NOMADICISTA

Hi kids, I'm starting to consider appliances and I was wondering if any of you fine road warriors know of any good, efficient small refrigerators out there? I'm doing either with 4/225 watt or 4/175 watt sharp pv solar an outback MX 60 charger controller, 4/12 volt golf cart batteries into a outback 3648 inverter so I want to go with a full electric fridge on my Tiny house rig. The only other electric things in the rig will be a small-ish flat screen tv, a laptop, a microwave and a small coffee machine. As I've mentioned in my other post, I'm putting in 14 windows and 2 skylights so until night time there will be plenty of natural light coming in and then the night will be carried through with LED lighting so the little solar system should be more then enough to carry a small fridge. I'm looking for something around 6 cubic feet and that will include a cubic foot or so of freezer space. Ok kids, any idea's will be appreciated.

Have a look here: http://www.engelaustralia.com.au/

I believe dometic do a compressor fridge to, though don't know how efficient they are compared to the Engle.

I got a great fridge from NovaKool, 12V or 120V, automatically detects which is available and uses 120 when you're plugged in, pretty energy efficient

Bill

Those look pretty good. What model do you have and if you don't mind how much did it run you?

ARB offers a line of fridges in the US ... http://store.arbusa.com/Fridges-C11.aspx ... designed for 4x4 and off roading ... similar to Stuarts Engles ... the NovaKools may be more towards your preferences ... will keep looking ...

Dennis ... you may have gotten this Tumbleweed Tiny House email ... sending in case you haven't ...

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/blogs/t ... 1bb154680b

... a list of their suggested refrigerators ... and at the bottom, suggested composting toilets ...

In the interests of science, I bought an Engel. An Engel Eclipse to be exact. It has a 38 litre capacity (40 Quarts).

Actually I needed a bit more freezer space at home, and it seemed about the right size for my needs.

Any how, I am now in a position to give an unbiased report on it.

They are very energy efficient, using only 33 watts when running. On a scale of one to five, five being coldest, I have full deep freeze with it set at three and a half.

As it is a top loader, the cold stays in when I open it, to rummage around.

The bad is that it is quite loud when running. I would estimate that it is around twice as loud as the standard household fridge that it sits next to. The particular model that I bought does have a reputation for being loud, so the other models may be okay on that front, but they cost close to twice as much.

Whilst I am running it on 240v AC, it also runs on 12v to 24v DC.

Always enjoy the links seen here. Have been making tiny house plans for several years - more for temporary use, as a travel trailer. Tonight, I followed the links for the composting toilets. It's amazing how I always seem to get pulled down the "rabbit hole" every time I go surfing!! Some very good stuff there....may have to re-think the whole disposal concept on the farm!

I ended up going with a standard 7.4 cuft Avanti fridge, a 20" Avanti gas range and for a toilet I went with Natures head. I figured there's not much difference in the smaller gas ranges when it comes to efficiency so I picked the Avanti because it pretty much matches the fridge and the Avanti fridge uses very litte power and for an extra 100 bucks I has a 5 year warranty so I think at $400.00 the fridge was a pretty good deal. I can always upgrade down the road somewhere. I picked the Natures head because of it's size and at just under a grand it's reasonable compared to some of the others out there. I'll post some pic's as I open them.

Composting toilet update. So I ordered a Natures Head from some folks on Amazon with 2 day shipping, Amazon shipped it by way of fedex and for whatever reason there was a UPS return label on it so a UPS guy who was dropping some other stuff off picked up the toilet and shipped it back to where it came from so now I guess Amazon will send me it all over again, so weird