Travel fridges - TEC coolbox vs compressor fridge
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2021
- I've finally borrowed all the things to play with these fridges. The Dometic was fantastic on trips away. Nothing like cold chocolate.
Dometic Fridge - amzn.to/2XUgO2Z
Campingaz cool box - amzn.to/3znBwGi
Jackery power station - amzn.to/2WttzRD
I started off with a Dometic peltier cooler but it drained my leisure batteries and created loads of residual heat. Sold that and bought the compressor cooler. Quite possibly the best purchase I've ever made for my camper!
I have an old TEC type Fridge that the fan stopped working On. Couldn't find one the right size so I hacked it a bit and fitted a good 80MM fan. The thing runs so much better than it did originally obviously because of the greater airflow. Found a Waeco TEC type on the side of the road during clean up that was obviously barely used and that works very well also.
Good job Dave and great timing. Was just talking about these today and wondering which type was better. Brilliant!
Dometic; The brand of portable appliances that you need a mortgage to buy... :P
I had a peltier mini-fridge for ages that had a fan that droned like hell, ended up giving in and replacing it with an Arctic Cooling PC case fan (did a vid of that on my other channel), oh the joy of a quiet cooler, it was so nice!!! But then later got a real fridge, with a compressor, which is so much better at cooling and doesn't leave me with major tinnitus... :P
I use a 240v fridge, pure sine wave inverter, 12v relay switching inverter and thermostat to drive relay. Gets me a compressor fridge running on 12v at about 95% efficiency of a 12 volt compressor at 1/4 the price.
And a sized (modded) soft start to help
Have you mounted the inverter to the fridge to make a portable unit? That would be an interesting setup to see.
I haven't. It's set up in my van with the inverter close the the batteries to keep the 12v cables short. It could be done though.
Should add I use an RCD and wouldn't skip it if I went portable
Thanks for the video. This is exactly what I needed to find the asnwer to. It confirmed what I thought about my coolbox killing my powerbank. As we can't fit in a fridge in our campervan, compressor coolbox it is then.
I've bought a 12volt 30 litre compressor fridge from Halfords for £180...
Any good?!
Perfect, but don't see them for sale anymore at the moment
Compressor fridge kicks butt hands down. I have one that goes down to -4 F and it is more consistent than my actual house fridge in terms of keeping the correct temperature, and also uses less power with no inrush current to start it. I have a small battery bank just like you have here and being able to keep food cold in my vehicle is amazing. I had a friend in university who had a thermoelectric fridge for his dorm room, he didn’t even realize it, was sold at a big box store… until his milk went sour cause the dumb thing couldn’t keep the temp low enough!
Snapped up a Halfords compressor fridge/freezer unit similar sized to what you have reviewed for a special offer bargain price of 180 beer tokens with a 2 year warranty branded as Halfords own! It works a treat on my boat and sips the battery power as it runs at 5 amps at full chat for about 5 minutes every half hour to maintain 2 degrees Celsius and it's ideal for popping in the car to go out with cold provisions when summer returns win win!!
You had me when you said "were going to science this..." I had my suspicions that the cool boxes on offer each and every summer were a POS and thanks for confirming it :)
I found the ones that heat too really useful - Great when you go out to pick up a takeaway!
Imagine having a compressor based heat pump one that could cool and heat… that would be the best of all products.. actually curious if something like that is sold 🤔
@@MittyNuke1 it's certainly possible to make (just reverse the pump, done with valves on a reversible A/C) though I've never been in the market looking for one
I love your very informative video's. Really helpful. Regards Graeme
TEC coolers Peltier/seebeck will only get ~20C difference between the hot/cold sides. so to get the cold side down to 5c the hot side has to be kept under 25c. At work a few years ago there was a thing where staff had those little ones that will hold a couple of cans/your lunch or a pint of milk, I counted up how many there were around the school, did a bit of maths, it was cheaper if the school had bought a 'walk in' American sized fridge and run it for a year than run the TEC coolers
I have a Delllonda 15l compressor fridge. Cost £160 on ebay using discount code. It is spot on for the campervan. We had a thermo electric before hand which basically turned electricity to noise.
That is a bargain.
I have the next size up 46 (approx) litre as a house fridge and it uses 50 watts on average so maybe a slightly larger compressor - I thought it would be the same but run longer to achieve the set point. Great video because they cost too much to mess around with for a klutz like me and the 'reaction' being part of the energy output description I hadn't even considered. I just think in terms of energy going in cannot exceed energy coming out - forgot about the latent energy in the gassy bits. The truth actually paralleled my beer philosophy which is basically, "Nothing exceeds like excess" Great vid thanks :-)
So David, you get Watt you pay for. Cheers. Jim.
