Dometic automatic fridge/freezer not working on electric

[tomag]

Hi all in Morocco and I noticed the fridge has put itself on to gas this morning when its been working perfectly on electric when I try to manually put it on electric I just get the red warning light flashing . Any ideas what is wrong

 

[Clarky]

Could be low voltage.
Dometic's are well known for being fussy about voltage drop and won't stay on electric if the voltage drops below a certain level.
Heavy use by others on sites with iffy electrical installations can cause the voltage to drop. Probably be OK once everyone has finished making their morning coffee.

Richard.

 

[scotjimland]

The mains voltage is too low... it changes over to gas when it drops to 190v

common issue on Moroccan sites .. especially during peak periods..

when we were there I decided it was safer not to use the mains.. low voltage, no earth was common ..

some of the hook ups were really dodgy looking,

 

[Lenny HB]

.fMorning Tom, you made it to Morocco then.
Knowing you have the 8505 fridge, they fall over way before the voltage gets as low as 190. It is best to set it to gas manually as due to Dometic's superb firmware if you leave it on auto it probably won't cool at all.
What happens is the electronics senses it is on mains but the voltage is too low so it tries to light the gas, now as it can see a mains supply it keeps the gas valve closed.
So we have a fridge that has a mains supply that is too low so it turns the mains heating element and tries to light the gas with the gas valve turned off, well done Dometic. You do wonder what numpties Dometic employ in their design department.

The first time it happened to be it took a while to work out what was going on, I checked the voltage I think it was 210v at the but I was more concerned why the ignitor kept going but the gas wasn't lighting, made sense when I finally worked out what was going on. Turned it to gas manually and it lite straight away.

 

[scotjimland]

they fall over way before the voltage gets as low as 190.

not personally measured it, only quoted from the Dometic 10 series manual.

Fault
The refrigerator is being operated with gas although it is connected to the AC mains.

1. AC power not connected or AC voltage < 190 V
   The refrigerator changes to AC power supply automatically as soon as the mains voltage is sufficient again.

Also experienced low voltage on a few Spanish sites ..

EU harmonisation was a great idea but it's still only 220v in Europe and can be legally as low as 216v ..

Morocco is also 220v but not part of the EU harmonisation agreement.

as explained here>
Your Electricity Board by law must deliver 230 volts +10% - 6% (ie. between 216.2 volts and 253 volts), and to maintain the frequency at 50Hz ± 1% (ie. between 49Hz and 51Hz) over a 24 hour period.

The EU decided, in its wisdom, to harmonise the UK standard mains voltage of 240v AC and the European standard of 220v AC, at 230v AC. Fine in theory but the costs of replacing all the supply equipment to deliver 230v was uneconomic (there being no advantage whatever in changing, other than ‘harmonisation’). So to avoid accusations of failure to harmonise, they simply fiddled with the legal voltage limits, nothing actually changed!.

The law now states 230v +10% -6%, thereby allowing the European 220v system to stay at 220v and UK to stay at 240v, yet both appear to be harmonised!

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[soreeyes]

As said could be low voltage . I find if you take it off auto and then manually select 240 v you can get it to run sometimes .

 

[tomag]

Thanks for all the reply's I only new it has switched to gas as I heard it ignite but as was said it must have been low voltage as when I looked a couple of hours later it was back on electric