential fridges please post how long you can run them from a full battery charge to 50% discharge.
I realize a lot depends on how often you open the doors but I hope to see at least 24 hours with normal use and four batts.
Am I dreaming?

[Defiant]

Thank you Hitchup Now I realize that the Elite suites are more likely to have them installed, much rarer in the Mobi suites, I just fail to see why anyone who is willing to spend 80-100thousand on a fifth wheel to full-time in would settle for the crap that Norcold/Dometic

[terry and jo]

We are in the process of modifying our 2010 to take out the Dometic 4 door and put in a residential. We were already equipped with a pure sine wave inverter and have a Honda EU3000IS generator as a backup.

Incidentally, over on SOITC there has been an extensive thread about changing out, and includes some blog postings I have done showing what other Suites owners have done with theirs.

http://www.suitesowners.com/forums/s...king-for-BigAl

While out Samsung french-door refrigerator hasn't arrived yet, there was a bunch of us that got together today to take out the Dometic and prepare the space for the larger residential. I took a bunch of photos during the process so far and will be either putting a blog post together or putting all the photos out on our Photobucket account. But, that is for later. I'm too tired today.

Slade and Alicia Tennery of Rolling Retreats in Elk City was a part of the team doing the job today. They commented that they will be ordering almost every coach they get with a residential. I suspect that one could still order one with the Dometic if they were going to boondock, but I imagine any that they order will have the residentials.

If you want, check them out at the link below. Their website still shows a 2013 Elite with a 23 cu ft residential refrigerator in it.

http://www.rollingretreats.com/

Incidentally, Slade is very conscientious with all the work he does. They replaced our standard dining table with 4 chairs with the new style with the cabinet against the wall, and today helped with the modifications needed for our Samsung. I'd recommend to everyone.

Terry

[Defiant]

Hi Terry and Jo,I have been following your story on your RF install on your blog and some of the other sites you post on ...very informative. I'm sure I could do one or have it done if I really had to ,but prefer to have it already installed when I buy or Order, we are not quite there yet, a2 more years of our Winnebago Adventurer, ,then everything goes house cars and MH and on to our full-time 5th wheel and diesel,

[terry and jo]

Speaking of the progress of us replacing our Dometic with a residential, I just posted another posting on my blog about Stage One of the modification. That involved removing the Dometic and making the modifications to create the space needed for the residential refrigerator.

Since I recently moved my blog over to a different blog "hosting" site, I'll just provide a link to my latest entry. There is a link within that entry that will take anyone interested to our Photobucket account to see roughly 39 pictures of the work we've done so far. It should open up in a slideshow presentation that can be paused to be able to read the descriptions of the photos below the images.

http://ignoringthebarkingdogs.wordpress.com/

Terry

[sprehoda]

The Samsung RF197AC is 18 CF.
DRV has be installing 23 CF residential fridges.
This makes a big difference to us.
Might only be possible for a new install.

[terry and jo]

I've seen one of the Elite's with the 23 cu ft refrigerator, and it does appear to require a modification of the "standard" cabinetry to fit it in. That model that I saw was also equipped with an inverter.

If you want to see pictures of that Elite with the residential, there are some photos here:

http://s1190.photobucket.com/albums/...SB3/?start=all

As for us, 18 cu ft is just right to go into an existing refrigerator cavity and is about 5 cu ft more than what the Dometic was. Since we don't normally keep a lot of food in ours, 18 cu ft is plenty big.

Terry

[Defiant]

Love all of the pictures! You can really see many things that might be overlooked while walking thru ...it can be a sensory overload, so now when we go to Hershey Pa. show we will probably spend much more time going thru the DRV and Redwood ..thank you Terry and Jo for taking the time to post those great pictures ! Now if our 2 years til go time would just hurry up and get here !

[Motor31]

Terry, I am curious. How much generator is required for the fridge if you are dry camping? We get along fine with honda 2000 when we dry camp in the current configuration.

[terry and jo]

Mike,

I don't have a definitive answer for you yet as we've not received the refrigerator for me to check and see what kind of amperage it is going to pull. What we have in the way of a generator is the Honda EU3000IS which is rated at about 2500+ watts continuous and 23 amps.

Hopefully, we will have the refrigerator in the next couple of days and I can check what the amperage rating is on the fridge.

Terry

[hitchup]

The Samsung RF197AC is 18 CF.
DRV has be installing 23 CF residential fridges.

I'd say I'm with Terry on this one. We've had more than one size refrigerator while fulltiming.

The 13cf Dometic can be small if we have too many leftovers AND go out shopping. But it forces me to use up leftovers and we rarely get moldy food or too many multiples. I can open up the fridge and see almost everything we have with the shallow shelves. (The freezer though is another problem,)

I think an 18cf would be preferable and 23cf may be too large for the two of us.

[Defiant]

Terry and Jo ... keep us up to date on how the install goes

[terry and jo]

It will be this weekend or into the first of next week. Our Samsung came into the Best Buy in OKC yesterday and we went ahead and picked it up rather than wait for them to deliver it today. I need to look it over and determine the best/easiest way to anchor it down to prevent movement when traveling.

When we got it home last night, we unpacked it and plugged it in to make sure it cooled BEFORE putting it in the coach. I also put some boards together to put on top of our furniture dolly to assist in moving the fridge around the end of the counter and into the "cavity" that is there for the fridge. Those boards should put the height of the dolly at the same height as the "floor" of the refrigerator cavity.

As we go along and after we finish, I will post pictures and descriptions on my blog and possibly on our Photobucket account and then link to all of them here on 5th Wheel Forums and over on SOITC.

Terry

[terry and jo]

Here is the latest, although not the final update about our residential refrigerator change-over. It is a link to my blog with some details and pictures of my preparation work and a rough preview of the refrigerator itself. The blog entry at the link below will provide most, if not all of the details.

We are now only hours away from getting this job done as it is now 1:00am and our sons will be over in the daylight to help with getting it inside and installed.

http://ignoringthebarkingdogs.wordpr...ion-stage-two/

Once the job is done, I'll post final comments and pictures of the finished product and look.

Terry

[terry and jo]

We got our Samsung refrigerator installed this past weekend and we found we had made some mistakes in our preparation. Thus, I want to post that before I post the final installment of this modification. Hopefully, what I point out in my latest blog entry will be helpful for those that may be planning a similar endeavor.

Check out the blog entry:

http://ignoringthebarkingdogs.wordpr...ssons-learned/

Terry