# Refrigerator 12 DV or stay with LP?



## TheLazyL (Jun 5, 2012)

I'm looking at a off the grid real estate for retirement. Southwest part of the country, lots of sunshine, temperatures range from a high of 95 (F) to a low of 35 (F). :2thumb:

Home has LP refrigerator, LP stove, 2 wood burning fireplaces (with forced air LP heat as backup) and solar hot water (with LP water heater as backup). A 500 pound LP tank comes with the property. 

Home also has a 5,000 watt solar system. Electric clothes washer, 120 AC electric lights and 120 AC ceiling fans. On the grid community water well.

From what I've read a LP refrigerator has:

No moving parts to wear out.
Uses from 1 pound of LP a day to 2 pounds a week (dependent on the model).
Ventless
Only maintenance is to clean burner and defrost.
Requires "D" batteries for inside lighting.
Knowledgeable Repairman are hard to find.
Replacement cost (plus shipping) in the neighborhood of $2,000.
House carbon monoxide detector a necessity.

I have a concern about annual LP costs. Where I presently live we use 2,500 to 3,000 pounds of LP annually. Retiring includes reducing costs too.

So I thought about replacing the LP refrigerator with a 12DC model

Moving parts, manufacturer's predicts life expediency at 15 years.
500 watts per day.
less maintenance.
Knowledgeable Repairman are hard to find.
Replacement cost (plus shipping) in the neighborhood of $3,000.

What I'm saving on LP I may be spending on the higher cost of the 12DC Refrigerator and at a cost of 10% of my solar power.

Home is about 5 miles from the nearest public road. I anticipate higher delivery cost for LP.

Anyone have experience with a full size LP refrigerator and willing to share many pounds of LP their refrigerator uses?

Or for $15,000 I can have grid power run to the property and go with a easy to acquire and maintain 120 AC refrigerator.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

A high efficiency 120V model is entirely doable on solar as well. Depending on your setup (how heavily you will rely on inverter(s)) this might be a good option.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

I don't think there is a wrong answer. You get to weight the choices.

Do you want to pay $15,000 to acquire a monthly bill? How much in an additional battery bank, solar panels, and LP storage can you get for less than this amount? My wife would vote for the power line, I would make other choices.

Have you considered a dual fuel fridge? You can run on electricity most of the time and switch to LP when the batteries get low.

How about adding another 500W of solar panels, or more?

How about getting an additional, and larger, propane tank? If they are getting a larger delivery the cost per gallon should go down. Also, two tanks means it is less likely that you will run out.
How about getting a few 100# tanks? You can take these to town yourself for refill and save the delivery charge.

How long will your current battery bank last?
Would an additional battery bank help or is it pretty well balanced now?
Do you have the capacity to pull an additional 500W with the current system? For all the year or just part?


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

I second the "A high efficiency 120V model".
I pulled the LP refrig from my RV and switched to a 120 volt model. I am happy with the change.


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## forluvofsmoke (Jan 27, 2012)

Just remember that for everything electric that requires AC power, you suffer efficiency losses of your battery storage, translating to possibly needing higher capacity storage and PV system, when powering through an inverter. Modified Sine-Wave are the most efficient at up to 95% (even with low-end models), but provide the least clean power, and won't operate inductive loads. The trade-off is that you get as little as 85% efficiency with Pure Sine-Wave, at a much higher purchase cost. Even if the life expectancy of your prospective 12VDC fridge is 15 years, that's longer than most AC models are designed to last, and the start-up surge requirements for compressor motors will take their toll on inverters if they aren't designed to handle it...up to 8 times (or more) the running watts for start-up surge.

The basic simplicity of keeping most everything on 12 VDC for lighting and appliances, or 12/24 VDC for, say water well pumps, is that you ultimately have less equipment to fail when you don't need an inverter to operate these items. Also, refrigeration units designed for DC off-grid use are designed for much higher efficiency...check the R-value of the insulation, for example, and compare to AC refrigerators. The chest model fridges (Sundanzer comes to mind) are designed to stay cold enough to keep food at safe temps for more than a day without power, and freezers to keep foods frozen for several days. Chest models aren't very convenient to access, but do have the ability to stay cold much longer when the chips are down.

If I ever have the opportunity to go off-grid, I'll be shooting for DC with everything I possibly can, including LED lighting (90% efficient and easy on the eyes, unlike CFLs).

