Refrigerator noise

[jhmoore]

My last longer adventure in my 4Runner was three weeks--I slept inside the vehicle and ate dehydrated camping food or instant oatmeal for 2/3 meals each day and generally ate one meal in a restaurant each day. I was mostly not way in the backcountry.

I'm planning a longer trip this fall & still planning to sleep inside the 4Runner. Still mostly not way in the backcountry, but restaurants will be harder to come by and involve a certain amount of risk in the time of COVID. So I'm pondering a refrigerator inside the 4Runner.

But... I'm an awful sleeper with noise. I used to travel a fair amount for work and any time that I'm in a hotel room with a mini-fridge, I unplug the thing so that I don't have to hear it turning on and off throughout the night. So for those of you with fridges in your vehicles, how much noise do they make? Anybody sleep inside the vehicle and does the fridge noise bother you?

Thanks!

 

[Herbie]

We sleep in our van with a Truckfridge TF49 (upright) compressor fridge. When the compressor cycles on, you can hear it, but it's tolerable. At some point I switched the fan over the coils (PC-style 120mm fan) to a quieter model, which helped the most. I also backed off the mounting screws for the compressor by half a turn or so. From the factory the compressor was quite tightly fastened to the fridge box which was significantly compressing the rubber mounts and (I believe) negating some of their isolating effect. Those two fixes helped quite a bit.

The other option is to get the fridge to run less often. At night, you can probably safely change the temperature setting a little. I know some people even shut off their fridges at night, though I personally wouldn't do that if I was keeping real perishables there, and not just keeping the beer cold.

 

[86scotty]

@jhmoore, you've answered your own question. The noise is going to bother you if a dorm fridge does. They are essentially the same, a small compressor, just powered differently.

Herbie's advice is spot on. I've done it lots of times but to save power at night, not because the noise bothers me. Run your fridge and let it get good and cold before bed and it will be just fine in the morning. Virtually all modern ones are pretty well insulated, much better than a dorm fridge actually.

 

[dreadlocks]

If your going to unplug overnight you should pre-load the fridge and do some testing.. get a digital thermometer that records min/max temps and put it in there.. see how much temp rise you get overnight with it packed and with it partially packed.. you may need to run the fridge a bit colder than you would otherwise so it coasts through the night without issue, most people doing this though have solar panels they can utilize in the day time to provide the power needed to get it back down to its set temp every day, effectively using the fridge as a battery.. extracting heat in the day with abundant solar ability and coasting it through the night w/out touching the battery reserves, could just be done by turning a knob down in the day and up at night... Its definitely more fiddly, requires constant attention, and you gotta kinda fine tune it yerself, but if done well you can hypermile those fridges to need very little battery with a reasonable solar setup.

 

[67cj5]

The Snomaster 35L is the quietest fridge I have ever found you can't hear it unless you get down on all fours and put your Ear right next to the vents and my next pick would be the Dometic CDF-18 / CF-18, I have slept in my camper with it under the bed and never heard it at all

The Snomaster is a bit power hungry, Snomaster is not a brand I would buy unless I had a DC to DC Charger and a big solar panel on the roof and twin batteries.

Hope that helps.

 

[jhmoore]

The Snomaster 35L is the quietest fridge I have ever found you can't hear it unless you get down on all fours and put your Ear right next to the vents and my next pick would be the Dometic CDF-18 / CF-18, I have slept in my camper with it under the bed and never heard it at all

Snomaster out of stock. All these new folks who've never been camping/traveling before buying up absolutely everything in sight and overrunning every natural place around are really starting to annoy me!

 

[67cj5]

Snomaster out of stock. All these new folks who've never been camping/traveling before buying up absolutely everything in sight and overrunning every natural place around are really starting to annoy me!

Yeah a lot of people have been buying fridges and stocking up on frozen foods because of CV-19, It's crazy because nothing is running out,

If you want a good little fridge take a look at the Dometic CDF/CF range but remember to buy a 110/240v power supply because most of them only run on 12/24v, The CDF/CF-18 is my personal favourite it's very quiet and it is light enough for the family to move from A to B weighing just on 20Lbs or 9.5kgs, I run mine 24/7 as a Drinks fridge set to about 2 or 3*c and the Cans are always very cold, It is very quiet and a joy to use,

 

[IdaSHO]

If we are camped in one spot for very long, we often shut the fridge off at night.
After we have been in and out of it as needed, and it has had the chance to rechill.

Shutting it off saves the noise and power. Once the sun is up we have more than enough battery and surplus solar to chill things down as needed.
Typically, it barely looses (gains) more than 6-8 degrees in the 6-8 hours it is shut off.

 

[tanuki.himself]

I've just taken delivery of a Webasto/Indel B TB51 and i can't even tell if the thing is running without kneeling down next to it. I'm also planning on adding small PC fans either side when I build it in - one to bring fresh air in from outside and another to vent warmed air back out of the other side and i'm expecting that will also carry any compressor sound away Also we usually sleep with a fan running for the white noise it produces and for the damping effect that chopping the air with a fan blade gives, so this arrangement will hopefully contribute to that

 

[Regcabguy]

My last longer adventure in my 4Runner was three weeks--I slept inside the vehicle and ate dehydrated camping food or instant oatmeal for 2/3 meals each day and generally ate one meal in a restaurant each day. I was mostly not way in the backcountry.

I'm planning a longer trip this fall & still planning to sleep inside the 4Runner. Still mostly not way in the backcountry, but restaurants will be harder to come by and involve a certain amount of risk in the time of COVID. So I'm pondering a refrigerator inside the 4Runner.

But... I'm an awful sleeper with noise. I used to travel a fair amount for work and any time that I'm in a hotel room with a mini-fridge, I unplug the thing so that I don't have to hear it turning on and off throughout the night. So for those of you with fridges in your vehicles, how much noise do they make? Anybody sleep inside the vehicle and does the fridge noise bother you?

Thanks!

I thought I was the only one? I unplug those mini fridges every time I use a motel room.

 

[Cabrito]

I turn ours off at night. I do it for the sound and the conserve my battery.

I've been running a ARB/Engel MT35 for over ten years now, and no problems with this method.

Try camping with four or five others that have a fridge... One time I was in a small site with several rigs with fridges in them and it was like a symphony of them turning on periodically all night.. Total nightmare.

 

[pluton]

I have a '97 4Runner, which is not a large, spacious vehicle, and occasionally sleep in the back of it...with an Engel MT45 across from my legs. The MT45 seems to emit 2 sounds: mainly a very low frequency rumble, I'd guess at about 20Hz?. Occasionally but not always, I hear a very faint high freq. at about maybe 6KHz.
I find that the noises are easily ignored, and that the noise my head makes rustling against the pillow or sleeping bag is louder. Usually I don't go to bed unless I'm genuinely tired and ready to sleep anyway.

 

[67cj5]

I have a '97 4Runner, which is not a large, spacious vehicle, and occasionally sleep in the back of it...with an Engel MT45 across from my legs. The MT45 seems to emit 2 sounds: mainly a very low frequency rumble, I'd guess at about 20Hz?. Occasionally but not always, I hear a very faint high freq. at about maybe 6KHz.
I find that the noises are easily ignored, and that the noise my head makes rustling against the pillow or sleeping bag is louder. Usually I don't go to bed unless I'm genuinely tired and ready to sleep anyway.

If you turn it a couple of degrees colder 2 hours before bedtime and then turn it off when you go to bed it should still be cold when you get up,