I'm of the "buy once; cry once" mentality and I'm looking for a dual zone fridge/freezer to start bringing on my trips. It seems like the top brands are dometic or ARB that I've looked into so far, but I'm open to whatever and I doesn't need to be "brand name" I just want to buy it once and get the best. It'll be going in the back of my Taco where I removed the rear seat for gear. Also for people with experience do you end up wishing you went bigger? I've got a battery setup so I'm not worried about the power draw too much, but of course I'd still like to have the lowest draw possible. Thanks for any help!
Best Fridge/Freezer I can get for my truck? Also go biggest you can afford?
- Thread starter deuceb
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67cj5
Man On a Mission
I have the ARB 50 and the ARB 82Qt/78L, If you are planning longer trips I would be looking at the 63 or the 82Qt,
The 63 uses the same compressor as the 50 does which will use less power but the 82Qt is very impressive and due to it's shear size it holds the cold a ,lot longer when the power goes off, It's a Beast, Buy Once Cry Once Get the 82Qt and you will have enough space even for the longest of trips.
Hope that helps.
The 63 uses the same compressor as the 50 does which will use less power but the 82Qt is very impressive and due to it's shear size it holds the cold a ,lot longer when the power goes off, It's a Beast, Buy Once Cry Once Get the 82Qt and you will have enough space even for the longest of trips.
Hope that helps.
dreadlocks
Well-known member
I've got an Engel MT80 and I frigging love it, expect it to last me decades..
alanymarce
Well-known member
We've used an ARB 47L and now have a Dometic 35 L. I wouldn't want to get anything bigger. It does mean having a practice to optimise use - for example, we keep a couple of beers, a couple of soft drinks, and a bottle of white wine in the refrigerator, and each time we take one of these out, put another in. We are two, and this works for us, however if we were 4 people or more then we'd need more capacity. For food, we have enough room for items which need to be kept cool, and restock as needed. If we're going to be unable to restock for more than 4 or 5 days, we carry more items which do not need to be refrigerated. Any bigger refrigerator would add more weight and take up more space, for no value (in our case).
Herbie
Rendezvous Conspirator
My only advice is be really sure about where you're going to put it, and how you'll use it.
I bought a decent fridge for my first purchase - it's still working very well for the guy I sold it to after I realized it wasn't the right shape for my space. My 2nd fridge is 100x better for me. In my case, I was much better served by going to a front-opening fridge versus a chest. What works best is always going to be debated since everyone has their own criteria, but for the space utilization in my rig, that shape worked better. If I'd been a little more clear up front about how I'd use it, rather than just getting the "standard" item, I could have saved myself a 2nd purchase, a little depreciation, and some wasted time.
I bought a decent fridge for my first purchase - it's still working very well for the guy I sold it to after I realized it wasn't the right shape for my space. My 2nd fridge is 100x better for me. In my case, I was much better served by going to a front-opening fridge versus a chest. What works best is always going to be debated since everyone has their own criteria, but for the space utilization in my rig, that shape worked better. If I'd been a little more clear up front about how I'd use it, rather than just getting the "standard" item, I could have saved myself a 2nd purchase, a little depreciation, and some wasted time.
67cj5
Man On a Mission
The only down side to a Front/Vertical opening fridge is every time you open them all the cold air drops out of the bottom of the Door and as that happens it draws in more warm Air at the top which make it use more power in order to cool down again where as Chest type fridges the Cold Air sinks to the bottom and stays there even when the lid is opened but warm Air still gets drawn in to the Top each time,
I could use a front opening fridge but the Chest type fridges give me the best power returns,
Herbie
Rendezvous Conspirator
I find that the "cold air pours out" argument is dramatically overstated. What you're cooling is the stuff in the fridge, and if you're doing it right, there shouldn't be huge volumes of dead air in there. Running the numbers, water has more than 4x the heat absorption of air by mass. (And water is up to 770x more dense than air by volume, depending on temperature). In practice, this means one liter of water can store about as much heat as more than 3000 liters of air. In a 49 liter fridge, assuming you had 1L of water and 48L of air, (a massive waste, but lets say you wanted to keep 1 bomber of beer cold), that means even if you exchanged ALL of the air with air that was 20° hotter, it would only raise the the temperature of the liquid by a tiny fraction of a degree.
What raises the temperature of fridges and causes them to cycle is (a) conduction of heat from outside the fridge to the inside, through the insulation, and (b) exchanging cold items for "hot" items, like swapping out beers.