DC home appliances are not widely available in many areas, yet, and some areas are not yet getting tuned into renewable energy, although it is coming slowly. As more and more people convert to the high efficiency DC refrigeration units, more venders will be wanting to cash-in on the market and be willing to stock them for in-store pick-up, as well as more manufacturers will be marketing them. In turn, more service techs will be trained and experienced in the repair and maintenance aspects...probably long before yours will need any work done on it.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

cowboyhermit said:


> A high efficiency 120V model is entirely doable on solar as well. Depending on your setup (how heavily you will rely on inverter(s)) this might be a good option.


I have two refrigerators and a chest freezer that run on 120 VAC that are not considered "high efficiency" however when I look at the label for operating ampere totals they are doable for a sized solar system. When figuring load needs for refrigerators or freezers on solar the info I ran across was that they run approximately 1/3rd of a 24 hour period, largely dependent on if they are in an area that doesn't get overly warm. In general ceiling fans don't draw a whole lot of current on a low settings. We've been replacing all of the incandescent and CFL lighting with LED's and we found that the equivalent of 40 watt incandescent LED's from Costco and only use only 7.5 watt actually put out more light than a regular light and they are dimmable. Just by changing to LED's we are seeing a slight reduction in our power bill even over the CFL's we'd been using. Last time we bought them they had reduced the price per three pack by $9 to $10.99. As to the use of 12 VDC refrigerator/freezer, the experience we've had with the motor home unit is that it was only worthwhile running it that way while driving to and from where ever we stayed. It would have discharged our solar system batteries in no time at all so the refrigerator/freezer ran most efficiently on propane. When going off grid it certainly is a good idea to figure what you can do without to lighten the discharge loads on your battery bank. Our solar system, so far, is only for backup and will be limited to refrigerators, freezer and a few lights. I don't want to run a generator unless we have to, at nearly a gallon an hour, plus all the noise, it's just not that enjoyable.


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## Tirediron (Jul 12, 2010)

If you are thinking of going this route, I would suggest that you research the chest freezer to refrigerator conversions, they are by nature more efficient and you don't dump all of your cold air every time you open the door. as far as I know a simple thermostat is about all that is required. this option would be cheaper than 12V dc, easier parts access, if solar, inverted AC power doesn't need as big of wires. if though tis used in the thermo stat conversion it should be plug and play. and most freezers last pretty much forever or at least a long time.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

Ideally imo everything in an off-grid system would be DC for efficiency and because I like working with it (Low voltage DC). In the real world though, most off-grid sites these days will end up with some sort of inverter running the majority or all the time, for one reason or another. Just a few years ago I would never have suggested an AC model but with the increase in efficiency of 120V models, the fact that most off-grid sites are running a quality inverter anyways, and most importantly the huge drop in price of panels, the loss of efficiency is less significant.

A cheap energy star fridge these days is under 400kwh/year (nominal), and you can pick one up for $5-600 for a Kenmore or what have you, if luxury is not needed. With solar panels @ $1/watt, depending on your climate you could setup a bare bones system to run that for under a grand. More realistically though, investing that $1000 or a little more into a larger system would certainly run it well. Remember if you pay a couple grand for the DC model you still need the system to run that as well. 
I wish the dc models would smarten up and get to a more competitive price, at least on the bottom end. There are a lot of $3000 120V models too


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## talob (Sep 16, 2009)

Tirediron said:


> If you are thinking of going this route, I would suggest that you research the chest freezer to refrigerator conversions, they are by nature more efficient and you don't dump all of your cold air every time you open the door. as far as I know a simple thermostat is about all that is required. this option would be cheaper than 12V dc, easier parts access, if solar, inverted AC power doesn't need as big of wires. if though tis used in the thermo stat conversion it should be plug and play. and most freezers last pretty much forever or at least a long time.


You beat me to it, as I was reading this thread I was thinking of a post I read the other day on doing just that I believe it was on DIYsolar website, be a whole lot cheaper than the twelve hundred and up for the DC refrigerators.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

TheLazyL said:


> A 500 pound LP tank comes with the property.
> 
> From what I've read a LP refrigerator has:
> Uses from 1 pound of LP a day to 2 pounds a week


I'll bet that's a 500 gallon tank, correct? 
5lbs per gallon at 500 gallon is 2500 lbs. 
Two lbs of propane per week on a 500 gallon tank is 1,250 weeks, or 24 years... give or take. 
Even a pound a day with 500 gallons is 7 years.



forluvofsmoke said:


> DC home appliances are not widely available in many areas, ....


Many are not needed. I use a blender or coffee grinder for about 30 seconds, and a hand mixer for maybe two minutes. It's not worth it to make these in DC.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

LincTex said:


> I'll bet that's a 500 gallon tank, correct?
> 5lbs per gallon at 500 gallon is 2500 lbs.
> Two lbs of propane per week on a 500 gallon tank is 1,250 weeks, or 24 years... give or take.
> Even a pound a day with 500 gallons is 7 years.
> ...


