Fridge and Amps On pitch

[Husky]

Okay boys & girls, guidance please.

We're hooked up to electric here in France where the French Aire is only offering 5 amps.

The temperature of the fridge is not going below 12°C. Outside temperature is 14°C.

Would I be right in saying that if were on 16 amps then the fridge would get colder?

Over to you.

Thanks.

 

[Stealaway]

No - Fridges take very little current at 220V. If you've not blown the ECU fuse or your van trip - It's going to be something else

 

[tonka]

NO.. Fridge does not take that much.. Maybe 150-200w on mains electric.... Newer vesrions can be as low as 125w.. So under 1/2 an amp.

 

[Husky]

Thanks Stealaway

 

[Peter & Elaine]

I have run our fridge of a 150 watt inverter
so if my calcs are correct only puts out .6 of a amp

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[ramsthom]

Been on a few French campsites with a 6 amp supply and at that low outside temp of 14 deg c it possible the supply voltage will be below 200 volts especially if others are using low heating on electric. this may be the cause of the higher fridge temp. Try it on gas to see if it improves.

 

[Lenny HB]

The tall fridge freezers have approx 270 watt element (exact wattage varies between models) so they draw about 1¼ amps at 220v.

 

[Diabalo]

I would check the voltage as said above.

 

[MichaelT]

We have had same issue before so we now run it on gas if amps are low. I think its low voltage but I thought the fridge would throw an error if that was the case.

 

[ramsthom]

On our Aes fridge it automatically changed to gas when the voltage dropped to 190 volts. Not sure on a manual one.

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[Lenny HB]

Often Dometic fridges thows a wobbly when the mains voltage is too low.
They try to lite on gas but because of the stupid Dometic firmware, as it has a mains supply the gas valve is turned off. So it keeps trying to ignite non existent gas.
The 8000 series are good at this we have an 8505 that does it. The answer is to switch it manually to gas.

 

[TerryL]

What type of fridge is it? Is there any kind of status panel showing any warnings, which is always a clue to the problem.

It's possible the mains heating element has failed - I'd say that those temperatures meant the fridge wasn't working at all.

 

[MyrtleGuru]

We ran our Dometic 3-way on mains successfully on a Portuguese site that only had 2 Amp EHU.

 

[Husky]

Hi everyone.
Now on a new pitch. 10amp. All working fine. Croissants & coffee now here in France. Thanks everyone.

 

[Lenny HB]

Hi everyone.
Now on a new pitch. 10amp. All working fine. Croissants & coffee now here in France. Thanks everyone.

It was more lightly to have been a low voltage problem rather than power.

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[MillieMoocher]

I have also fallen foul of the low voltage in France. Spent half a day trying to work out why my fridge (Dometic 3 way) would only work on gas even though I was on hook up.

The collective wisdom of this site saved the day for me before I started taking drastic action and taking the thing apart..

Naturally the fridge was perfect on the next site ..

 

[Tude]

All I can say is people on saying fridge on leccy only very small amps ie 1 amp are wrong. We stayed at Brugge aire it was full and our fridge wudnt work proper was on leccy but fine on gas. Had fridge checked back home no problem about 4amps on leccy it was using

 

[SuperMike]

We just got back from France, where we had a 16A Super Pitch. On the EHU post there were four 16A hook ups. One night when it was cold the 20A up stream trip, to the post, went pop. I tried explaining to the owner that such a trip actually meant that each hook up was only 5A, 6.5A or 10A depending on how many were being used.

My French failed me miserably, but fortunately all bar one weekend we were the only one on that post. Fantastic water pressure though, with an 85gal fresh tank it would fill in two scratches of the bum. Veve la France.