quatermass replied on 05/07/2022 12:55
Posted on 05/07/2022 12:55
Our recent French holiday was marred by poor fridge performance which was made worse by a dismissive e-mail from Coachman when we asked for technical advice. I have spoken to Dometic's technical manager who made a number of very pertinent points and suggestions. It is well known that caravan fridge performance can decline markedly at ambient temperatures above 30C. This is exacerbated by the current trend of the caravan industry for siting the fridge on the nearside of the van which means that the fridge vents into a hot awning and worse that an open caravan door can cover the vents and reduce the efficiency of the air flow over cooling fins. Domestic recommend that owners should fit a fan kit before taking a van abroad to France, Spain or Italy; this greatly improves the cooling efficiency. I confirmed this by removing the fridge louvres and placing a small desktop fan in the upper aperture which greatly improved matters.
I am very angry that neither the manufacturers nor the dealers make any mention of this in their literature; cooling fans are not even mentioned in the optional extras lists for Swift and Coachman vans (I don't know about Bailey) despite being well aware of the problem. Dometic also tell me that they have had discussions with the industry regarding the nearside placement of caravan fridges.
Many people take their vans to the continent and with the climate changing here in the UK I would have thought that it would be in the industry's interest to do something about this problem.
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quatermass