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Old 04-06-2015, 05:47 PM   #1
Rogerwilson
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Inverter for Residential Fridge

Lesson learned. DO NOT BELIEVE A THING THEY TELL YOU DURING THE WALK THROUGH UNLESS YPU PERSONALLY SEE IT! We were told they installed two batteries for our fridge. LIED! After being in our rig for a month, we could not wait at CW in Florida to work out the bugs because of a family member in California coming down with cancer.

Now we're in CA. Wife was wondering why our fridge was not staying cold while we were in transit. I finally looked in the forward compartment, took the battery cover off and YEP, one battery. Took my spare battery and hooked it up. We have not dey camped at night.

Question: there is a battery shut off switch on the front compartment wall. It has been in the off position the whole time. I turned the power off to our trailer, turned the switch to on and the inverter immediately turned on. Light was amber. I turned the power back on and turned the switch back to off. WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS SWITCH? They never explained the switch or the inverter to us other than there was one in our trailer for the fridge.
Any assistance with the process of working with this inverter and the battery switch would be helpful. Do we only turn the switch on while driving? Is the battery being charged by my truck and when hooked up to electrical?
We are very frustrated new Montana owners.
 
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Old 04-06-2015, 11:09 PM   #2
mazboy
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one battery would be enough to keep your propane/refrig cooling. you don't need 2 batteries, but 2 are nice for dry camping for the night, i.e. walmart.

as for the switch, turn it to 'on' and leave it alone. this is how you run your system. when the truck is connected and it is running you are charging your system.

this should eliminate your frustration.
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Old 04-07-2015, 01:04 AM   #3
WaltBennett
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Sounds like you learned the lesson of NEVER trusting anything coming out of a sales person's mouth concerning a PDI. They also are usually not the slightest bit familiar with what they are selling and can't answer questions about specific things - so they BS instead.

For a residential ref., you probably do need two good deep cycle batteries. The battery cut off switch doesn't completely isolate the batteries, but they won't charge when it's turned off, nor will your inverter be powered. The ref. wasn't staying cold because it was only being powered when you had shore power since this switch was off. Like Eddie, I leave ours on all the time (but I do have a master disconnect that totally isolates the battery bank of 4 T105s when I've need it).
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Old 04-07-2015, 02:26 AM   #4
FordMan1966
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Quote:
quote:Originally posted by mazboy

one battery would be enough to keep your propane/refrig cooling. you don't need 2 batteries, but 2 are nice for dry camping for the night, i.e. walmart.

as for the switch, turn it to 'on' and leave it alone. this is how you run your system. when the truck is connected and it is running you are charging your system.

this should eliminate your frustration.
This Montana is just like mine and has a residential refrigerator and it does not run on LP. I will be interested to see what the comments are to this topic because I have questions as well. Mine does have 2 batteries.
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Old 04-07-2015, 02:58 AM   #5
kdeiss
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Do I understand correctly if your unit comes with a residential refrigerator it also comes with an Inverter converting DC Voltage to AC Voltage?? in addition to the Converter that converts AC to DC,

Just a word of causation if you are indeed running the Refrigerator off the batteries through an INVERTER you can damage the AC compressor with low Voltage their may be a low voltage shut off I am not familiar with this new setup
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Old 04-07-2015, 03:52 AM   #6
FordMan1966
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Quote:
quote:Originally posted by kdeiss

Do I understand correctly if your unit comes with a residential refrigerator it also comes with an Inverter converting DC Voltage to AC Voltage?? in addition to the Converter that converts AC to DC,

Just a word of causation if you are indeed running the Refrigerator off the batteries through an INVERTER you can damage the AC compressor with low Voltage their may be a low voltage shut off I am not familiar with this new setup
All 2015 Montana's where the floorplan ends in RL is for Residential Living which has a Residential Refrigerator. The Inverter is only to operate the Refrigerator while traveling or Dry Camping.
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Old 04-07-2015, 04:06 AM   #7
dfb
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The residential fridge should cost a lot less than the Rv fridge. Is this reflected in the price?.
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Old 04-07-2015, 04:25 AM   #8
jcurtis934
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If they haven't changed the disconnect switch, its key can only be removed in the off position. Converter only charges batteries when hooked to shore power...truck should provide a little charging to battery if it is wired and fused, but not capable of much...my guess is that the inverter has a drop out circuit to shut itself off when 12vdc input is too low...but documentation of the inverter will tell you this. Normal operation off shore power should disable inverter if the system is designed correctly...another moc member with residential fridge should be able to tell you this. Good luck and enjoy learning about the new montana. John
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Old 04-07-2015, 04:44 AM   #9
FordMan1966
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Quote:
quote:Originally posted by dfb

