Any reason to pick a built in fridge over a portable unit?

[blackwood]

I'm shopping for a 12v fridge for my truck bed setup. I have a fiberglass shell covering it. I'm looking at portable units but I have the space for a built in unit. A drawer system would be super fancy too. Are the portable cooler style, the way to go?

 

[JLee]

Will you ever want to use it outside of the truck, as a garage fridge/etc, or in a different vehicle?

 

[blackwood]

I forgot about the rv fridges wanting to be level. I was reading up on the Dometic portables and they have a allowance incline of 30°. I think I'll drop the idea of a built in unit. It would have looked cleaner and I already have an upright deep freezer at home. So the fridge will be truck only. I am installing an aux battery/solar system. Looks like venting is something I'll need to incorporate. I'm going to install two 6" round roof vents for general cooling, one more hole for the fridge isn't going to be too big of a deal.

 

[IdaSHO]

Built in units are, generally the RV type.
1) Are required to be more level to work best.
2) RV type suck on the 12 volt power.
3) To work best have to be vented properly.
4) Requires propane or 120 volts AC to work best.
5) When you are not moving every day you can run on gas and not need solar, generator or starting vehicle to maintain the battery power level.
6) Requires propane supply.

1 Not if 12V DC
2 Not if 12V DC
3 Not if 12V DC
4 Not if 12V DC
5 Not if 12V DC
6 Not if 12V DC


Any questions? :sombrero:


BTW, the Waeco CR-1065 I installed in my custom camper.

Super efficient, quiet, never needs ice, and you are never digging for items like in a chest fridge.

 

[jim65wagon]

1 Not if 12V DC
2 Not if 12V DC
3 Not if 12V DC
4 Not if 12V DC
5 Not if 12V DC
6 Not if 12V DC


Any questions? :sombrero:


BTW, the Waeco CR-1065 I installed in my custom camper.

Super efficient, quiet, never needs ice, and you are never digging for items like in a chest fridge.

Agreed. Our Norcold DE 751 (new version is the NR 751) works great.

(hint) it's the black box to the left

 

[Herbie]

I'm just now making the switch from a portable/chest style fridge to a "built-in" fridge. Specifically, the Truckfridge TF49. It's running the same Danfoss 12v compressor that all the other quality chest fridges are running, so the power and "level" requirements are pretty much a push between the two types. The one obvious difference is that people always say that the cold air will "spill" out of a vertical fridge, but that always sounded strange to me since the main thermal mass in the fridge is the *stuff* being cold, not the air. The VW guys have been using this model as a drop-in replacement for the old Dometic 3-way fridges in the westies for many years, and they swear by them, especially since the smaller Danfoss compressor means they actually get more storage space in the same cabinet volume. Some have gone so far as to rebuild their cabinetry to accommodate the larger TF63 as well. For me, the rated volume of the TF49 is already larger than my outgoing Edgestar FP430, so I'm sticking with that one.

Anyhow, as far as are there reasons to pick one over the other? The driver for me was form factor. The "shape" of the box and how the door opens can sometimes be a better fit for your space.

The chest fridges require overhead clearance to be able to open the doors, making their "consumed" volume larger, unless you can put them in a drawer under something else, but I couldn't manage that in the available space in my van. (I don't have a high enough ceiling to raise the bed enough to put the fridge underneath, for example). Instead, an upright built-in fridge is shallower and narrower, but taller (but not as tall as a chest fridge with the door open), so I'm able to fit it into a cabinet behind the driver's seat. As a bonus, my cabinet, with a slightly smaller "footprint" than the chest fridge, will also fit a 5gallon porta potti underneath the new fridge, along with a decent size drawer for a stove, neither of which really would have fit in the space the chest was using. (I did have a small bin in a cubby underneath the fridge for a while, to be fair, but this is WAY more useful.)

I'm still putting the final poly coat on the cabinet today, but here it is during construction so you can see what I mean:

The upper compartment holds the TF49. The bottom compartment will have a drawer for the stove and hold a Thetford 550p or comparable Dometic 5-gallon porta potty that can slide out. In comparison, the FP430 was deeper (protruded further into the middle of the van) and slightly wider than the cabinet, and I couldn't raise it enough to be able to put the potti underneath it and still open the lid.

 

[IdaSHO]

The cold "spilling" out has been debunked many times.



Besides, these fridges seem to work most efficiently when kept FULL.

So even if the air spilled out, there wouldnt be much to spill, and the vast majority of the mass in the fridge remains cold.

So any kind of work the fridge has to do to drop things down to the desired temp is minimal.


We keep ours between 38 and 40 in the fridge portion. Great for keeping things that sour easy from going bad.
And plenty cold enough to even make ice in the freezer portion. With the fridge at 38, it gets down below 20 in the freezer.


Looks like you are off to a great start. You will love the new fridge!

 

[joelbert]

The nice thing about a non-builtin is when it quits, it's easy to swap out. I wish the RV that we had actually used an ARB or something similar vs the built-in dometic.

 

[blackwood]

I just placed the order for a medium sized Dometic portable unit, I'll just keep it simple. A built in would have been nice. But now I wont get fleeced when buying ice bags, thats the important thing :wings: