Refrigerator Power
Yesterday we releveled and today no power. Well, so much for an easy retirement and stress free camping! We woke up this morning to find the refrigerator was dead. No lights and not even a beep when we touch the control panel. We’ve seen this once before when the fridge shut down and we discovered that one of the two blade fuses on the control board had come loose. That time there was 12V coming in but not getting past the blade fuse so it was an easy fix. We replaced the fuses and everything had been working fine until this morning.
Since we had been messing with the fridge yesterday and moved it around a lot trying to relevel it, I figured we had knocked the blade fuses loose again. Also, other 12V accessories like lights and heat seemed to be working and I had checked the circuit breaker and fuse panels which were all good.
We emptied the fridge once again, undid the blocks holding it and pulled it out. I got on top to check the board and the fuses only to find that there was only 5V coming in and not the expected 12V. Now, I was worried! It wasn’t the fridge but something upstream in the power supply system. We had already checked the fuses and breakers in the RV but now looked at the power panel and saw that the battery was down to 9%. So, the battery had been powering all the 12V accessories for enough time to completely drain. Now, I’m thinking that we have an issue with the power converter. We lost a power converter in our old motor home and it was similar to this. 120V was working fine and I had checked the power cord and power pole just to be sure. It appeared that the 12V side of the power converter went out and the battery was carrying the load.
We were going to need to call an RV Tech to get a new power converter installed but in the meantime I needed to power the 12V stuff in the RV until someone could come out. I couldn’t use our generator since it would just take our shore cord and that was already powered. I couldn’t use our Jackery power supply for the same reason. I needed to get 12V power to the battery and then the battery could run everything. I considered a battery charger but most of those are trickle chargers and wouldn’t handle the load, BUT I did have two sources of 12V right in front of our rig – an F-150 and a RAM 3500 with good batteries and alternators in each! I pulled the F-150 up to the front of the rig and put a jumper cable from the truck to the RV house battery and everything turned back on! Now we had a good temporary 12V source to get us by for a while.
We put the fridge back in and loaded it back up so all our food would stay frozen or cold as appropriate and were cleaning up when I took my tool kit out to the pass-through storage and something in there was beeping. Beeping???? What the heck would be beeping now that wasn’t earlier? While I stood there staring towards the beeping, my eye caught the Battery Disconnect switch which was somehow in the vertical “off” position! Now, I felt like a dolt. I must have bumped it late yesterday when I was putting my tools away from working on the fridge and didn’t catch it. I sheepishly turned it back on and disconnected the truck jumper cables and sure enough, everything stayed powered. Thankfully, we hadn't called anyone yet and my only mea culpa is to you and my lovely wife.
Just one problem: my understanding of the function of the battery cut off is that it disconnects the battery from powering anything when you park the RV for a long period so that the battery doesn’t run down. Now according to web posts that’s not entirely true because some items are wired around that switch like the CO monitors, etc. The posts say you have to charge your battery once every 3 months or so while in storage to compensate for that slight draw. BUT everything else is supposed to be cut off. Now, in our case this morning, the cut off switch was in the "off" position and the battery had been drawn down to the point that the fridge wouldn’t work but lights etc. would work on the reduced voltage. Shore power wasn’t getting to the fridge via the power converter or it would have been running fine. So, what does the cut off switch do? It appears to keep the power converter output from getting to the battery or any other load but does not cut the battery connection to all the loads. I’m confused!
We’re going to have to do some wire chasing and some reading in the manuals to figure this one out.
