Most RVs come with a refridgerator of some kind. Some of them work great, but most of them take some time to cool down when they’re full. Another common problem is poor performance in hot weather. In this article, I will explain how to circulate the air in the fridge and cool things down quickly with our upgraded RV fridge fan.
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Our Current RV Fridge Fan Setup
We already have a fridge fan kit setup. It’s made out of a portable battery and some old computer fans. Our setup has been working well for the last 2 years. That fan and battery combination lasts about 3-4 days, which is pretty good. However, those fans don’t move a lot of air. Also, the things on the bottom of the fridge don’t stay as cold as I would like. Generally, we keep milk, sparkling water, beer and wine, and our treats like pineapple tidbits in our bottom compartment. I want it to be nice and cold down there, so our food and drinks don’t go bad. We have a Norcold N3141 RV fridge, which isn’t very common. The design of this fridge has all of the cooling up top. Most of the time the cold air doesn’t sink very well, because our fridge is often full, the air gets obstructed by various items.
The fans we already have are very quiet and power efficient. They only move a little bit of air, and they do it very gently. However, I’m finding that they just don’t have enough power to force the air around. I’d like to upgrade our setup to two different fans and run them at different times. On our daily travels, I can use these small, efficient fans. But when I want to cool things down quickly after buying groceries, I can use a bigger, more powerful fan.
Getting Parts For The New Setup
After a lot of research, I got a fan and a larger battery bank. Our previous setup had a 10,000 mAh battery bank, which has been running our old fans for 3-4 days. This bank charges pretty quickly, and it only takes a couple of hours to fully charge. It uses a rapid charger and takes USBC. It moves enough air to keep the fridge somewhat cool. Also, it’s very silent and it makes the airflow very gently.
This new GDSTIME 75 mm USB fan that I got on Amazon is much more powerful. The other benefit of this fan is its low profile. Since we don’t have a large fridge, the new fan is thinner and easier to stick to the wall. It moves a lot more air with a lot more power. It takes 0.4 A and 5V, which is a lot more than our previous fan (0.16A), but it should cool our lower compartment much faster.
I also got a larger battery bank. It’s 30,000 mAh which is triple the size of the other battery bank. It’s approximately the same length as our old battery, but it’s much thicker. It’ll run the new fan for the same amount of time as what I had with my previous setup. This new battery will also run the old fans for a couple of weeks. There are a lot of other fridge fans on the market, but I didn’t like any of them. This is why I chose to make my own. Some of the more popular fans are from Camco and they use 2 or 4 D batteries. The fan is set to last about a month in your fridge, but then you have to replace 4 D batteries.
Why we chose a rechargeable battery
We have a lot of batteries to charge, like our laptops, phones, drone, and our massive e-bike batteries! We are well equipped to recharge battery packs, so it made sense to base fridge fan this on a rechargeable battery. I’d much rather have a rechargeable battery and not go through disposable batteries all the time. The new battery will last for a long time, and it was pretty cheap. Because our fridge is pretty small, I don’t want to waste any additional space. This is why I chose to mount the battery vertically to the wall using command strips. The space on the back is somewhat wasted anyway, so that would give me easy access to plug things in on the top.
We are huge command products fans, and we always keep a box of command strips around. I love command products, because they’re pretty strong, easy to remove, and they don’t leave any damage. There are different command products: just the sticky strips and Velcro-style strips. The velcros should be strong enough to hold the battery even over bumps. I tend to line them up ahead of time and click them together. To prep the surface for the command strips, I always use rubbing alcohol to get rid of any oils. I prep both surfaces for better effect.
Installation Of Our New RV Fridge Fan
I chose to put the battery bank in the wasted space on the wall of the fridge, so the air will be forced down and around. Then I attached Velcro command strips to the battery bank and let the glue cure. I plugged the fan in ahead of time, to make sure that I leave enough space for it. After that, I removed the protective papers from the command strips and glued them to the wall of the fridge. The fan needs to face out, so it can suck the air in and down and move the air. I’m also attaching the Velcro command strip to the fan and mounting it on the other fridge wall. There’s a nice little gap that lets the air move straight down, cooling the bottom of the fridge. It’s a nice flat fan that doesn’t take a lot of space and it’s shooting the air straight down. It works much better than I expected! It’s a little noisy, but I can’t hear it if the fridge door is shut. Those other fans are much quieter, but they just don’t move enough air. In 30 mins the fan cooled the fridge from 60 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit. The bottom of the fridge is so much colder, which is s exactly what we hoped for!
We’ve had our fan cooling setup for a couple of years. Sasha and I feel like almost any RV fridge can benefit from a fridge fan kit. We are hoping that this article was helpful. We also made a YouTube video about this topic, you can watch it below. If you are looking about other helpful articles, click here.