Dry camping results with our electric refrigerator

February 02, 2013, 11:53:43 pm

We finished 11 days of dry camping with our Lemon rally friends in the Quartzsite desert. This is our first extended boondocking experience since installing our Whirlpool electric refrigerator one year ago.

Everything worked great and our two 8D Gel house batteries held up just fine. We did not turn our inverter off at night, but did turn almost everything off except our refrigerator. Batteries were never lower than 12.4 volts (75% full) at 7am each morning.

We ran our generator each evening from about 5 to 9pm, and again in the morning from about 7 to 9am. We turned on computers and DVRs at about 7am, which were partly powered by our solar panels.

We added a switch in our fridge to keep the defrost heater off at night, but we never had to use it, so I may remove the switch.

FYI, we ran our generator 77 hours for the 11 days, about 7 hours each day. Even without campground costs, we spent about $10 /day for electric (no) hookups.

Re: Dry camping results with our electric refrigerator

Reply #1 – February 03, 2013, 07:38:56 am

We also did the dry camping bit at Quartzsite and our coach is total electric with zero problems . Ran gen set 3 hours in AM and 3 hours in PM ,or till 14.2 volts showed up not letting house batteries to go lower than 12.2 .Did not turn anything off, did all our normal life's goings on .Really like this coach ,but still find A thing or two that I forgot about or never knew in the first place . The Lemon rally will be missed by us ,as that is what brought us to this part of our great country in the first place .This is pay-off time for me after all the years I spent at sea .This is the life I dreamed of all that time . Yes it feels good . Brad Metzger

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