Residential Fridge Inverter Problem Solved

[Captain 'Murica]

I looked through several forums and couldn't find a definitive solution so I thought I would share here. I have a 2018 HC 385 BR with the residential fridge. At first it worked flawlessly as advertised. However, shortly after purchase I started having trouble. As described in several other threads, it would turn on initially, but when I checked as my first stop the GFCI would have tripped turning the fridge off. No matter what I tried, it tripped the GFCI.

I took it in to have it looked at under warranty. They said that it was a bad transfer switch and replaced it. The first trip after getting it fixed I had the same issue.

The fridge worked flawlessly as long as it was on shore power. I started doing research and found that putting a fridge on a GFCI it generally frowned upon. This is for several reasons including: 1) fridges produce electrical noise which can trip GFCIs unnecessarily and 2) if the GFCI trips, all of your food goes bad. I checked with my Dad who was a licensed electrician and asked him if replacing the GFCI with a regular outlet would cause issues and he assured me that using a GFCI for the fridge was unnecessary.

So, I decided to switch out the GFCI for a regular outlet. I pulled out the inverter and opened it up. I had to remove the circuit board from the face place to get the GFCI outlet out and the new outlet in, but all in all it was a pretty easy switch.

I have been on a few trips since then and so far it is working great! The last trip was a few weeks ago. We went about 2 hours down the road and when I got to my spot my fridge was 34 and my freezer was at -2 when the outside temps were in the 70s.