In the short 15 seasons we have used the coach, we have has three electric reefers.
The first was poorly installed during the hot climate mod as called out by GMC. It was a 3.5cuft Norcold 12/120. There was an advisory bulletin from
GM to install both the roof vent and side access panel if they got customer complaints of the reefer being ineffective at higher temperatures.
There was this little problem...
The installation (per Norcold's specification) was to clearly vent to heat to inside the coach. That was built in.
That ventilation path was not closed off.
This was in Minnesota in October, we were hard pressed to stay warm. That poor new 30K Suburban was burning itself crazy and just barely hold the
level. One of us stopped in front of the reefer and noticed the fall of frigid air. After a little investigation, I stuffed both the coach side
access panel and the roof vent with what ever we had available and then we got the LP tank to last more than 3 days.
About ten years ago the Norcold quit mid season. Without the time and resources to do a lot about it, we purchased a dorm reefer (120$us) and a 40$
Hazard Fright modified square wave inverter and put the kit together for the rest of the season. As that unit was shorter, during the winter I made a
drawer to go under it. But Mary never liked that unit, the door opened the wrong way and the "freezer" section was not very good and hard to get into
because the door had to be wide open. It was also a power hog. And, I had to put fans to pull the heat out of the closed box, more about this down
the page.
We later acquired a better unit that is has a top door freezer and is (Energy Star), and much less the power hog. With our pair of GC2s, we could run
for a day and an half before I had to recover the house bank and this was before we were largely LED. It is longer now, but I am not sure how much.
Mary likes this one. I got the old Norcold to behave and offered to put it back in. With the loss of the drawer space, this was not well received.
A short cautionary note about residential reefers. Most of the little ones that might fit in out coaches do not have exposed condensers (the part
that rejects heat). What they do is use the sides as condenser, so if they are installed without clearance to both of the sides they will not perform
very well (if at all). They also have no means to secure them in place and no included means to lock the doors closed. Their reduced performance on
modified square wave power can only be determined with some special instruments. This is real, but it is not a big difference. The biggest
difference was between the replacement and the original is combination of the reefer and inverter was about a kilobuck.
Matt
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Matt & Mary Colie - '73 Glacier 23 - Members GMCMI, GMCGL, GMCES
Electronically Controlled Quiet Engine Cooling Fan
OE Rear Drum Brakes with Applied Control Arms
SE Michigan - Twixt A2 and Detroit