What raises the temperature of fridges and causes them to cycle is (a) conduction of heat from outside the fridge to the inside, through the insulation, and (b) exchanging cold items for "hot" items, like swapping out beers.
67cj5
Man On a Mission
No that is not correct, If your fridge has been allowed to cool down and be stable for 5 or 6 hours @ 2*c / 35-36*f and then you put 6 or 12 cans of beer in there the Air Temp will rise almost as high as the temperature of the items you have put in there and it will run and run until the cans have cooled enough to allow the fridge to turn off,
I have spent the last 4 and a half years testing many fridges 24/7 Non Stop using as many as 8 sensors in each fridge, You can forget what the fridge dial reads, and every time you open that fridge you will see the top are of your fridge rise as much as 16*f maybe more, The main cause of this is even if you do not lock the fridge latch as the fridge cools it creates a vacuum like your domestic freezer does and when you open it you break that vacuum and the seal makes a noise as the warm Air gets sucked in and it is that rush of Air that forces the cold Air out, Not only that the Coldest part of your fridge is at the bottom and when you open the vertical door the cold Air falls out, This can be seen using thermal cameras and measured using multiple sensor thermometers, And although Fridge freezers are mechanical things they actually breath which is caused by thermal loss and restored by it's duty cycle.
Oh and as for the hot Air getting in, That only happens when you open the door, When a fridge is closed what warms a fridge up is the lack of insulation as the Cold escapes through the walls of the fridge, Don't Believe Me ??? then Just get a Laser Thermometer and take reading all the way round the external walls of the fridge.
Sorry but those are the facts.
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Herbie
Rendezvous Conspirator
Your appeal to authority not withstanding, unless you've placed one of your eight sensors into a bottle of water, all you're measuring is air temperature. Of course the air temperature rises in the fridge when you open the door - the point is that the embodied energy of that air is a fraction of the total thermal capacity of the system. Again, of course the temperatures rise when you add 6 or 12 cans of warm beer - beer is water - you're adding a significant thermal mass that's bringing energy to the party.
Since you claim to be all setup, run this experiment: Fill your fridge with a normal amount of food. Drop one of your eight thermometers into a water bottle and close the door. (The other seven can continue to measure air temp.) Allow time to achieve equilibrium. Open the fridge, use a fan to force out all the air, close the fridge. I'll bet a six pack of your favorite brew against hard data that the temperature of the sensor in liquid doesn't change appreciably over a "normal" window of having the fridge open. You'll see a rapid climb in air temperature as that air is replaced, but the water will not move in a significant way in such a short window.
Finally, COLD is not a thing that escapes. HEAT is energy, which we know can't be created, only moved or transformed. In this case, the compressor uses the adiabatic process to move heat energy out of the system. It is fighting against the natural tendency for energy to seek equilibrium - in this case the heat of the environment is trying to equalize into the low-energy space that is the fridge box. Heat warms the outside of the fridge until the outside saturates to the same level of energy as the environment. The warm outside of the fridge warms the "middle" of the insulation, which then warms the inside, and so on. We can talk about conduction, convection, and radiation, but the gist of things is that heat outside is trying to move inside. This is the (a) I mentioned in my post above - heat energy conducts (mostly, a small amount radiates, and a little is convected) from outside to inside. The better the insulation, the slower this process - but it would take infinite insulation to prevent this entirely. The other thing I mentioned was (b) moving warm items in, which is exactly what you called out above.
Returning to my earlier point: The temperature of the air relative to the liquid is how you get things cold - convection of air within the box moves heat out of the food/beer/etc., but this is a pretty low-efficiency process. The air has to be significantly colder than the food before a lot of energy moves. Having the fridge door open will certainly prevent you from cooling your food (as that differential disappears temporarily), but exactly because air has such a low specific heat (the index of how much energy it takes to raise a given mass by 1°), the compressor can remove the newly added energy with relative ease.
Again, if you have a liter of air and a liter of water, both at room temperature, and you try to cool both down by some number of degrees, you literally have to remove three-THOUSAND times as much energy from the water as you do from the air.
Since you claim to be all setup, run this experiment: Fill your fridge with a normal amount of food. Drop one of your eight thermometers into a water bottle and close the door. (The other seven can continue to measure air temp.) Allow time to achieve equilibrium. Open the fridge, use a fan to force out all the air, close the fridge. I'll bet a six pack of your favorite brew against hard data that the temperature of the sensor in liquid doesn't change appreciably over a "normal" window of having the fridge open. You'll see a rapid climb in air temperature as that air is replaced, but the water will not move in a significant way in such a short window.