I have a 400# tank and a 100# tank. There is no way that these are 400 gallon and 100 gallon respectively.

A friend of mine has a 12V TV, VCR, and blender at his remote cabin. I'm sure he has other similar products but I don't remember them all.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Typically, once you cross the 100# threshold, folks stop calling them by pounds and move on to gallons. It can get confusing.

It also has to do with DOT regs, the largest "portable" tank I have is "100 pounds", or 23.? gallons. Everything I have that is larger than that is rated by WC gallons. Folks around here always refer to them in the same nomenclature.

For instance, I have never seen or heard of a 500 pound tank, but 100 gallons is seldom seen. However, 500 gallons is VERY common.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

You have always given good advice in the past so I trust what you say. All I know is that this was sold to me as a 400# tank and and it lasts about four times longer than my 100# tank. Mostly I've owned the 100# tanks.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Caribou said:


> You have always given good advice in the past so I trust what you say. All I know is that this was sold to me as a 400# tank and and it lasts about four times longer than my 100# tank. Mostly I've owned the 100# tanks.


There will be clear stampings on the tank if it is a D.O.T. tank with the tare weight, inspection date, and WC capacity. If the numbers are not readable, it can't legally be refilled.

Same with the stamped aluminum data plate on the larger tanks... 
no data plate makes it immediately illegal regardless of its condition. 
Re-fillers won't touch it because the fines are ridiculous if they get caught.

Your numbers on your tank should tell you what you have without any guessing.


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## TheLazyL (Jun 5, 2012)

LincTex said:


> I'll bet that's a 500 gallon tank, correct?


Correct.

Thank you for posting some actual LP refrigerator consumption rates.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

40 pound on the left (10 gallons), 100lb on the right (23.5 gallons)










100 gallon (rare in Texas) - about 500 lbs total capacity, but 400lbs if filled to 80% full (legal capacity)


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## TheLazyL (Jun 5, 2012)

Caribou said:


> ...How about getting a few 100# tanks? You can take these to town yourself for refill and save the delivery charge....


True on the delivery charge.

Only problem I see with that idea is how would a soon to be old geezer (me) manhandle 100 pounds tanks to town and back?


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## TheLazyL (Jun 5, 2012)

Tirediron said:


> ...I would suggest that you research the chest freezer to refrigerator conversions....


She who must be obeyed would not approved standing on her head as her 5' 4" frame falls into the chest to retrieve....


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Around here, a 100lb tank is $70 to fill, so it's about $3.20 a gallon.

I can get bulk delivered for $2.36 a gallon (100 gallon minimum)

If I only use one or two 100lb tanks a year, it's prob worth it to just haul-and-fill. But alas, wrestling 172 pounds (a full 100lb tank) is not for the older ones here.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

TheLazyL said:


> She who must be obeyed would not approved standing on her head as her 5' 4" frame falls into the chest to retrieve....


LOL, my 5'4" wife keeps a step-stool in front of the chest freezer.


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

Price on LP varies alot throughout the country. Here right now I can get it delivered for $2.39 gallon. I can bring my small tanks in and have them filled for $1.70 per gallon(big difference). As far as the OP moving the 100# tanks (which weigh around 180# full) get a dedicated trailer and just leave them on it all the time could be one answer. Just hook on the trailer disconnect the line and drive to town. In my area you would easily pay for the tanks and the trailer from the cheaper propane rate if you used very much. The OP can call around in the closest town to check prices.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

TheLazyL said:


> True on the delivery charge.
> 
> Only problem I see with that idea is how would a soon to be old geezer (me) manhandle 100 pounds tanks to town and back?


I resemble that remark.

True, not all plans work for everyone. Adaptations can also be made to cover the weakness' in our plans. Hundred pounders can be kept on a platform that is the same height as a pickup bed or they can be mounted in a trailer. When I find an answer here it is often by combining ideas and/or altering the idea to fit my need.

A large tank is another way to reduce total cost. Quantity discounts and reduced numbers of deliveries will help reduce expenses.

Perhaps someone with the knowledge of the regulations can share the largest legal residential tank and the number of them allowed.

When the tanks near the age at which they will no longer be filled I would suggest that they are filled one last time and stored in a secure, dry location for emergency use and replaced with a new one. I think 12 years is the cutoff for 100# and lower. As these near their age they should become really cheap.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

TheLazyL said:


> True on the delivery charge.
> 
> Only problem I see with that idea is how would a soon to be old geezer (me) manhandle 100 pounds tanks to town and back?


