The RV Refrigerator BATTLE continues! Gas Electric vs Residential vs 12v

what's going on guys so today's video is to discuss rv refrigerators now i made a video about this recently where i went over the three most popular types of rv refrigerators those being your gas electric your 12 volt and your full residential refrigerator but this specific video isn't to focus on the best use and the best scenario to use each individual refrigerator it's to focus on the issues that you could potentially have with the refrigerators and that's i think something that concerns a lot of folks recently you've seen a lot of folks talk about the benefits of one over the other and there are really two camps when it comes down to this either people that will never go back to a gas electric refrigerator or people who will never move to a residential refrigerator and these are definitely things worth understanding as to why some people may have a better experience with one refrigerator over another and that's what i hope to talk about in this video so hang tight i'll be right back [Music] all right so when it comes to the different types of refrigerators let's talk about the ideal situation for a gas electric refrigerator and where you're most likely to have the best success with its performance and that's going to be basically areas where the temperature and the climate is more temperate where you don't have to deal with extreme heat and extreme humidity pretty much year round if you're in an environment where you have let's just say below 60 relative humidity most of the year then a lot of times these gas electric refrigerators will perform very well they'll perform just as good if not better in some cases than a residential refrigerator now if you live in the deep south if you live in areas where the humidity hovers around 70 to 80 percent year round and the temperature can climb as much as you know 100 to 110 degrees then a gas electric refrigerator just won't perform well most of the time in those scenarios so if you look at rv dealerships that stock one type versus another they're taking in their geography when they are looking at those refrigerators they're looking at folks who buy rvs and predominantly use them in areas that the refrigerator might perform best down here in south texas a gas electric refrigerator just doesn't work real well it doesn't cool down enough to provide you that safety margin that you need to ensure that your food doesn't you know develop any type of bacteria from not being cold enough so whenever you look at the different types of refrigerators that are out there you have to understand that there's a reason why in the south residential refrigerators are becoming more and more popular 12 volt refrigerators are becoming more and more popular and regardless of what a lot of people think about 12 volt being better in a mobile environment than a residential they both have very similar compressors a 12-volt refrigerator has a smaller compressor because it's a smaller refrigerator and they haven't made them that large yet but they're both susceptible to the same type of issues in regards to moving around and being jostled around and going over harsh road conditions and because of that the failure rate of one over another isn't necessarily greater or less but the big advantage 12 volt refrigerator is going to have is the fact that it's easier to get in and out of the rv if there's a service issue so with a residential refrigerator what you lose by having the luxury of a residential refrigerator is ease of pulling it out or putting it in now a lot of your larger rvs that you see with a full residential refrigerator generally have a window large enough that you can remove the refrigerator through the window or the service department can if they have to completely remove it for whatever reason in some smaller travel trailers or travel trailers in general you may not have a large enough window so it might require a slide to be removed in order for you to remove or service that refrigerator so that's the big distinction there now the problem a lot of dealerships have is if you buy the unit from them you're going to go back to them when you have a problem and the ability to get that warranty and their service department to get reimbursed or paid for the labor and time that it takes to remove the refrigerator may not be worth it because the amount the manufacturer pays them may not make it worth their time to actually do the work but they're kind of forced to do the work to keep the customer happy and ultimately they may just really build a bad relationship with that type of refrigerator because the extra work it entails okay so we know that it's more difficult to remove a residential refrigerator from an rv and i think that's pretty obvious considering the fact that anything large that you put inside of the rv is going to be relatively difficult to get out if you need to service it case in point a reason why a lot of manufacturers use a two-piece shower stall is because if you have a problem if you crack it if there's some type of an issue there's water damage underneath it things like that you can actually remove the unit and you can work in that area without having to take a wall out if you have a one-piece shower assembly it's very very difficult if not impossible to remove the shower stall without removing an exterior wall simply because the showers generally don't reside in slides so it's going to actually be on a wall and in some cases again the wall has to be removed to remove the one-piece shower stall system and then oftentimes they'll recommend replacing it with a two-piece system so you don't have to go through that headache again same thing holds true with refrigerators so if you get a huge full-size residential refrigerator inside of an rv they probably put it in there before the walls went on and if it was in there at that point the challenge of course is getting it out so having an rv with large enough windows to get it out that way or unfortunately if you have to remove a slide to get it out you know those are just things that you might have to deal with if the refrigerator needs to be completely removed for whatever reason now the benefits of a residential refrigerator are pretty good as well the fact is if you live in the south if you live in an area where a gas electric refrigerator just won't properly cool