The residential fridge should cost a lot less than the Rv fridge. Is this reflected in the price?.
I would guess that the residential refrigerator would cost more especially when you have to take into account the 1000 Watt Inverter.
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Old 04-07-2015, 05:57 AM   #10
dfb
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I think thes 18 cu foot are about 4000... The residenti my guess is 1000 and the inverter about 300.00..
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Old 04-07-2015, 06:35 AM   #11
Rogerwilson
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Quote:
quote:Originally posted by dfb

I think thes 18 cu foot are about 4000... The residenti my guess is 1000 and the inverter about 300.00..
While I am definitely not rich by any means, money is not the issue. So we turned the shore power off, turned that battery switch the dealership had in the off position. The inverter turned on and the Amber light was on. Was that because the battery levels were low? Is it normal for the fan to be running on the inverter? I have noanuals or documentation from the dealership to help me.
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Old 04-07-2015, 07:41 AM   #12
FordMan1966
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I have the same thing and same RV. I had to hold in on the square button on the inverter to get it to turn off. Then I had to hold it in to get it to come back on. No instructions on any of this from Keystone
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Old 04-07-2015, 09:08 AM   #13
dfb
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We bought our 3610 from Sierra Rv in reno. They pointed out things we did not see!
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Old 04-07-2015, 09:26 AM   #14
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One can always go on the internet and look/download manuals for any that you don't have. Our dealer put docs in one of the drawers...but not all were there. The documentation of the inverter should mention how it handles battery voltage getting too low to maintain a stable 120vac output. And there should be an automatic transfer switch hooked into the wiring that would have shore power as the priority source of 120vac to drop out the 120vac from the inverter. This should be mounted near the inverter. John
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Old 04-07-2015, 10:40 AM   #15
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Jcurtis, the inverter comes off the battery 12 volts. Why a transfer switch?
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Old 04-07-2015, 11:38 AM   #16
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dfb,
Typically, an inverter used to power a residential refer will have both 110v input and a 12v input. The built in transfer switch will first look to see if 110v ac is present. If so, it will pass the 110v on to the refer. If not, it summons its power from the 12v batteries, inverts it to 110v ac and sends it along to the refer.

The transfer switch automates the process.

Hope that helps,

Ken
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Old 04-07-2015, 05:03 PM   #17
Rogerwilson
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B
Quote:
quote:Originally posted by brenkco

dfb,
Typically, an inverter used to power a residential refer will have both 110v input and a 12v input. The built in transfer switch will first look to see if 110v ac is present. If so, it will pass the 110v on to the refer. If not, it summons its power from the 12v batteries, inverts it to 110v ac and sends it along to the refer.

The transfer switch automates the process.

Hope that helps,

Ken

This helps a lot and thank you everyone. I know and could find all the documents online but it's nice to hear it from you experts.
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Old 04-07-2015, 06:59 PM   #18
7.3Ford
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David,

I think we have the same model 2015 Montana 3611RL. I saw only one battery on the PDI, but they said, that is all keystone said is needed. The inverter that comes with the Montana isn't very good, and I don't use it, I have a 2000 Watt inverter that puts to power to everything, and has less draw when not is use.

Check out my blog (see tag line below). When the Sun goes down, I need about 160-180 AH right now to run the fridge and satellite all night.

The Monty comes with a 84 AH battery I think they said. So two battery will not cut it if you are going to dry camp.

I kept their little battery as backup, and have six 6 Volt Golf Cart batteries. I ran the fridge for one week without shore power hookup. The solar panels are able to replace the Amp Hours used, but when it is cloudy, full charge is not possible.

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