Top 9 How Long Will A Rv Fridge Run On Propane Top 96 Best Answers

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You can run an RV fridge using a 20 lb. propane tank for 280 hours, or just over 11 days.If you’re using a standard 20-lb propane tank, you can expect it to last around 11 days (non-stop) before needing to replace or refill it. For a 30lb tank just add 50%; so it would last for 17.7 days non-stop.Generally, a 10 to 12 cubic foot RV fridge will burn about 1.5 pounds of propane per day.

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How long will a 20 lb propane tank run a refrigerator?

If you’re using a standard 20-lb propane tank, you can expect it to last around 11 days (non-stop) before needing to replace or refill it. For a 30lb tank just add 50%; so it would last for 17.7 days non-stop.

How much propane does a RV fridge use?

Generally, a 10 to 12 cubic foot RV fridge will burn about 1.5 pounds of propane per day.

How long will an RV fridge run on propane and battery?

An RV refrigerator will run off of the battery if your fridge model is set up for it or if it uses propane too. An absorption fridge will run on batteries only for about 3 hours but if using propane too it will last for weeks. A residential RV fridge will last for about 12 hours on batteries.

Is it better to run RV fridge on propane?

Generally speaking, propane-powered RV fridges are preferred as they don’t require a lot of maintenance, and they last longer as they don’t have any moving parts. An electric fridge, on the other hand, is a bit safer and doesn’t require you to be on the lookout for gas leaks.

How do I keep my RV fridge cold while traveling?

Another great way to keep your RV fridge cold while driving is by adding frozen drinks and ice packs. If you have any open space in your fridge, filling any holes with frozen items is a great way to preserve the cold in your fridge.

How long does a 30 lb propane tank last in an RV fridge?

That means that a 30 lb. propane tank can run our appliances for 16 hours before running out.

Can you drive with your RV fridge on propane?

Remember to turn all appliances off when traveling. Most use an electric ignition that can create a spark and trigger an explosion if there is a break in the propane line. If you are an RV owner for whom safety is the first propriety, then traveling with your propane refrigerator switched off is the clear choice.

Do propane refrigerators use a lot of propane?

A 10 cubic foot propane refrigerator will typically consume 1.5 lbs, or . 375 gallons, of propane per day. The energy content of 1.5 lbs of propane is 32,250 Btu or about 9485 watt hours.

Will an RV fridge run on propane without a battery?

To run on propane (LP), an RV fridge does not require battery power, but it does require battery power to open the gas valve and fire the igniter. The front panel LEDs and thermostat are also powered by RV batteries.

How many amp hours does an RV refrigerator use?

To calculate how much power an RV fridge uses, you must know the starting amp requirement of the model. A double door model typically uses 7-8 amps, or 900-1,000 watts per 120V. The amps used for operation are less than the starting amps drawn. Generally, after switching on, a fridge can operate on 2-4 amps.

How long will a propane fridge run on a tank?

These units are economical and don’t require an outside power source. So how long can a propane refrigerator run? Most can run nonstop for 11 days on a standard 20 pound propane tank.

How long will a 12 volt battery run a RV refrigerator?

In general, a 12V-50Ah battery can run a 2 cubic feet 12V fridge for 35 to 50 hours before it’s completely depleted. A 10 cubic feet RV refrigerator can run on the same battery for only 10 to 15 hours.

Should I leave my RV refrigerator on all the time?

Ultimately, it’s possible to keep your RV refrigerator running all the time if you don’t go anywhere. However, if you’re intent on travel, then powering down and disconnecting it from the power supply or propane source, is best.

Will RV fridge run off battery while driving?

The short answer is: Yes! An RV fridge can be used while driving. Keep in mind there are safety concerns with running propane while driving.

How long does a 3 way fridge last on gas?

In fact, your 3 way fridge freezer can run for approximately 2-3 weeks on a 9kg gas bottle before it needs refilling. So, you can still do a big shop and enjoy chilled food and drink in the most remote spots.

How long does fridge last on propane?

