Stop Starting Car Fridge

>Its only an electrical appliance. Switch it on....switch it off.

That's not really correct. Many electrical items will suffer from surge currents at switch on - with some items this will cause premature wear, motors, light globes and many items of electronic equipment will fall into this category however cycling them once per 24 hours will not make any difference to long term reliability.

Mike Harding

Nothing is absolute.

Life is even more complex.

Nitpicking has become a passtime.

>Nitpicking has become a passtime.

This is a public forum - many people on here have specialised technical knowledge - when you (or I) make a technical statement which is incorrect expect it to be corrected - don't be so precious.

Mike Harding

You bored again old fella?

Nitpicking is your trademark on this forum. You are full of tehnical nonsense which has no meaning in real life.

Not long along you nitpicked a word I used in the Afrikaans language. That time however you didn't offer to correct me as you probably didn't know the answer. I let it slide.

This time I will take you on again and we can restart the "Unholy Wars" if you wish.

>You bored again old fella?

I'm bored with you Willem.

So why raise your nitpicking issue in the first place then.

Relax Willem: you’re making a big deal out of nothing. You made a technically incorrect statement (in the field I have spent over 30 years working in) and I, nicely, corrected it. People do it all the time on this forum – don’t get so upset.

Mike Harding

I wouldn't be worried about the fridge but the food inside, if you run it at +5 then turn it off for 12 hours it's probably going to get up around +10 or more by morning. Even +5 is too warm for safe storage of food should be below 4 at all times. I run mine my cf50 on 3 lights which is around -1 to +2 as I like my beer cold and food to last.

Brett, your the winner....
If some-one buys a fridge they usually use it to keep food at a "safe" temperature level for human consumption, +4 max, according to WHO.

Why would they then let the food inside spoil by bacteria, salmonella etc caused by the food heating up to +8 or even above +12 etc.

Maybe they should get a more efficient fridge or a larger capacity battery system??

The fridge won't be affected as much as the battery system simply because when you start it again in the morning it has to cool down the internal space in the fridge and the food from the +12 etc back to +4 which takes longer and drains MORE power from the battery than running the fridge all night anyway. I think most fridges would only run about 3 or 4 times a night in the lower area of Australia, below 26th parallel.

Hi there Nuzzles what Jimbo is getting at is that you take your food from the house fridge at say 4c then dump it in the car fridge then start it up at which stage the fridge is probably sitting at 15c and would take a little while to come down in temp at the same time your food is at an above suitable storage temp chances of food going off before you eat it. Steve M

At 12.23v there maybe no 'real' battery problem with the fridge running, as the battery has only 'lost' 0.43v depending on accuracy of test implement, and it also depends where you actually place the probe and take the voltage from, and if the voltage was taken a long time 'after' the fridge turned on, eg when it was about to turn off again, or if it was taken just as the fridge started the numbers would be affected by the larger start-up current.

Note, if you 1/2 fill the fridge with some plastic bags of water, as well as your food this will keep the internal fridge temp low and it will not 'run' as often during the day and the night.

I would run the fridge @ +2 half full of bags of water 24/7 if you are only going to put your 'daily lunch' into it each day, you may be surprised at how effective it will become as a fridge and the reductuion in run time and therefore less battery draw daily.