12v Fridge Boondocking Time with Josh the RV Nerd

hey everybody josh airbeanerd here at hayler rv of coldwater michigan and i'm hanging out one of our eagle hd fifth wheels today where you have the new optional 12 volt refrigerator i was a big proponent of this i'm really glad to see jayco among a ton of other brands uh start to offer this i think wildwood was really one of the very first ones to offer a 12-volt fridge just as a standard matter of happenstance and one of the big questions that we get like here in the midwest a lot of people are part campers and i know that other areas of the country there's far more boondocking that goes on so as a nationwide coast-to-coast dealer one of the questions we get is i boondock how friendly is this for my boondocking lifestyle can i actually keep my fridge running or am i gonna end up with spoiled milk so i got a hold of my friends at firion who are the largest volume supplier of 12 volt refrigerators in the industry and i got some actual testing data from them now first want to establish a few ground rules so you kind of understand what the uh criteria were during this testing where the calculations include a solar panel it's assuming a south facing solar panel with a 10 degree angle tilt unobstructed light and during the summer solstice basically in english meaning maximum possible sunshine perfect world scenario it's got the fridge set to off-grid efficiency settings which when you're in that mode by the way at 75 degrees ambient temperature it only pulls about 2.4 amps per hour which is crazy low and at 90 degrees ambient temperature obviously a more real-world kind of statistic you're only still pulling about 3.8 amps still very very low and obviously you can kind of scale up and down from there it's also assuming only the refrigerator load meaning no lights no fans which obviously is not the most real world uh kind of calculation but they had to establish some kind of baseline because there's no way they can predict how much lights and fans and everything else and usb plugs everybody else is using and during these tests it is assuming that the ambient temperature is a steady 75 degrees all right so with that established this also always assumes just a single battery so it can only get better from your single 75 amp hour battery so with just one battery no solar no nothing they had this fridge running for 32 hours okay that's pretty good if you need to make a pit stop overnight or you're making a long trip that will be more than enough because obviously you could be using lights fans awning slides you could be in and out of the fridge and you'll have plenty of battery reserve and when you're driving it's going to help keep that thing charged back up now with just a simple 50 watt solar panel they extended that time from 32 hours to 77 hours well that's pretty much a weekend right there and again it's not really hard if he had to plug in the truck to get a little supplement juice here and there okay you could do that now here's the thing though this is the one that i really was uh impressed and encouraged by because in my mind if you are going to be a true off-grid warrior chances are you're rolling with at least two batteries i know i would and chances are you're rolling with at least a 100 watt solar panel i think those are very realistic expectations but with just a single battery in that same 100 watt solar panel they got this thing to run for 17 days boom that's a lot that is a lot of time you know two weeks now understand that's that was just a scientific just the fridge running they weren't opening and closing it they weren't running slides awnings fans lights every other thing so obviously your real world camp time uh reserve on that battery would shrink down from there but again i think if you're boondocking if you're serious about this you're going to be rolling with at least two batteries i know i would so with a 100 watt solar panel which you don't even have to necessarily have on the roof just a portable panel is all that takes those little side mount plugs that's all it takes to give yourself i mean a serious amount of off-grid time i think they totally qualify for off-grid friendly when you consider the fact that a true off-grid person is probably already taking those supplemental measures regardless so they cool faster um they they operate down the road safely there's no fire hazards no fire concerns they're the best of like all of the world's all kind of smashed into one i'm a big fan of them and i think that you're going to see them pretty much well there already are in in anything short of like a giant full-time fifth wheel they already are pretty much the dominant thing available out there now i think it's only going to become more so so it's also important to remember this is another thing they're an active 12-volt compressor fridge they're not a passive fridge like i've heard people say i had an old 12-volt fridge in my pop-up and it could barely even keep the pot chilled let alone you know keep ice or ice cream okay when you're in those little campers like that that's still a passive fridge and 12 volt doesn't provide enough juice to it'll chill stuff but it won't really get a cold cold this is an active compressor fridge and if you don't understand what that means let's forget the whole refrigerator thing for a moment and let's talk about something like uh belly heating in an rv that we already pretty much understand so um passive cooling is kind of like radiant heat so imagine you just have a hot object sitting in the middle of this room and it just slowly spills heat into the room it will eventually get there it will eventually heat the room but it will do so more slowly actually technically more efficiently but more slowly efficiency and speed are not necessarily the same thing now forget that and imagine you have forced air heat ducting pumping the hot air into the room well that will naturally heat the room more quickly think of that when you're talking about this this is an active compressor cooler it's effectively actively cooling everything much much faster it will cool at least four times faster according to jayco's studies so these things work like a charm you know if you're just going to make a quick pit stop you don't need to really mess with anything they're going to work fine um things like all of the cherokee campers basically that we have at halodrv have that optional uh 50 watt solar juice pack with a little charge controller which is again enough for a good weekend especially if you add a second battery and on those cherokees by the way you can add a second 50 watt solar panel and not have to monkey with any other equipment and there you go now you have two batteries and you have the 100 watt capacity to get you a long weekend it works it's easy it's awesome it's very scalable to real world scenarios and then there's a lot of things uh like these jacobs they have sidemount roof prep uh solar or side mount solar prep roof mount solar prep side mount roof prep that's your uncle josh the rv nerd you get the point anyway i've gone on this longer than i meant to but i'm really pumped about these things i'm very excited i think that these are pound for pound the best option out there i understand that for some specific users they may not be the perfect fit for your style of camping but i think for most everybody this is one of the best ways to go if you need more information on that if you're curious about what kind of campers we have that offer these 12 volt fridges give our team here at hayward our vehicle let us know the style of camping you're looking to do and we can help give you some suggestions based on uh you know your specific camping needs so of course as always take care stay safe have fun and happy camping everyone and if you appreciate the actual data information things like this that we get to put out every now and then make sure you follow our channel guys because we have stuff coming out like this regularly and i just don't see a lot of it out there we try to keep you in the know so you know which way to go with your rv purchase thanks for watching have a great day you

Channel: Haylett RV Reviews, News, & More

Views: 50,012

Rating: 4.9665737 out of 5

Keywords: Michigan, RV Dealer, camper, wholesale, guaranty, bullyan, general rv, camping world, terrytown, rv nerd, josh the rv nerd

Id: HNCnwXOh1ng

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020