batteries

I'll be the first to say it - more details !!!! Like what sort of fridge ? if you have like an X-trail and you run a thermoelectric fridge during the night in North Queensland during summer off its under bonnet battery then you will have one dead battery by the morning. But you know if you have a patrol or landcruiser with a healthy battery and you run a full waeco or engel or similar and don't open it much in a cool environment say anywhere south of Brisbane during winter then there's likely to be bugger all current draw from your large RC battery.

But look at it this way, if you battery is low by morning then you can use the gennie to crank it back up. Though you would have read how terrible it is to run a starting battery to non-starting level.

etc etc etc

Hey Skipp

So what sort of fridge were are you going to take and when you took about "putting it on a battery overnight" did you mean a separate battery or the battery under your bonnet ? If a separate battery then that would be fine and i take it you charge it the next morning at the same time as you put the fridge on the gennie. But to be honests using a gennie to run a fridge is so overkill not to mention expensive and noisy. If you have a separate battery then use the gennie to charge it in the morning and before nightfall using a good 3 stage charger. If you have a 240v rectifier for your 12v fridge then all you need is a double adaptor to both run the fridge and recharge the battery. Just hope you don't have a noisy gennie or you may p#ss off other campers, or worse your wife.

Dry cell don't use and bugger it up ? Not sure what you mean, you have wet lead acid batteries, Absorbed Glass Mat batteries (AGM), calcium batteries, sealed lead acid batteries. None of these bugger up if you don't use them - so long as every month or so you properly charge them.

If you use the car battery don't rely on the gennie 12v charging outlet to charge it if you care about it (unregulated supply thing), get a good quality 240v 3 or even 4 stage charger that when the battery is fully charged will reduce to a trickle charge which means you can't overcharge it.

One of my fridges is an old Waeco 40L compressor model. On a winters night (brisbane) can use as little as 8amps from 7pm to 7am. That would be fine for you el cheapo Supercheap small car battery if you want to go the dead cheap way. My opinion anyhow.

You may upset a few people if you run a generator all day, you might be better to look at a 3 way (12v/240v/Gas) fridge & run it on gas while you are camped. Our local camping store has Gasmate 3 way fridges for $299.00.
Anyway, hope you & wife enjoy your camping.

skipp, as your new, I would say use a battery you can afford, "Hint->" the larger the Amp/ hours for a Deep Cycle battery or "RC" for a Starter battery the longer the battery will last running the fridge...
A decent DC battery will be about $140 - $160 however a car battery would be cheaper. Check out a Delkor DC27 (80a/h) or DC30 or 32 Battery (100+ a/h).

Deep cycle batteries are specifically designed to run the fridge, where the Start battery which is rated as CCA, and is specifically designed to start cars, about 700 CCA is realistic.
Deep Cycle is the choice by the big companies who rent out equipment etc.

A Generator... also many choices, look at a budget priced GMC from Bunnings for $100, or a Honda for $1200. They both work, for a low budget low use genny the gmc is more than reasonable.