RV Fridge Maintenance

There are a number of moving pieces in your recreational vehicle, all geared towards making you and your fellow campers comfortable. RVs help to add some luxury and security to the typical camping experience.

One of the great aspects of owning an RV is having your own kitchen for cooking meals while you’re out in the wilderness. To do this, you need a fridge for storing your groceries, from dairy products to fresh produce. And that fridge, like every other part of your RV, needs to be well-maintained in order to keep a consistent temperature for storing food safely.

Here at Razorback Camper Sales in Hot Springs, AR, we know a great deal about the ins and outs of recreational vehicle maintenance in general. Our expertise includes maintaining RV fridges, so we’ve provided this guide to help you get yours in good shape for traveling.

Preparing The Fridge For Traveling

When you’re making your way down your pre-trip checklist, it’s important to include your refrigerator in that maintenance list. Inspect the interior thoroughly to make sure there aren’t any signs of damage or areas of concern. If the fridge makes a strange noise, you may want to have it looked at by a professional before you leave on your trip.

It’s wise to pre-cool your fridge overnight before you load it up with all your groceries. Give it eight to ten hours to get to the correct temperature so that your food can stay cold, reducing the risk of bacteria growing and spoilage occurring. Make sure that the food you fill it with is already cold as well, either fresh from the grocery store or from your house fridge.

Defrosting After Your Trip

Once you’re done traveling for a while and plan to store your RV, you’ll need to defrost your fridge before you leave it for weeks or months at a time. You don’t want to keep it plugged in and waste electricity, so you may as well defrost it completely. If you use your RV full-time, you’ll need to set aside time periodically to defrost the fridge to keep it in good working order, too, since this process helps to extend the life of the appliance in addition to saving power by boosting performance.

Several options are available to you for completing this process. Regardless of which method you choose, you’ll see a lot of water drainage, so make sure you have a means of catching or absorbing the liquid, whether with a large drip tray or a number of towels. This will help prevent water damage to your RV.

General Safety Tips

Your RV fridge, if kept sufficiently cool, is generally going to operate safely. However, there are a few warning signs of a malfunctioning fridge you should be aware of. The smell of ammonia, for example, signifies a leak, which means you’ll need to turn off your fridge and open it up to allow it to air out. Open up the vents and windows of your rig, too, because the fumes are extremely toxic. If you’re on a trip when this happens, turn off the fridge and stop using it until you can get to a service department.

When performing your own fridge maintenance, be smart about it! Consult your owner’s manual before you get involved in the inner workings. You will likely get the best results by consulting a professional mechanic who can address all your issues easily. The service department here at Razorback Camper Sales can help you out with this and other RV maintenance issues. Visit our dealership in Hot Springs today to check out our full inventory of new and used campers, trailers and RVs for sale. Razorback Camper Sales proudly serves the greater Little Rock metro area, as well as Pine Bluff and Texarkana, AR.