These units are economical and don’t require an outside power source. So how long can a propane refrigerator run? Most can run nonstop for 11 days on a standard 20 pound propane tank.

Can I run my RV refrigerator on propane while driving?

RV refrigerators work best when using propane but 3 way refrigerators can be run on 12volt Dc while driving. This conserves propane but will drain your battery if you switch your motor off for even a few hours. If you travel with your generator running, use the electric setting on your refrigerator.

How long will a 12 Volt RV fridge run on battery?

In general, a 12V-50Ah battery can run a 2 cubic feet 12V fridge for 35 to 50 hours before it’s completely depleted. A 10 cubic feet RV refrigerator can run on the same battery for only 10 to 15 hours.

How long does a 3 way fridge last on gas?

In fact, your 3 way fridge freezer can run for approximately 2-3 weeks on a 9kg gas bottle before it needs refilling. So, you can still do a big shop and enjoy chilled food and drink in the most remote spots.


RV Propane Usage: How Long Does Propane Last?
RV Propane Usage: How Long Does Propane Last?


How Efficient Are Propane Refrigerators?

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How Much Propane Does an RV Fridge Use?

Propane is a clean, portable source of fuel for many RV refrigerator models.

And if you’re boondocking, or have no electrical hookups, it might be your only source of power. So it’s important to plan your propane consumption accordingly.

But, how much propane does an RV fridge use?

Let’s look at how to accurately calculate your fridge’s propane usage along with some tips to make your fridge more efficient.

The Amount of Propane a Standard RV Fridge Will Use

The amount of propane your RV fridge uses depends on its age and size. Older models are less efficient. And typically, the larger the refrigerator, the more propane you’ll need to power it.

With that said, let’s look at a real-life example using the Dometic Americana 8 Cu. Ft. RV Propane Refrigerator.

The Dometic RV fridge with 8 cubic feet of internal space is rated at 1500 BTUs (British thermal units) per hour. One gallon of propane has 91,502 BTUs. So essentially you could run your fridge for roughly 61 hours off 1 gallon of propane.

How long you can run an RV fridge on propane will depend on the size of the tank. Your typical 20 lb. propane tank holds 4.6 gallons of propane.

So, how long will a 20 lb propane tank run a refrigerator?

Using the example above, we simply take 4.6 (gallons in a 20 lb. tank) X 61 (the hours our fridge will run off 1 gallon). You can run an RV fridge using a 20 lb. propane tank for 280 hours, or just over 11 days.

Tip: Check out our free propane usage calculator in our popular guide How Long Does Propane Last in an RV? to easily calculate the propane usage of all the appliances in your setup.

Now, let’s quickly look at how an RV fridge works, and then we can talk about how to maximize its efficiency. Because while we love the idea of remote RV use, we don’t want to carry, or burn through, more propane than we have to.

How a Propane RV Fridge Works

Your home fridge uses freon to keep food and beverages cold. But your typical RV fridge is different. It works using a combination of hydrogen, ammonia, and water. Together, they create a powerful evaporation effect that extracts heat and keeps things cool.

That sounds complicated, but it’s really not. Essentially instead of applying cold, an RV fridge works by extracting heat. That’s why it’s sometimes called an absorption fridge. It’s absorbing the extra heat, not creating cold temperatures.

If that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry. This step-by-step explanation might help.

Propane heats the water and ammonia blend in a specially-designed boiler. The ammonia and water solution then travel to the separator, where the ammonia evaporates and continues through the refrigerators pipes and the water continues down to the absorber. As the ammonia vapors travel, they run into a condenser. The condenser extracts the heat and returns the ammonia to its liquid form. From there, the ammonia travels to the evaporator in the freezer element within your RV fridge and hydrogen is added to the ammonia. This mixture then moves to the evaporator in the fridge portion of the refrigerator. Any heat in the freezer and fridge portion is absorbed and passed to the exterior of the fridge, thus leaving the inside cool! Lastly, after passing through both evaporators, the ammonia enters the absorber and is separated from the hydrogen and mixed with the water before returning to the boiler.

Can I Make My Propane Fridge More Efficient?

