Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Ok... curious question.
Buddy has like a 1986 cabin cruiser. 24 foot long... v8.
You can sleep down stairs in the thing.
He has a refridge down in there too.
It has a 12 volt setting and a 110 volt setting, but no propane setting. Infact, the boat has no propane at all for anything.

Correct me if im wrong, but as far as i know, the refridge in every RV ive ever seen will KILL a battery in just a few hours in the 12 volt setting.

Why would they build a boat you can sleep in, with a fridge that can kill the batteries in just a few hours?

Or are the 12 volt fridges in boats different the RV's and use less power?

I used to have one like that. When anchored or moored without shore power I never ran my batteries down with the fridge on the 12v setting. I had three batteries (two for accessories and one for engine cranking) with a battery switch and batter isolator to protet the cranking battery.

seems weird to me, why no propane? My RV can run the fridge forever on very little propane... My fridge does not have a 12v option... Just propane and 110v with an automatic switchover...

seems weird to me, why no propane? My RV can run the fridge forever on very little propane... My fridge does not have a 12v option... Just propane and 110v with an automatic switchover...

In reality propane is in reality a "big safety hazard" in any hulled boat. Propane should there be any kind of leak will settle to the lowest point available in the hull and accumulate, then should there be any source of ignition you could see either an explosion or a fire, neither or which would be actually desirable in a boat.

I have a pontoon houseboat for instance that we do use propane on because it is safe enough because of a lack of a hull. One day I was under her cleaning the pontoons and could actually smell the propane under the boat. I had the wife searching inside for the leak and she actually couldn't detect it or even smell it inside the boat. I later found the leak behind the stove/oven at a connection joint. But a person couldn't actually smell it in the enclosed cabinet the joint was actually in. The propane gas was sinking down through a plywood seam or joint and dissipating away under the boat. Had I had a hull and it had accumulated inside it instead, the act of starting an inboard motor or and insidious spark could or maybe would have made for a "real bad or interesting day" I hope to never experience.

Can you say propane bomb

Ya, weird huh?
The fridge in our rv will run on propane, 12 volt DC, or 110 volt AC.
So propane when boon-docking and have no power hookups, and on 110 if we have a power hook up.
We never run it on the 'piggy' 12 volt DC setting. Its worthless..
I know if I switch it over to 12 volt, it will kill the batteries in like 2-3 hours if im boon-docking.
The fridge in our RV will run on a tank of propane prob for like a year.. heh.... burns very little propane.
Thats why im wondering if the fridges in boats are different then RV's, because the 12 volt setting is worthless in our RV.

I would think it would be worthless on a boat too, seeing as you couldnt even make it through 1 night...

The difference is RV refrigerators use ammonia as a refrigerant. They use heat, either a propane flame, 110 volt heating coils or 12 volt heating coils. That is why they will run your battery down so fast. The boat refrigerator probably uses a small compressor just like the one in your home refrigerator except smaller and uses less power. I have a 110/12 volt deep freeze in my RV and have never had a power problem. We have two six volt golf cart batteries for house power in the RV. We normally need 50 amp service in order to power everything, two air conditioners, microwave/convection oven, two TV, washer/dryer and etc. One thing I do when we are forced to hook up to 30 amp service is switch the refrigerator to propane. It uses two 500 watt heater coils when running on AC. That alone would use almost 1/3 of the available power.
30 amp is what we call roughing it .

Ok.. this is where i was heading...
Youre right! Our RV fridge is an ammonia unit.
Thought most everything, like rv's boats' etc used this kind cause once your camping off the grid batteries cant be used to run a fridge anymore due to the power requirements. Thats where propane comes in.

So are you saying a compressor driven fridge can run for much longer on 12v batteries then the ammonia type?
Like days vs hours?

ps, we have the (2) 6 volt golf cart batteries in our camper too...
That setup Rocks!
About to put it to work this coming 4th of July boon-docking for 5 days up at a lake in the Colorado Rockies!

I'm not sure how long it would run on the two batteries but we have dry camped in some large truck stops, Wal Marts and casino parking lots for a night at a time and have never ran the batteries down. Of course we run the generator for any serious power usage. During one of our major ice storms we camped in our drive way for 10 days until power was restored. We ran the generator until bedtime and ran off batteries the rest of the time powering both the furnace blower motor and the freezer. I do not think the freezer ran very much as it was cold as heck.

I have a 12 volt Norcold on the Party Cruiser, with a separate battery for it installed. I get about 3 1/2 days out of it. I'd prefer a propane fridge though, they work alot better.