Saturday, October 1, 2022

Another Repair Project

Thursday - Back in spring while we were at a HH, the MaxxFan started misbehaving. If we ran it on auto, which is the preferred mode, as it got warmer and the fan sped up, the fan would shut down. The manufacturer said that it was probably the controller board and they would send out a new one - once they get hold of some. 

After multiple delays and shipping address changes, I finally asked a ham radio friend, BobB, who lives in the Orlando area to just mail it to us whenever it arrives. It took months. He mailed it to our home in Fairbanks and Bridget bought it back with her at the beginning of September. I finally got around to replacing the board. 

Friday - Thunderstorms and wind this afternoon. Enough potential wind for me to bring in the patio awning. By 4:30, it was dark to the south and east with lightning in the clouds. 

Not much going on today. Two test sessions and grocery shopping. I did order the 12VDC  compressor conversion kit for our Dometic RV refrigerator. It is a complete replacement for all of the ammonia and propane pieces on the back of the refrigerator box. The control board is reused.

It’s supposed to work much better than the absorption refrigeration unit. With an average power consumption of 60watts, that’s still 1,440 watt-hours or about 115 amp-hours. So we may end up upgrading our 220 amp-hour (usable) house battery bank and maybe adding more solar sooner rather than later.

Around 6:00, I wandered to the pool but it started to rain around 15 minutes later. It stopped around 6:30. Then started again around 6:45…

Saturday - This is one reason why we are replacing the absorption part of our refrigerator. Kind of too warm for a refrigerator. It should be in the upper 30s to low 40s. Not in the 50s. I think that it’s kind of interesting that the jump from the 40s to 50s was shortly after I had ordered the compressor conversion unit…

I did notice that I couldn’t hear the fan running behind the refrigerator. There is a 12V fan to blow air up towards the upper refrigerator vent on the roof. 

2 comments:

  1. I started getting excited reading that there's a conversion kit to convert a propane fridge to 12 volt compressor; then I saw that it requires 60 watts so not for me at this point in my RV career.

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    1. I like the idea of no propane flame. The 60 watts is much less than the 350 watts that is currently consumed when on shore power. But we’ll see what actual power consumption is for us. I should be installing it next week sometime.

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