Overheating caravan RV fridge we install a cheap alternative & we have one to giveaway van fridge
welcome in this episode we're offering you a review of a product that we purchased two months ago the product being a Karl's rv fan kit and Karl's Kool Rv has given us one of their product kits to give away so don't throw your fridge away yet g'day everyone we are currently at a free roadside camp at somewhere in Queensland no really we're at Widgee in Queensland so we're here at the roadside camp and i've got a bit of a task today what has happened to us is that our fridge is not performing well see the top temperature it's at 6.1 degrees and the ambient temperature is at 27 now we've been watching this fridge for a little while ever since we got into Queensland and it has just been average everything seems okay we've actually had it fully checked and everything else it's uh working as per it should upon further investigation we found that our fridge was rated as a sub-tropical fridge now unfortunately when our van was built we had discussions with Bushtracker and we verified that the fridge that was going in was a tropical rated fridge because i was quite aware of the different fridge ratings just so that you can understand what they are i've just got them there a rating of sn which is subnormal has an operating range of plus 10 to plus 32 degrees c an n or normal rated fridge is plus 16 to plus 32 a subtropical fridge is plus 16 to 38 degrees and a tropical fridge is rated between 16 and 43 the reason they have the lower rating or the minimum temperature is because sometimes the fridges have difficulty operating below that in other words they might not cycle normally they might not defrost and so on that's why they have the minimum temperature so our fridge is a sub tropical rated one like i said we were quite sure that we were getting a tropical rated fridge we made sure that but obviously um obviously there must have been some miscommunication with Bushtracker when it was made we checked on our receipt and it didn't have anything stating that it was subtropical or tropical or anything like that where some other fridges that they offered did so we've got to deal with what we've got so our sub tropical fridge should be able to perform adequately between 16 and 38 degrees it does not as soon as it gets anywhere near 30 or 32 it just can't even hold the temperature as i've just shown you so what we have done is i've gone ahead and purchased a fan kit there can be several reasons why the fridge isn't operating as good as it should one of them is build up of heat in the van and it can't escape properly so i've purchased a fan kit to try and help that this is one that's produced by Karl's Kool obviously Karl's got to be a good guy because he's got a car with a k and we've gone ahead and bought that it's also got an internal fan that you put on the inside of the fridge to help distribute the air evenly around the fridge which will help also with the cooling so i'm just going to install that today and we'll get back to you and let you know how it goes hopefully the theory is that these fans are going to go on the inlet and outlet vents they simply just go on the back of them which means it will push air up through the fridge and create more of a draft up the back of the fridge and hopefully help it be more efficient and cool better so i'm going to install them one in the top vent one in the bottom vent it's got a controller that you can sit with the start and stop temperatures for the fans and also a thermostat that controls it all same with the internal one it's got a thermostat a controller and you mount that and you just blow across the back of your fridge cooling unit to help distribute the coolness more evenly so these just cable tie in the back of the vents like so apparently they say that you should space the bottom out uh 10 millimeters so that you get a good angle and it goes through the louvers on the grill better and it's more resistant to water why they didn't give you a 10 mil spacer with the kit i don't know so we've had to fish around and the only thing i could find was beads and beads that actually come off our our door hanging that Kathryn's made to keep the flies out so i've pinched a few beads we're going to stick them on the bottom for the spacer and hopefully it all goes well the details of the unit that we've purchased the cooling unit will be on our website along with the tropical ratings that i just went through so it is a common problem with a lot of vans that they only install non-tropical fridges because they say things like well the customer might only live in Victoria they don't need the added expense of a tropical fridge but you know i think caravans have got wheels so she'll be able to go anywhere around Australia i think the minimum should be a tropical fridge that's just my personal opinion one of these is longer than the other which is obviously the top vent so i'm going to put a long one on the top these are a standard Dometic vent and you do have to modify um or cut these little tabs off they're not used for anything to do with what we've got as in holding the vent in or anything like that righteo it looks like the gotta go right at the top of the vent and it says the top vent so the sticker faces the outside there saying on the top one so they push air out like that doesn't really matter i'll just put them in the middle so they've said all to do is just stick it on with cable ties it's a bit uh not super industrially installed but never mind we will see how it goes will add a little bit of weight to the the grill but i'm hoping it doesn't affect it too much especially over the corrugations and our you butte beads i'm going to put one on hopefully they don't split over time but we'll just see how it goes i have installed the top fans on the vent i'm just going to lower the control and and the other fans and everything down the cavity now and uh hopefully we can find some spots to cable tie the lead so it's not flapping around in there and then we'll do the bottom one oh it's going to be a tight fit not that's in all right top one's done just gonna have to leave that cable hanging down there next one bottom vents the label must face inwards so it's sucking air inwards if you get what i mean with this set of fans are going to position them offset so that it actually blows air in around the back of the compressor motor as this fan pushes the air towards us so i want to try and help that blow air through the little condenser and i've checked to make sure it's not dirty or anything so that's not the reason that it's uh operating averagely so regardless of whether we have to purchase a new fridge later on these fans will help a new fridge anyway um cope with excess heat so it's not going to be wasted money even if it doesn't work um because we don't want to buy we don't want to spend another three grand on a new fridge when we've got this fridge here that's should have been perfectly fine that's not so we'll do our best and try and make it work now there was an option with