ins123 said:
During your first few post the subject of a 12v refrigerator placement/location was discussed and debated at length. Maybe I missed the outcome, but where was your final location.
All of this time and miles later and we have yet to find a final location for the fridge... That one piece of equipment has provided as much usefulness as it has hassle, that only our Outback Porta Privy shower tent can compare to.
After purchasing the Engel 45qt, and seeing how large it was, it actually sat in my living room for a full year, unused & unplugged... I finally decided to throw it in the camper for a 4 day trip to Utah awhile back, thinking with the warm temps it would be good to have and for a short trip, and if it was obnoxiously in the way, it wouldn't be but for a few days to deal with. Given its size and intrusion into our 'foot space', I located it at the front of the camper, under the sliding window...
As you can see, we don't have the couch/bench option in our camper, so this location, along with a bunch of other kit piled around it, worked for awhile. While I do have a 'slide-lock' base for the fridge, I was hesitant to install it, until I determined if that would be the final location of the fridge. But we quickly realized on that trip, what we had been missing by not having a fridge along on our travels... It was all it advertised and had been touted and more.
The majority of the items in the above photo are removed and/or relocated while in camp, leaving only the fridge on the floor. As far as taking up our 'foot space', it turned out to be a non-factor. I've used it for a seat, and on solo trips I've used it as a small desk to set my laptop on to watch a DVD during bad weather (
with my camp chair set up inside - a poor substitute for my Lazy Boy at home...)
But now, all that has gone out the window... In addition to some recent upgrades previously mentioned here, I was finally able to acquire a couch/bench for our camper last week from a local owner of an identical make & model year camper as mine, who was kind enough to give me his couch/bench after removing it to make a custom platform for his two canine companions.
The couch has been my most desired addition to this camper since the day I bought it. The original owner removed it & tossed the couch in the trash prior to my taking possession of it. We often use 2 camp chairs to sit inside during inclement weather, not ideal in my opinion... But now I finally have a couch, and as a small added bonus, due to this one coming from an identical model year FWC, the wood grain finish and cushion upholstery all matches what we already have. That symmetry really works for my OCD tendencies... In addition, almost all of that gear previously stored on the floor - 2 camp chairs, toilet chair, shower kit, air compressor, portable awning - now fits nice & neatly under the couch.
Well now I have a couch, but at the expense of the floor space where I placed the fridge... If I were to turn it, so it runs parallel with the truck, it will be right under the stove-top, making it a bugger to prepare meals... Additionally, the couch can extend over to the drivers side to the galley making a nice bed - which comes in handy for stealth camping, or when the winds are so fierce that leaving the top down for the night is preferable, as happened to me on my trip home last week from picking up the couch - but that makes it impossible to store anything the size of the fridge on the floor.
So as we are preparing to make another trip to Utah this weekend, and having developed a fondness for the fridge, I am back to the drawing board regarding where to put the thing... I am entertaining the idea of putting it in the back seat of the truck, as my friend Joel did with his 45qt and his T100 -
That will work for our 4 day trip upcoming this weekend, but with two young children who will be riding & camping with us this summer, that's a band-aid fix at best. So as I finish up this long-winded reply to your short & simple question, I'm actually heading out the door to a local RV company to inquire about fridges that can be fitted into the icebox location (
similar to what NorthernExplorer did here in his FWC...), which I had hoped to use as a pantry & dry storage, but now will likely be re-used as fridge space.
Plans, changes, reconfigurations, reshuffling, reworking, adjusting, adapting.... There are worse problems to have I suppose.
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