Keeping fridge cool down southern France/Spain.
Hi Folks,
Can you please let me know any ideas/tips that you have for keeping your Caravan fridge cool when down the south of France as when we were there last July and it was over 40 degrees, we had real problems keeping the contents of the fridge cool!! We were
plugged into mains electrity at the time and both of us ended up ill as some of our food had went of because of poor fridge performace!
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
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Many years ago I did a similar thing, fitted one of those cheap 12volt dash fans in the cavity behind the fridge. By my rudimentary calculations this did improve fridge cooling by about 5c in the hottest weather in Spain. Just enough to have a pleasantly cold beer! Used to store/cool the glasses prior to use in the freezer compartment which also helped!
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We had no problems at 36 degrees. We just made sure we never put anything in which was not already cool. So used an electric cold box to chill beers, water, wine etc, so there was no need to put them in the fridge, or if we did they were already cold.
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Use Camping Gaz, sounds more expensive but we have bought a 907 cylinder for £13, in the UK £28.99
Admiral
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We too have experienced trying to keep the fridge cool in 40 deg heat. We made no mods but often found that it ran more efficiently on gas at peak heat time. Usual tips about door open for minimum time and trying not to put too much 'room' temperature items in at the same time. You may have to resort to small shops everyday - bit like the locals really.
Admiral - where? last time I purchased a 907 refil in Europe cost 23 euros I think.
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The problem can be that you often get low amperage hook up abroad so by time you have one or two tings running there is really not a lot of power for the fridge to operate at its peak performance.
Also it is not always best to set it to the lowest setting as that also creates more heat compounding the issue so try setting at 3 or 4 instead of 5 (assuming 5 is coldest setting), it is surprising how cool the fridge will get.
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Rig up some shade so that the sun isn' beating down onto the side of the van where the fridge vents are. That can make a decent difference.
We found running on gas instead of electric was much better.
Also, we got a tip to turn the setting down from max, to about 25%. On max, it was trying too hard, and causing more heat than it could get rid of - circular problem.
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On our previous three vans in which had 3way absorption fridges we fitted a thermostatically controlled fan kit behind the upper fridge vent which greatly assisted the cooling of the fridge-the switch control was mounted on the front of the fridge.Enquire
of your dealer re the kit.Our latest MH has a Waeco M90 compressor fridge and it performs much better than the previous 3way absorption fridges -we had 34/35C last May in Spain and there was no defrosting in the ice box at all by contrast with previous fridges
which would slightly de-ice above 30C, even with fan assistance in place.0 -
The layout of our van (door on the continental side) means we can alway pitch it with the fridge side up against a hedge or at least on the north side of the van. Whilst we're looking south towards the sun, the fridge stays in the shade behind the
van, and despite temperatures in the high thirties on many holidays we've never had a problem.0