then a residential refrigerator is a great alternative now where i don't recommend using residential refrigerators are in travel trailers that generally don't have any type of upgraded suspension equalizer you run the risk of course of damaging the appliance when you go over really rough terrain and the chassis of the rv is just having to absorb all of that so if you have a good quality upgraded equalizer with some suspension built into it then that's going to mitigate some of that damage to some degree and it's going to reduce the stress on the appliances as well as everything else inside of your rv the other area that you want to be careful with residential really any refrigerator is placing it in the back of the unit where it's going to essentially have the most movement generally if you place it anywhere between four to six feet behind the back axle of your rv you're going to be transferring a significant amount of movement whenever you go over bumps whenever you go over potholes whenever you go over any type of rough road surface to the actual refrigerator unit in most cases i appreciate a refrigerator when it's placed in the center or even closer to the front of the rv so you're seeing a lot of these rear kitchen floor plans coming out on the market and the refrigerator is almost always placed towards the back of the rv and as nice as these floor plans are you do run the risk that whatever appliances you have back there could potentially break you could even run the risk that if you carry let's say water bottles in your sink that your sink could become detached from its solid surface and collapse in people have experienced that you run the risk that light fixtures and other things that essentially you're going to have more movement could fall even your trim so anything essentially placed towards the back of the rv runs a much higher risk of being damaged whenever you're traveling and that's just something to keep in mind and your appliances of course are no different whether it's a microwave whether it's a stove whether you have a dishwasher in your unit or whether you have your refrigerator in the back so just keep that in mind now again when it comes down to what refrigerator is going to be right for you i don't want you to just assume that any one type is going to work perfectly for you or that any one type is exempt from potentially having some type of an issue i think that if you go to most rv dealerships you'll actually see more gas electric refrigerators sitting outside their shop than you would see residential units and i think what most people end up doing is just going out of their way to fix a residential refrigerator as opposed to having to take it to the shop where it could potentially be removed now something else to think about when it comes to a residential refrigerator versus a gas electric it's what happens if you do need it worked on if it's in your unit and you need a technician to fix it whether you go to an rv dealership or you actually call a appliance technician to come out to look at your unit so the first part of that is if you call a technician to come out to you there's going to be cost associated with that so you end up having to get that cost recouped somehow either from the manufacturer from the dealer some way of getting that paid for because you're likely to have to pay for it yourself and generally that's how you maintain the warranty on that specific appliance now i know what most people want to do you buy your rv from a dealership and you want to take your rv back to that dealership to get it worked on well unfortunately most of the times the technicians at the rv dealership aren't experts in residential refrigerators they're not really certified to work on them and by them working on it it could cause other related issues with your warranty that's not always the case but it is the case in some cases there are compromises there's pros and cons to each system most rv dealerships are very familiar with repairing a gas electric refrigerator they are becoming more familiar with removing and repairing 12 volt refrigerators in most cases a 12-volt refrigerator again can be removed relatively easy as a gas electric refrigerator can residential refrigerators require kind of a different type of repair and not so much a different type of repair just one that rv dealerships tend not to be as familiar with in some cases they want to replace the refrigerator when it could be repaired as opposed to replaced so the goal with this video is just to help you understand what refrigerator might be right for you understanding the potential issues you could run into and this goes for any appliances i don't think we'll ever own an rv with another gas electric refrigerator we've had three of them and every single time we run into the same problems and most of the time those problems just relate to the fact that it never cools down or by the time it does cool down it's dark outside so everything's great at night but the minute the sun comes up it has a hard time cooling and you open the refrigerator for three seconds and close it you've lost all your cold air and the system again doesn't cool down effectively and that's a problem i deal with down here if i were living up north if i were living on the west coast then i would likely get a gas electric refrigerator because that wouldn't be an issue but having food spoil is definitely an issue for us and that's the reason why we're big fans of residential and it could fail right our new fifth wheel comes with a residential samsung refrigerator it could fail on us we could have problems with it we hope we don't and if we do we're gonna try to take care of those problems and try to fight the battle of the warranty side on the back end but at the end of the day it really comes down to personal preference it really comes down to maintenance and it comes down to where you take your rv where you travel the most the type of climate you live in and how you plan on using your refrigerator in the long run anyways guys i sure hope you enjoyed this video if you haven't had a chance please take a moment subscribe to my channel give me a thumbs up we'll talk to you again very soon

Channel: Big Truck Big RV

Views: 30,842

Rating: 4.8931751 out of 5

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Id: NYEYdF3C7TQ

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 28 2020