Funny thing about pounds. Last time I was in Scotland I tried to change UK pounds for Scottish but they were old ones and they wouldn’t take them. Barclays told me I had to be a EU citizen to get them exchanged. I had my aunt do it for me.
The hi/low is the battery cutoff so it doesn't wipe out your car battery
Really good video thanks for making it. Be great if you could compare a few of the compressor fridge brands. Dometic vs Mobicool Vs Alpicool.
You definitely get what you pay for. I got a 45w peltier unit for my boat cool box for £15 off Banggood. It pulls 4-5amps with the two fans which my solar can cope with on a good day. The cold side frosts up quickly but I would have to pre load with cold provisions for realistic use. That compressor unit is utterly wonderful by comparison. On an off grid boat watts consumed is everything. I have never tested my old caravan fridge for power consumption. That is a different cycle altogether.
I have seen a portable 3-way fridge (absorption fridge). The only downside I can see with the absorption fridges is they can only cool below ambient up to a point. The major upside is there are no moving parts.
"Hi, NEd, Lo... NEd?" - ah that's good laughs!
Hello Dave, slightly connected question if you could help please.
We are going on an overland trip and have the 500w Jackery and a Dometic compressor fridge. On its own the Jackery will power our fridge for 60 hours plus.
My question is whilst driving would it be better to plug the fridge direct to the vehicles 12v system or into the Jackery and could we top up the Jackery from the cars 12v at the same time.
We also have the solar panel to charge when not driving.
Many thanks Perry
In the Jackery manual it says NOT to use and charge at the same time. So I'd run the fridge of the vehicles 12V and charge the Jackery off the vehicle at the same time if possible (or necessary).
@@DavidMcLuckie thanks very much Dave, I will try that
Perry
Love your style, & content. From an Englishman... 🤣
Very enjoyable video :) compressors are way more efficient. I don't believe unless it's done very well that TECs in any cool box's are useful.
I've been playing with TECs for the last few weeks. Trying to get to sub 30c. Struggling if I'm honest getting over a -18c threshold. I want to test some hardware. So far I've got it to cool an area down to -18. Waiting on a 300w module to tinker more. So it was really cool to see you're having a play/test also. :) Nice one.
I'm sure Tech Ingredients did a series on TEC coolers, but that was way over my station. :)
@@DavidMcLuckie they did indeed! Some people don't want that level though so it's great having a video in this format. :)
@@DavidMcLuckie I'm still waiting for the TEC energy recovery from an exhaust video fyi ;) .
I bought the Halfords compressor fridge at £280. Awesome piece of kit. As a fridge, it draws 3A when it needs to. It goes to -22 if needed. A week later, the price dropped... Dhoh!
A friend also has the Halfords one, seems it's a pretty good unit. They even do one with its own built in battery.
I’ve been looking at fridges and cool boxes for my van, I’ve got a cool box at the moment that I use with the blocks you freeze to keep it chilled,I get a day/night or 2.
Would be interested to see what holds its temperature, for example cool blocks in the non powered box and as low as the powered unit will go, Unplug,blocks in ,go, what would keep it coolest. Make as fair as possible buy putting prechilled cans in.
👍
I got a Campart for 280 quid, its the hybrid or 12 volt and 240 volt. Cheapest one out there , 41 litres , has a compressor. I think the 12 volt has a different way of cooling not sure. Works great , but nothing longterm , the guy in the UK based shop said he,d had no returns n sold loads.
That's weird. It says it's got a 240v compressor but makes no mention of the 12V cooler, but the picture on the site shows what appears to be a TEC. In theory you could just mount a 12V inverter on it and run it on compressor all the time. Interesting.
TEC fridges with thermostats are available, mine is happy to sit a 5c but does take 12 hours to get there then cycles. But granted I wanted a compressor fridge but at the time no way could I afford one.
Ah so they do exist. At least with a thermostat they shouldn't murder batteries just as badly.
The little Chinese 15L compressor fridge that I've had running for 18 months has two selectable compressor speeds and 3 low voltage cutoff settings 12v, 11.5v, 11v. Adjusts down to -4F. Also bluetooth so you can check it and adjust it on a phone. Bought another one for my daughter a couple weeks ago on Ebay for $163 US delivered.