Now that you know how your propane RV fridge works let’s look at ways to make it more efficient.

Routine Maintenance

The easiest way to improve your fridge’s efficiency is to make sure you’re keeping up with routine fridge maintenance.

Disassemble and clean the LP gas burner

Remove carbon deposits and dust from the flue and flue baffle

Clean the ignitor assembly

Vacuum and clean the cooling units and condenser fins

Check the propane regulator for leaks and adjust accordingly

You don’t need to perform these maintenance tasks every time you use your fridge. Annually is fine. Make it a part of your camper de-winterization steps, for example.

Keep Things Level

An absorption fridge uses a system of fluids to keep things cool, as we discussed in the section above. That system relies heavily on gravity, which means it works best on level ground.

Important: If your RV isn’t level, your refrigerator won’t run as efficiently. And in worst-case scenarios, this can lead to mechanical issues.

Use a level before you start up your RV’s fridge every time! It could save you from major repairs and will maximize your propane.

Run Your RV’s Fridge Before You Pack It, Then Add Cold Foods First

Absorption fridges require time to cool down, sometimes a lot of it. In some cases, it can take as long as 24 hours for an RV fridge to reach the temperature you need it to be.

To help it along, try to let it pre-chill before you fill it full of food. And, when you do go to fill it up, add your cold items first. A few ice packs won’t hurt if you have space for it.

Cold food items will help the fridge lower its temperature faster, assuming you’ve allowed it to prechill for a few hours first.

Don’t Block the Rear

Typically an RV fridge will release heat air out the top vent and bring in cool, fresh air using a floor vent on the back of the refrigerator. If those vents are blocked in any way, your fridge will be far less efficient.

A blocked air vent is a common problem for RVers. For example, driving along bumpy roads can cause things to fall off counters, and sometimes those items land behind your RV fridge. Check and ensure that hasn’t happened when you go to set up camp.

You also want to ensure there’s space between the back of the fridge and your RV’s wall. This tends to be a problem if you’re installing a new absorption fridge.

Each model has different rear space requirements. And if your new model requires more space than the old one, you might be inhibiting its efficiency because of where you placed it. Check the manual and if needed, move your fridge a little further from the back wall of your RV to maximize efficiency.

Help Circulate The Air

RV refrigerators typically don’t come with a built-in circulation fan as your home fridge does. So, to help circulate the air and keep the inside cool you can install an RV fridge fan.

Simply attach the fan to your RVs fridge evaporator fins to help evenly distribute the cold air throughout the fridge.

15″ Triple Fan Deluxe RV Frost Guard Refrigerator Evaporator Fan Price: Buy Now on Amazon Clicking this link to make a purchase may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.

As an added bonus, the fan will help keep your RV fridge frost-free!

How Efficient Are Propane Refrigerators?

Propane fridges give us the fantastic ability to have a working refrigerator even while off-grid. However, one common worry is how efficient (or inefficient!) they are. As someone with an interest in off-grid living, I’ve spent a few hours researching this.

So how efficient are propane refrigerators?

Propane refrigerators are highly efficient. While the efficiency varies per fridge, most last longer than 11 days running non-stop from a standard 20lb propane tank. You can increase this using our efficiency tips below. Still, use electricity when available: it’s cheaper and doesn’t need refilling.

That’s the summary answer, but of course there’s more to it than that.

Read on for more details, tips on how to get the most out of a propane fridge, find how long your propane tank would last, and more.

General Notes

Did you know that absorption fridges (the propane type) were first invented in 1858? A French scientist, Carré, first coined the technology at the Swedish Institute of Technology. Einstein actually proposed his own design – the ‘Einstein refrigerator‘ (a bit confident with that name, wasn’t he?)

Ever since then, the technology has been progressing through innovations until the modern types of propane fridges available today.

Looking to purchase one of these fridges? Check out our detailed run-down of the best propane fridges on the market.

Want to learn about safety? We’ve got that covered too, in our article covering propane fridge safety.