Finally, COLD is not a thing that escapes. HEAT is energy, which we know can't be created, only moved or transformed. In this case, the compressor uses the adiabatic process to move heat energy out of the system. It is fighting against the natural tendency for energy to seek equilibrium - in this case the heat of the environment is trying to equalize into the low-energy space that is the fridge box. Heat warms the outside of the fridge until the outside saturates to the same level of energy as the environment. The warm outside of the fridge warms the "middle" of the insulation, which then warms the inside, and so on. We can talk about conduction, convection, and radiation, but the gist of things is that heat outside is trying to move inside. This is the (a) I mentioned in my post above - heat energy conducts (mostly, a small amount radiates, and a little is convected) from outside to inside. The better the insulation, the slower this process - but it would take infinite insulation to prevent this entirely. The other thing I mentioned was (b) moving warm items in, which is exactly what you called out above.
Returning to my earlier point: The temperature of the air relative to the liquid is how you get things cold - convection of air within the box moves heat out of the food/beer/etc., but this is a pretty low-efficiency process. The air has to be significantly colder than the food before a lot of energy moves. Having the fridge door open will certainly prevent you from cooling your food (as that differential disappears temporarily), but exactly because air has such a low specific heat (the index of how much energy it takes to raise a given mass by 1°), the compressor can remove the newly added energy with relative ease.
Again, if you have a liter of air and a liter of water, both at room temperature, and you try to cool both down by some number of degrees, you literally have to remove three-THOUSAND times as much energy from the water as you do from the air.
67cj5
Man On a Mission
I have put sensors in fruit, meat, Beer, water, Milk and Ice as well as cooking oil and the walls of the fridge and they all react differently depending on the water and fat content, Ice is one of the fastest reacting items to sudden changes in air temp, Cans of beer or Coke etc can be misleading as the can is always colder than the contents, and despite all the claims by companies on how even their fridges cool there is always one area that cools the faster and is always colder than other parts of a fridge, the coldest part of a fridge is where the refrigerant first comes in to the cooling element,
Quoting text book theories and figures has very little value under real world usage and conditions, Because no two fridges behave the same, Add to that each company programs there fridges to run differently, and the Air Temps go up and down like a fiddlers elbow as does the temperature of lemons and oranges but not as much as Air., Oranges and lemons are a good thing to use when checking fridge calibration by inserting the sensor half way in to the fruit.
4x4tripping
Adventurer
Always try to watch the fast growing travel weight. And watch the bulky size. Use a size who fit your need. The powerusage dont count, because there is not much difference over the weeks.
I use a 15L Engel fridge, for travelling with up to 2 Persons - did handle over 60`000 travelling miles well - while living over an year inside of my car. My Toyota has a small armrest fridge, if I need to carry more, who just works with the engine running.
Stuff what has to be there: Milk, Cheese, Butter, Sausages, Meat, Beer. Eggs, Vegetables dont need to be cooled. Buying bulki packaged steaks at the supermarked, need to repackage with that size soon - if you try to carry single-packaged 15 Steaks...
A size way above 30l seems not to be necessary, too if you are travelling with 4 Persons for an extended tine.
I use a 15L Engel fridge, for travelling with up to 2 Persons - did handle over 60`000 travelling miles well - while living over an year inside of my car. My Toyota has a small armrest fridge, if I need to carry more, who just works with the engine running.
Stuff what has to be there: Milk, Cheese, Butter, Sausages, Meat, Beer. Eggs, Vegetables dont need to be cooled. Buying bulki packaged steaks at the supermarked, need to repackage with that size soon - if you try to carry single-packaged 15 Steaks...
A size way above 30l seems not to be necessary, too if you are travelling with 4 Persons for an extended tine.
67cj5
Man On a Mission
I have a few fridges and If I am going to carry a lot of food and drinks etc, If I am using either the 18L 35L or the 47L means I can only cool a certain amount of the food and drinks and the rest has to be stowed somewhere within the Vehicle, But if I use the 78L then the whole lot can be kept in the fridge and the storage space is kept free for other items, I agree with what you say but having too many fridges can be a pain when it comes to choosing which one to use, I like to carry enough food so I don't have to restock So the 47L seems to be the better choice, purely because I can put 20+ cans of coke or Dr Pepper in the bottom and load the food on top which helps to keep the fridge colder for longer,