Wednesday, May 02, 2001 at 00:00
Pete, We ended up getting a Chescold RC1180 gas/electric, and we are pleased with it. It suits our style of camping, which is one of staying several days in one place. If you were on the move every day, an electric one might suit better. But there has been times when we have travelled on every day, and we have found our Chescold fine for that sort of use as
well, during the day you run it off your car battery, and at night you leave it in the car and run it off 240v if you are in caravan park, or lift it out and put it on the ground and run it on LPG. Some people run them in the car at night on gas and just leave the windows open a bit, and some people run them on gas when they are driving, but that is not recommended. I dont know what they work like in extremely hot conditions. I have heard that they dont work too
well. Ours is a fridge freezer model and we have two digital thermometers, one in the fridge and the other in the freezer, and we are able to monitor the temperatures without openeing the lid and adjust the thermostat accordingly. I see you have asked someone else about the noise level of Liemacks. In my view there is no way you can sleep too closely to one. We had ours mounted in the storage box on the drawbar on a
Kimberley Kamper and it would have been impossible to sleep with it switching on and off during the night. Liemack tell you to leave it turned on 24 hrs a day and to let it cycle itself on and off. In addition, Liemack claim it to be very energy efficient. We conducted a
test of ours before the dealer took it back, where we charged our battery up(130 amp deep cycle) and turned it on and ran it until the battery was flat. Admittedly, ours was a fridge/freezer, so maybe it had to work harder than the fridge only one, but we did this
test in our garage at
home with the garage door open and the lid of the storage box open to provide ventilation, so it wasnt in the sun, or sitting in a hot car. We did this
test twice, one time it ran for 27 hours and the other for 26 hours. We had the cut out temp at 4 degrees and the cut out battery voltage at 10.5v. We monitored the temp in the fridge, the freezer and the outside air. The air temp reached about 30 degrees at midday, so it wasnt all that hot. During both these tests we didnt once open the lid to take anything out or put food back in, as you would normally do. I have heard from other people that they are energy hungry and noisy. Regards Simon
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