Now regarding their efficiency, there’s not a lot of published data that we can consider for direct comparisons. Especially since they are quite a niche technology. For some rough estimates check out the following sections comparing propane to electricity, and estimating the efficiency from different sizes of propane tanks.

What Affects the Efficiency of a Propane Fridge?

The actual efficiency of a propane fridge will vary slightly depending on conditions, including:

How hot the air temperature is

How much airflow is around the refrigerator

Anything in the refrigerator (ice packs vs. warm food)

The setup of the refrigerator (i.e. is it completely level?)

Chemical reactions fueled by a heat source. This is either an electric heater, or a propane burner.

How to Increase The Efficiency of a Propane Fridge?

Switch it on the night before. Will take less time to cool down (lower starting temperature) and be ready for use on the day. If you can’t put it on the night before, give it a helping hand by putting a small bag or tray of ice in when you turn it on. Make sure it’s completely level. The whole system relies on gravity, so any misalignments will affect the cooling efficiency. These fridges don’t have anything to encourage airflow. Picking up a few mini fans can help get the cold air flowing and quickly cooling the fridge. Don’t stuff it too full! Leave enough space for there to be good airflow. Particularly when first cooling it down. Use electricity to power the fridge before you leave on a trip. Then switch to propane. Hodor! Hold the door and keep it shut. Only open it when you need to.

How Does Propane Cool a Fridge?

A propane fridge works using a series of chemical processes involving ammonia, hydrogen, and water. In short, these are:

A ‘generator’ is powered by burning propane (or an electric heating element) Ammonia and water are put into the generator, which seperate as ammonia becomes a gas. The ammonia gas is then put through some cooling fins, which cool it back down to a liquid. This liquid is then combined with liquid hydrogen in evaporator coils. When they are combined, their reaction produces a lot of cooling. This happens inside the actual fridge. Once the reaction is finished, the ammonia and hydrogen are seperator in an ‘absorber’. The ammonia combines with water. The ammonia and water go back into the generator. The process starts again!

See a more detailed description in our post covering the best propane fridges (near the bottom of the article).

Using Propane Vs Electricity On A Fridge

Due to the sheer availability, it’s always a better idea to power a propane fridge via electricity – when available. This is simply due to using propane means you’ll need to refill or replace the propane tank. Typically, the difference in energy cost isn’t enough to compare to the time and hassle you lose filling propane tanks.

Directly comparing the costs of both fuel types is difficult: there’s so many variables. Not only their actual costs, but their efficiency in how we use them. We can however draw a basic comparison.

Per this source, if you pay a standard $0.12 per kWh of electricity, and one gallon of propane = 27 kWh of electricity, then 27*0.12 = a break-even point of $3.24. In other words, if you can get propane for less than $3.24 a gallon then you’ll save in comparison to using electricity at $0.12/kWH.

Note: It’s also worth bearing in mind that propane burns cleanly while our electricity is typically generated using fossil fuels, propane is arguably better for the environment (unless we’re talking about electricity from renewable sources.

Does A Propane Fridge Need Electricity

No. A propane fridge can run without any electricity whatsoever. This is why they’re so loved by outdoor and wilderness enthusiasts, as well as RV-owners.

How Long Will A Propane Refrigerator Run On A Propane Tank?

Let’s work it out together for the example of a standard 20lb propane tank.

A gallon of Propane provides around 91,000BTU of heat. A 20lb propane tank contains 4.7 gallons of propane, or 4.7*91000 = 427,000BTU available The average propane fridge uses 1,500BTU per hour to operate. 1,500 * 24 = 36,000BTU per day BTUAvailable/BTUPerDay= 11.8 days of fuel.

So there we have it. If you’re using a standard 20-lb propane tank, you can expect it to last around 11 days (non-stop) before needing to replace or refill it.

For a 30lb tank just add 50%; so it would last for 17.7 days non-stop.

Note: The above calculations provide a ball-park estimate only. In reality, many propane fridge users find their tanks to last for weeks and weeks. Especially when they’re not in constant use. In most cases, you’ll barely be able to tell a decrease in the level of gas in the tank after a whole day. So I would take these calculations as a ‘worst-case’ estimate.