I find that the compressor fridge freezes my sandwiches if I put them at the front. Is it likely that the fan on the cheap one helps circulate and prevent frozen breadie bois
No. The fan is cooling the outside of the cooling element. Wouldn't make much sense to ventilate the coolbox with outside air would it?
@@heikki8409 This is fair. No airflow would actually reach the cooling chamber.
Argos 863/6122 £95
(there's a huge range below £400)
99KWh/year. max power unstated.
All I can see against it is the ambient temperature range (16°C to 38°C) & that it's 240V only
used a residential mini compressor fridge with a separate freezer compartment, no auto-defrost, in my RV for a cpl years and over time it consumed more and more power while starting up until it started tripping GFCI outlets.
i'm not sure they're good for ongoing portable use. I didn't always operate it level and I'm sure that had something to do with it, there was no built-in fan on the compressor so its cooling was totally garbage and the thermocouple relay I was using to control my add-on fan failed after a year and a half, which left it to overheat and causing the aforementioned issue with power consumption, overheating, and breaker tripping
now i've got a new RV with a 3-way fridge, and it operates on absorption technology. I run it on LPG mostly, it seems to hit the generator hard when it runs on AC, which seems wasteful to me, so I leave it on the LPG.
the fridge manual states that running it on 12v can't cool it effectively from a "warm" start (e.g. shut it off, let it warm to room temp, and try to cool it on 12 volts). it would be really cool if you could do a series on absorption fridges - their efficiency vs mini and residential fridges as well as maybe overcoming the 12 volts limit by using thick conductors and a solid power supply... perhaps the limit is the anemic stock wires and the battery.
Resistance heating with electricity is really really inefficient so to get decent chilling effect it draws lots from your 240V but the 12V is minimum power so it doesn't kill too many batteries but doesn't chill well.
Compare old hot-wire bulbs with fluorescent or LEDs for what I mean about efficiency, I use 25W-equivalent bulbs which are 5W fluorescent or 2.5W LED.
Just like diesel heaters there are Chinese compressor fridges available for way less money then the Dometic.
Maybe if we're really lucky someone will send us one in to test. Then I can take that apart.
Dometic pricing: Production cost + branding at 30 quid per letter. So a free bumper sticker from them is worth 210 British tea-tokens.
Cost + Branding and then double it might be closer. :)
I don't think you would do what I'd like to see. I have this idea of taking a cheep compressor fridge and turning it into an Air condition for my van. Not the whole van, but if I closed off my sleeping area with curtains inabiling to have an area I can escape the heat a bit?
The cooling would be so minimal as to be useless. Lot different cooling a box that's a couple of cu ft and insulated as to something a few hundred Cu ft and has a lot of thermal mass to start.
It certainly won't work with an average fridge, as it just has waaaaaaaaaaaaay too little cooling power (often
@@unmountablebootvolume I know they have a battery operated tent AC, but that is $1000. I'm building a wall at the back of my van that will house my separated garage and was thinking I could hide the compressor behind the isolated wall. My sleeping area would be 25" w, 72" l, 30" h. I'll still have to try. I'll also have a curtain made up of Havelock wool.
If your electricaly capable and dont mind a bit of pissing about with pipes and wires, ali express sell refrigerant compressors that run off 12 volts and evaporators and condensers, you could build an aircon system for quite cheap. But its a bit of a faf.
@@karldingbat thanks. I'll definitely check it out. So many say it can't be done. Luckily the bumblebee didn't listen to them or it would have been an ant.👍😊
Halfords had some compressor coolers in a few weeks back started at £250 dropped to £220 when I got one then dropped to £180 a week later fuckers has an extending handle and wheels so you can pull it along
That would have been a bargain.
in the not so distant future when everyones running electric cars? we'll be able to charge all our goodies up the same time when we "top-up" old Bessy's power banks.....or use the huge solar panels on the roof rack that come as an added accessory.....btw....I was willing you to touch that wire! damm...lol
Hallllooooo
That Dometic will still go down to -15*c when the Abient Temp is 43*c where as those coolers will stuggle to go below 30*c when it is 43*c Ambient temp and When you use them in a Car in the summer the Iternal temp of the car can go as high as 55* to 60*c which means your thermo cooler with be around 45*c Inside So all your food will be Ruined, where as the Dometic will still keep things Cold, People really need to stop buying these thermo coolers because in the summer they are useless.
Haha
Would be nice to have some actual numbers, watt draw from each unit to get a good idea. I found this video to be a waste of time, unstructured
So the bits where I tell you how much power they are consuming from the Jackery wasn't enough? Would you like a personalised email with the numbers?