this kit to have a larger fan that can move more air at the top but i elected to stay with the smaller fans because the sound the noise of the fans operating was far less with the smaller ones even though the large one one had a higher airflow or a higher capacity i didn't want to um have the noise because this is where we sit the fridge is on the side where our awning is which is good for the fridge because at least it's in the shade but it's bad for us because when we sit under here with hot weather you can constantly hear the fan from the fridge running so i wanted to try and not add an excessive amount of noise to that because it's already noisy that's why we went with the smaller fan units on the top even though we could have had a larger higher capacity fan you can select the kit that you you think is best suits your needs some only have fans at the bottom some people only put the fan internally or we've gone for fans at the bottom and the internal fan and the fans at the top i'm also going to try and put a separator in here made out of like a plastic or cardboard core flute to try and direct this this air flow up so it's not trying to push it back out this vent so we get the whole airflow of going around and going up the fridge and coming out the top vent to try and make it more efficient but i'll see how i go i was just going to silicone it in there if i can get it all bent to the right shape and like i said direct that air flow up instead of trying to push it out here and suck in the same vent and causing all sorts of turbulence now we need to find a location for our controller so you want to have the controller accessible because you want to be able to change the settings wow they're quiet so with the controller for the fans you can set the on and off points for the fans the way it's set there as standard is turns on at 45 degrees it's currently 30 degrees and it turns off when it reaches 40 so the way to test whether the unit works is to simply increase the off temperature to above the on to 46 the fans turn on and it's going to blow the air into the compressor and the top one is working up there and it's sucking the hot air out so you can set this to whatever you want they suggest that 40 and 45 is what they recommend but you can vary it but you do need to keep in mind that you don't necessarily want these fans running while you're driving unless it really has to because you've got the all the air pressure from the wind and so on that'll be flying through i'm not exactly sure how that will affect it although i wouldn't think that there will be a lot of air movement so currently all good i just need to mount that thermo couple is going to go on the compressor tube so i'll find the hot one which is that one and we're going to cable tie it to there so it's going to monitor the temperature on the compressor outlet all looking good so far and they're reasonably quiet they're not super high flow but they are quite quieter than the one in there and four times five times the flow of that little one for sure and if i hold it there we should see the temperature go up because this outlet pipe is currently hotter that's a bit of a bummer let's see how it goes the compressor outlet temperature is currently 36 degrees should slowly go up because i've just turned it on switching on 45 so it's got a fair way to go so what i have now done to the fridge apart from installing the the fans on the covers the fans at the top i've created a baffle it guides the air up from the fridge heat exchanger so what used to happen before was the little fan would try and push air out this way and it'll also go up the cavity and out the top but at the same time the air was trying to suck in through the vent here so it was sucking in because of natural convection the little fan was pushing out against it and also going up so it was all mixed up so now what i've done is with these two fans it'll push it past the compressor motor around the back of it and that fan will suck it through and push it up as well as it will also go straight up because i've got this baffle up to about here and it'll mix and the fans at the top will suck it out so the air movement should be a lot better but there's only one real test and we shall see how it goes i've just got tape holding the controller in place until the silicon dries and then i've just got to do the one on the inside which is a bit riskier because i'm going to drill through the fridge which is a bit of a worry but we'll see how it goes hopefully i don't wreck it just a little bit more info on the fans i've got the fridge controller it's very hard to see it in there it's got some red and yellow numbers on it um what it's saying is that i've currently got it set so that the fans turn on on 39 degrees and they turn off at 45 degrees and the current temperature is 45 and that's of the uh fridge evaporator pipe work that that's attached to so that should turn off if it goes below 39 but it's a long way from that at the moment fans are still running bottom ones top ones they're not too noisy they're a little bit noisier than it used to be but the main thing is the fridge temperature which i'll show you now so our current fridge temperature is 2.6 degrees and we measure that inside the fridge we've got a wireless fridge temperature monitor which we have sitting in the basket in here that's measuring that but if we look at our other temperature display in here which you can see it there it's just going up 5.2 5.3 5.4 that is a a we've just got a little thermocouple that measures the temperature here and that turns this internal fan on and off so this fan is very very good it stops the back unit from completely freezing up when it does that the unit doesn't switch off so it can't defrost because it thinks it's never reaching its temperature so that fan helps push the air around the inside and it has made such a big difference with cooling food it's incredible so i think this is a super product for anybody that's got a fridge that's under performing in their caravan so currently inside we're sitting on oops i don't know whether you can see that currently inside we are sitting on 36 degrees by that temperature there this one says 33 it's a bit lower and it is near the fan so somewhere between those two is the real inside temperature and the fridge is happily sitting at 2.6 degrees which is great
thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe if you want a reminder hit the bell and remember we always love a thumbs up well down to the nitty gritty for your chance to win a Karl's Kool rv fan kit all you need to do is one head over to their facebook page which i'll put a link in our description and like their page then jump onto our instagram page and if you're not already following us follow us and send us a message giving us the answer to this question what did Karl use as a spacer? the winner will be announced in next week's episode g'day everyone we are currently at a free roadside camp somewhere in queensland and it's windy Widgee hey Widgee Widgee is it ? yep
2022-04-10 16:36
