Refrigeration issues

The purchase of a WAECO fridge in Darwin was supposed to save endless headaches and purchase of ice along the route. The accompanying deep cycle battery and cabling should have ensured that nice chilled water, cheese, meats and importantly beer could be carried to make the journey nice and easy.

That plan has sort of worked.

Mr WAECO can be a temperamental machine at times requiring lots of love and care but also the correct balance of power to maintain its chilly state. For some reason maintaining a frosty 5C has been harder than I thought due to the combination of long distance driving, few powered sites, the few nights in a single spot and the level of goods requiring a chilled environment.

I’ll explain the conundrum….

The fridge can run from two sources; the battery and the mains so when in a powered site, the fridge is running direct from 240V and when the engine is running it is then running from the electrical charge being created through the battery. If Stan isn’t moving, the battery power runs the fridge on its own. So, once the battery power has run out it becomes a little tricky to get it back fully charged. This requires the engine to be running but without the fridge drawing any power on it.

Seems easy doesn’t it but when you run the engine without the battery the outside air temperature warms the fridge to a higher temperature then requiring more battery power to bring it back down again.

Having spoken to many people about this little puzzle, I tried turning it off a night; hoping that the outside air temperature would be low enough to sufficiently remain around 5C but without draining the battery overnight. This didn’t really work. I tried taking out the light bulb from the fridge in an attempt to reduce the amount of battery power being used when the fridge was opened. This didn’t really work.

It seems the only way that Mr WAECO will work is the gently gently approach and then shouting when out of earshot. I’m sure this will be fixed but am coming to the realisation that it was a mistake not to invest in a battery charger!!!