Fulltiming with an Engel and solar

[Lynnrb]

Last year I met an oldtimer in Death Valley. He was living full time out of his old Toyota Hilux/camper shell. The camper shell was custom made, but was still not quite a full fledged camper. It had single size bunk running down one side and an Engel fridge, stove and storage down the other. He could sleep, cook,eat and read in the camper, anything else required existing the rig. He ran everything from propane, a 100w solar panel and a deep cycle battery. Here is the clever part. He used the Engel exclusively as a freezer, he had standard ice chest as a refrigerator, but never bought ice. He would charge the deep cycle during the day, then place 1 liter water bottles in the Engel at night to freeze them. Then the next morning transfer the bottles to the ice chest to cool his drinks and veggies. He could keep the this routine going indefinitely. This guy is leaving a very light footprint on the environment. True overlanding.

 

[kramme]

Thanks for sharing that idea - I never thought about using my ARB as a freezer and freezing bottle of water in a ice chest. That could come in handy for certain types of trips / uses.

Also this guy sure did figure out a nice solution for FT travel overall!

 

[Scoutn79]

Interesting idea but wouldn't it work better to use two sets of bottles and freeze the ones from the fridge during the day when the solar is able to provide extra power instead of using just the battery to freeze the bottles at night? This way you would change bottles in the Am to get full use of the solar during the day.

I do something similar elk hunting..I open my cooler at night and let the subzero air in and then close the lid in the morning to keep the cold in during the day....course most times near the end of the season it is cold enough outside you don't worry about things thawing out.

Darrell

 

[Lynnrb]

The flip side is that at night the fridge would not need to work as hard to keep the contents cool, as the ambient temperatures would be lower. I'm really not sure which way (day/night) would net "winnings" as both have their upsides.

X2

 

[workerdrone]

We are traveling full time with a propane RV fridge, ARB fridge, and Yeti, this was my original idea to use the ARB as a freezer and rotate blue ice paks between it and the Yeti so we'd have massive fridge and freezer space. I'm sure it would work well; we just haven't needed the space and the Yeti ended up being highly overqualified dry storage, the RV fridge our go to unit, and the ARB basically for overflow and beverages

Those compressor fridges like the ARB are so amazingly efficient; well worth the $. I've confused a couple of people in our travels by saying that we can make unlimited ice from the sun if we want

 

[unseenone]

The other option would be to do a dual door with fridge and freezer. But I do routinely freeze water in our units. No cooler though.. You could also do two small units, and run one as a fridge and one as a freezer. 100W is borderline enough to run the deep freeze. I have 100W on my roof and it works great.

 

[Bear in NM]

Funny, while camping this last weekend, I had someone ask if I could make ice with my arb. The thought had crossed my mind, but to make ice I would have to move my "cooler" stuff to another place, so I never considered it as an option. Might have to do some testing once I add an additional solar panel. With my smaller amp hour battery setup, I am guessing I would have to do this during the day, to pick up the excess amps from the sun.

Craig

 

[Lynnrb]

The oldtimer was living in his camper, so he needed a freezer for longer time food storage. So this arrangement worked well for him. May not be the best in other situations.

 

[unseenone]

I have been doing long term meat for almost two years--- using a couple of units as a deep freeze. My show fridge is full of meat, and stays in the trailer. Set at 0, off you go. It does consume more power... so extra solar is a real plus.

If you don't need that kind of long term, set the freezer for 10-15, it will still do the job well, but will not use as much power. Great short term solution. Of course outside temperatures, temp in your vehicle, etc. can make a difference. You can always throw something over the vehicle windows to keep out the bulk of the heat.