Quote:
Originally Posted by JRTJH
At any given time, there are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of RV refrigerators in operation. I've only heard of a couple of "failures that resulted in a fire"... It's not a common occurrence and I'd suspect you're more likely to fall out of your RV and break a hip than to have it burn down from a "refrigerator fire"...
The reason there are Halon fire extinguishing systems on boats is because you can't "open a door and run"... In an RV, if it catches fire, you get out, stand there and watch your trailer... In a boat, you won't have that luxury....
I'd look more at "heat prevention" than at "fire prevention" with an RV refrigerator... ARP makes the Fridge Defend, but Norcold retrofitted most of their refrigerators to include a thermal overheat device which will disable the refrigerator in the event of a "chimney stack overheat condition"... I believe Dometic has followed that same path....
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The Norcold and the Dometic devices are also referred to as recall devices, even though they are installed on all new fridges. The problem with them is when they do operate, the temperature has already reached a critical level and the fridge is no longer functional, and even if a magnet is used to reset the device, the refrigerant is not as effective as new because crystals form and can plug things up. The ARP device operates at a much lower temperature, way before any damage has been done, and after a cool down period will automatically turn the fridge back on again. We have had an ARP device since 2015 and the fridge has work great ever since, and this is after having the cookout g unit replaced twice, once due to crystal formation, and the second time due to a leak.