How Long Will A Propane Refrigerator Run On Battery?

To fully operate a propane fridge on battery can quickly drain the juice from the battery of an RV (or similar). Expect it not last longer than 3 hours. However, if not switched on and only using the electricity for the control panel, this is a tiny amount and can last for weeks.

How Long Does It Take For A Propane Fridge To Get Cold?

As I mentioned above, the answer to this question depends on a lot of variables. Particularly the power of the fridge, and the temperature of the air.

In general, it will take many hours for a propane fridge to cool down. At least 6, more likely 10-12 hours. This is why the best practice is to turn it on the day before you need it, and let it cool down overnight. (This is even more effective given it starts from a cooler temperature at night).

Be sure to reduce the cooling time by following the tips to get the most efficient cooling from earlier in this article.

Conclusion

Propane fridges are an amazing tool to get the advantages of civilization even while totally off-grid. They do come with disadvantages (upfront cost and long cooling time), but they’re totally silent and work everywhere. Which are priceless advantages.

I hope this guide has helped give you the information you need to get the most out of your propane refrigerator. If you want to learn more, check out our articles on:

The best propane fridges available

and

Are propane fridges safe?

I hope you enjoyed this article, and that you have a great day!

-Craig

How Much Propane Does An RV Fridge Use?

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What You Need to Know About Propane RV Refrigerators

RV fridges that run on propane are absorption system fridges. These fridges have an AC option in addtion to propane power. Some RV fridges also have the ability to operate on DC power. Unlike their compression system fridge counterparts, absorption fridges have no moving parts.

RV fridges work by having a small pilot light thats heats a boiling chamber filled with ammonia and water. The water and ammonia mixture is circulated through a series of tubes, eventually changing the ammonia to a gas form.

The ammonia gas keeps rising and the water runs back into the boiling chamber. The ammonia starts cooling and runs down tubes, absorbing heat from the interior of the refrigerator as it goes, making the interior of the fridge cold. To operate at peak efficiency, RV refrigerators need to be level and require care and maintenance.

How Much Propane Does An RV Fridge Use?

Generally, a 10 to 12 cubic foot RV fridge will burn about 1.5 pounds of propane per day. However, the amount of propane an RV fridge uses will depend on the age, size, and ambient temperature.

Propane RV Refrigerator Maintenance tips

An RV fridge will use less propane and last longer with a little care and maintenance. Here is what you need to do to look after it.

Keep your RV fridge level. To help keep your RV fridge from overheating, park your RV on a level surface. RV fridges have a harder time cooling when they are not level because the water and ammonia can’t make their way through the tubes as efficiently. This can not only cause your RV fridge to burn more propane, but can also cause your RV to burn. Unlevel RV parking can cause RV refrigerators to catch fire, with catastrophic consequences. Cool your RV fridge before putting food into it. Defrost your RV fridge regularly. Allow air to circulate in your RV fridge by not blocking the coils at the back of the fridge. Don’t pack too much into the fridge. Park so that the fridge is on the shaded side of the RV. If the refridgerator is on the sunny side of the RV, it will have to work harder to cool the air inside itself. Park so that the side of the RV that has the fridge in it is on the coolest side of the RV. Never run your RV fridge on propane while driving. This is the number one cause of RV fires on highways.



Make sure you keep track of all your RV maintenance and repairs with an online tool such as RV LIFE Maintenance from RV LIFE. Not only can you keep all of your documents in one place, but you’ll also receive timely reminders when maintenance is due to help you avoid costly repairs and potentially serious accidents.

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Lynne lives, travels and works full time in the R-Pod 180 with 3 pointers and 1 small but vital corgi mix named Alice. Lynne began full time RVing as an experiment in 2019, but she quickly fell in love with the convenience, freedom and minimalist lifestyle offered by full time RV living. Lynne is a professional dog trainer, offering mobile and online dog training services through her website at www.mydoggeek.com. You can read about her travel adventures on her blog at: https://rpodadventure.wordpress.com/

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