I'm glad you clarified the (me) part because at 71 I still pick up 16 gallon plastic diesel fuel barrels to refill my pickup that weigh in the 100 pound area. Not saying it's all that fun to do but thankfully it's not on a daily basis.


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## Country Living (Dec 15, 2009)

We have two propane tanks - a 250 gallon and a 500 gallon. The small tank is our primary tank; the large one is our disaster preparedness tank (won't be used unless we run out of propane in the small tank). We topped off both tanks last week and the price was $2.50/gallon. Six weeks ago the price was $2.35/gallon. I have both tanks topped off about three times a year because the lowest I will let the primary tank go is 50%. This is just a personal preference.

We have a EZ Freeze 19cf propane refrigerator. We also have a propane stove and a small propane heater that runs off the tanks in the workshop. Our tankless water heater is also propane and we have a whole-house Generac generator that runs on propane. I estimate the fridge averages about 10 gallons a month - well worth it in our opinion. In case of a catastrophic event we won't run the big generator so having a propane fridge gives us the ability to safely store food that needs refrigeration.

For us, even though natural gas is not in this area, propane is still a more reliable and stable resource in case of an event. We're fortunate our propane dealer has a disaster preparedness plan to keep the propane flowing as long as possible. They thought we were a little nuts when we wanted a 500 gallon "back-up" tank since they are confident they will always be able to make deliveries. They now understand we hope for the best and plan for the worst.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

forluvofsmoke said:


> Just remember that for everything electric that requires AC power, you suffer efficiency losses of your battery storage, translating to possibly needing higher capacity storage and PV system, when powering through an inverter. Modified Sine-Wave are the most efficient at up to 95% (even with low-end models), but provide the least clean power, and won't operate inductive loads. The trade-off is that you get as little as 85% efficiency with Pure Sine-Wave, at a much higher purchase cost.


The MagnaSine pure sine wave inverter/charger that we bought for our home solar back up system is rated at 4000 watts 120/240 VAC split phase, it's rated for 5 sec. at 5800 watts which takes care of most all locked rotor starting amp load motors that are designed to run within the 4000 watt rating, it's also rated a 93% maximum efficiency. The Xantrex 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter/charger we have in our motor home is rated 4000 watts for 5 sec. and is rated 90%+ efficiency. It certainly pays to do the research to get the best efficiency possible so that you're not wasting battery storage on no load or low load conditions.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

hiwall said:


> right now I can get it delivered for $2.39 gallon. I can bring my small tanks in and have them filled for $1.70 per gallon.


That's incredible... At those prices I would convert everything I own to run off of portable bottles, even my Softail.



Caribou said:


> Perhaps someone with the knowledge of the regulations can share the largest legal residential tank and the number of them allowed.


So far out "in the sticks" off the grid doesn't sound very residential, so I bet you can get by with nearly whatever you choose. LongRider in the pacific northwest has (3ea) 500 gallon tanks in his backyard (he also runs all his vehicles on propane)



Caribou said:


> When the tanks near the age at which they will no longer be filled I would suggest that they are filled one last time and stored in a secure, dry location for emergency use and replaced with a new one. I think 12 years is the cutoff for 100# and lower. As these near their age they should become really cheap.


Good idea! 
They can be re-certified for about $30-$45 but not for 12 more years, usually like 7 or so. I think they can get re-stamped as many times as possible as long as the tank is good.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

I don't know about down there, but up here where it is really cold 1000 or 2000 gallon (US) tanks are not uncommon on farms and acreages. The funny thing is that you don't save much money on the tank once you get over 500, I think the 1000gallon was the most cost effective IIRC.


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## oldasrocks (Jun 30, 2012)

Recently we replaced our frig. I tried to talk the wife into a propane unit but because they don't come with an ice maker so she opted out.

I think a propane unit would last a lot longer than an electric unit of any kind.

We have 2-500 gallon tanks. Our standby genny runs on propane is the reason for 2 tanks. So normally I only fill every 18 months or so. Shopping around, since we own the tanks. enables us to find good prices. We filled for $1.64 last summer.


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## Tirediron (Jul 12, 2010)

TheLazyL said:


> She who must be obeyed would not approved standing on her head as her 5' 4" frame falls into the chest to retrieve....


A lot of people put containers of water in a bottom layer, to act as a spacer and as a cold sink. Sometimes you have to think outside the box. or in this case think about the inside of the box. A much more efficient use of the space would be a cold drinking water tank with a small pump system.


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