RV Refrigerator Control Panel Overview
Dave SolbergDescription
The RV control panel on your built in refrigerator may seem like an unneeded accessory, but it’s crucial for choosing when and how to use each type of power to keep your food cold and safe. Using the right combination of electrical power and propane can save you money as well as ensure your RV refrigerator doesn’t lose power at the wrong time. This video covers the use of the RV control panel, as well as indicator codes and when to alternate from one form of power to the other.
Some of the important points covered in this instructional video are:
- The importance of the RV control panel
- When to use automatic vs. LP
- How automatic mode works on your RV refrigerator
- How to ensure your food won’t spoil if the campground electricity fails
- How to set the RV control panel for each individual camping situation
Uses for an RV Control Panel
The day you put your ice coolers away in the garage was a happy day. This meant you were done camping in tents, and had moved up to enjoying the open road in your own RV. Your refrigerator is one of the most important appliances in your RV, and it’s a multi-powered machine. This means it runs on either LP gas, 120-volt AC power, or 12-volt DC power with the use of an invertor. The RV control panel determines which one the refrigerator is using now as a default, as well as whether it will switch to an alternate power source if the primary one goes out. Using the control panel to choose the right power source for each camping situation can not only save you money, it can make sure your food stays cold in camp and out on the road.
It's important to understand the function of the control panel, especially when it's in automatic or in LP. Now this happens to be a Nor cold. And so we're going to put it on and put the mode into automatic and automatic means it's going to run on electricity as the default. That's the one preferred source. So when we're plugged into a campground source or we're running off a battery inverter, it's going to give me the 120 volt and this will be flashing here. We show that we've got, this is AU and AC. So, if for any reason the electricity goes off in the campground source or break or whatever, this is automatically going to switch to the LP side. So, if I'm out sightseeing and the campground source goes off I don't have to worry that my refrigerator is not gonna operate and the food's gonna spoil. So now we're gonna unplug this from the outside and I'm gonna listen for the spark. I got the spark, the Igniters going. Now this refrigerator, we're gonna put it on. It is on the automatic side. We see again, and it's flashing LP. So now the next thing I want to do is I'm going to run this on the LP mode specific. And I do this, even though it will switch over to LP. If I don't have electricity, if I'm running off batteries or I'm dry camping, and I've got a battery bank and inverters, this refrigerator pulling off those batteries is gonna drain them down pretty fast. So, dry camping I typically wanna be in just the LP mode and saved my batteries for the rest of it. But what happens if my LP system then fails? What if I run out of LP inside? So, we're gonna shut that system off here. The line to the LP. I hear the refrigerator went off and it's gonna give me a code. It's gonna tell me that I have no flame but what it's going to do, it's gonna try and start several times before it does that. So we're just listening for the clicking sound outside, trying to restart. It's gonna try it about five or six times. There it comes on with no flame. So it took a good 20, 25 seconds for that to finally go through the entire cycle and tells me I have no flame. So we're gonna shut it off here. One last, there we go. We're gonna plug it back in. We're gonna turn the LP back on and we're gonna put it on the automatic AC side. This one, and the newer fridges have a sensor that tells you the door has been left open. So if you didn't get it closed completely we're just going to open this up And let it go. And it takes about probably 45 seconds or more before it, it says, okay, you've left the door open. You're not getting something out of it. You're losing the cooling capacity in it. And it'll give us an alarm. There we go. So now we have an audible sound that's coming off of this as well as the sound on the front. All we have to do is reset that and simply shut the doors and we'll see that it comes back on automatic AC lights on the inside. So understanding the codes and the operation of this is essential when using an RV refrigerator.
Ticket#35419 just bought a used trailer and the fridge does not have an on off button. Does it run all the time? Is there a way to unplug it?
I have the Norcold N7LX in my 2019 Jayco Flight SLX. Upon original inspection before delivery the refrigerator passed inspection as working. However, once receiving the trailer a week later, I can not get the refrigerator working. I get the 10 flashing red lights every 5 seconds fault code. The trailer is hooked up to RV Park 30 amp box. I am getting 110v at all A/C outlets. Everything appears good, no blown fuses, trailer is level, but as soon as I power on the fridge, I get a green light for maybe 3 seconds, then the fault code. Also the light inside the fridge is not working. I understand that it should automatically kick into the last known settings, however being a new trailer, I am unsure the the fridge was ever used before. If anyone has any suggestions, or has encountered this problem, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Eric W.
did not realize my fridge would run on coach batteries thought the automatic was for gas or ac power this tip is gonna save my lifeline batteries when i'm dry docked thanx guys........
I have an original Dometic in my 1995 Fleetwood Bounder that works perfectly on AC when hooked up to shore line. It worked for a day on LP gas on the road then stopped working. I reset the control manual per the instruction manual, still nothing. I even reset the carbon dioxide detector (which definitely works), but still no frig. Camping World had done an LP inspection and fixed a small leak and tightened the valve a bit a month before I left. The stove and oven were working, so I know it's not the LP gas line. I even had one truck stop check to make sure the LP tank was still full (he put in one gallon of gas, so it was full). One website suggested I blow out the gas lines by turning on the stove for a period of time (like ten minutes), which I did (I really didn't see how that would help but I tried it anyway). The frig still will not kick on with LP gas only and the frig control panel has a constant "check" light. On my road trip I finally gave up and threw away some groceries that got bad and bought a big coleman cooler which took up all of the space under my dining table. I'm desperate, I want to use my frig when I'm traveling on the road with the LP gas but my frig apparently does not. What else can I do besides handing over my vacation-home-on-wheels back to Camping World for many months with a repair bill I can't afford?
what if nothing will light up or come on ,on the control panel?