God has a plan and a purpose for all of us. Who knows, you may have already saved some lives by sharing what happened with the propane fridge. And Toni, you should NEVER apologize for showing your emotions! Congrats on the new fridge, you guys deserve it!!
A new fridge, YEAH!!! Get a freezer to add to when ya can!!! Great idea!! That UNIQUE mfg. plant is just south of Toronto, in Canada. We have our regular ones- 2 fridge in house (1 small, 1 larger) with freezer comp. in each and an upright freezer in the barn, all piped into the solar back-up grid. Great investment!! You won't be sorry!! We do have to get our batteries though checked, they are 7 yrs old now. They only last so long, so prepare and get backups for future. We have to get an appt. setup with the Solar install group to come out and do this, hopefully this year, then be good till 2028 at least. The battery's in a insulated protected container helps, going through extreme winter's, or guys said that it get's perhaps a little more years of service. Worth it- we still have to build it for ours, they are just inside the barn building. We still run off the regular grid, but solar kicks in, anytime that the electric from the grid goes down. Best to have it all just off-grid, baby steps.
What a nice fridge. I just got there stove. Unique is quality stuff. I’ve liked mine. Now you can feel safe. Tears of joy. Have a great day you two..!!
living Off Grid McGarvey style that’s good to hear that we went with a reliable company! I’m really relieved the death machine is not in our cabin anymore, tears of joy! Have a great weekend Ron 😀
This is exciting. We just bought the exact same make/model for our DPMH thats on a shipping truck right now. This is one of the only brands I know of that has exposed fins on the back. I'm hoping I'll be able to use the existing rv chimney system for the heat removal so it's not dumping into the rv.
Congrats on the solar fridge!!!! It will be awesome. As an extra safety measure, you can heat up your ring terminal with a blow torch and once heated allow solder to bond the wire to the ring terminal and then use your marine grade heat shrink over it. Gives me additional piece of mind. All the best and look forward to more videos! Cheers!
By crimping AND soldering the terminal to the wire you reduce the resistance at the connection to less than the wire itself. It's a much more durable connection with no potential hotspot, nor corrosion. Adding the marine heat shrink backs it all up. In my opinion it's the only proper way to make a wire connection. When I was an electric vehicle technician for 13 years I found out real fast that if you don't make proper connections, they will fail fairly rapidly. Especially if it was subject to the weather, or near a battery.
Yay! Such good news! Yes, that fridg is huge!! LOL! Good job on the video, too. Thanks for sharing all the sordid details with us! I hope the truck detail goes as smoothly as the fridg installation.
Congrates on the new fridge. We will be going that way a little ways down the line. Anyways, good for you using marine grade, as a retired ship captain, I actually have rewired several cabin cruisers so I know how it will hold up. I also use tin coated wire but that is way overkill for residential wiring (unless outdoors. Also, I noticed that you are using 4 trojan batteries, is that powering up the cabin pretty well? I forgot what your wattage on your array is. Anyways,, con grates again and may come up sometime this fall, building my toy hauler/camper now..
Clif Ferguson our array is 380 watts. But we broke one that isn’t producing much. We will be charging more with the new fridge. Getting ready to purchase 4 L16’s. Hopefully during the bad months we will be able to charge every 3 days.
Keeb awwwwe shucks! Thank you! We have not started yet. Hopefully, we’ll be starting excavation in the next couple weeks. We are really happy with the fridge. I’m sure you’ll love yours as well.
For once getting old and having a old bladder worked in someone’s favor! 🤣 I’m So glad you guys caught that when you did! I really like this fridge!!! My question is this. With the cost being $1500 plus, Why not go with 110v fridge and get more batteries? Just wondering the cost vs energy use. I hope the fix for the truck wasn’t too bad!!
Living the Dream Homestead Efficiency. A 110 has a larger motor and less insulation. This has a smaller motor and more insulation. We did consider a 110. But that would also need a dedicated 20amp plug. Our cabin isn’t wired that way. Stu
I purchased exact same fridge as you a year ago. Can you tell me your experience 1 year after installing it? I have been having some issues with mine running for an extremely long time(6 hours on then 6 hours off). I am just wondering what your experience has been and is this normal for the fridge?
I actually plan on doing a review video very soon. We haven’t had any issues. Ours runs like it should (more in the summer), but doesn’t have a big drain on our batteries. Is your wire big enough? Or maybe a fuse is going out? Our wire is 8 gauge ran at 35ft.
I have 8/3 AWG wire but its about 50 feet from the batteries, although I combined the red and white wire together and black and bare wire together to make the wire effectively 5 AWG. I have a 300 amp hour lithium battery bank feeding the system where the voltage generally stays at 13.2-13.3 volts at the battery. When the fridge is running, the voltage at the fridge is 12.7-12.8 volts but it draws about 0.8 to 1 amp higher than the spec average of 4.5. When you look up that info on troubleshooting forums it generally indicates that there has been too much refrigerant added to the system when it takes a long time to cool couple with running amps higher. Thats why I was curious about how long yours generally runs for under normal type operation. I actually put a temperature logger in the fridge to record the temps every 15 minutes and found the fridge cools at a rate of 1.1 deg C per hour. That didn't really seem normal to me so I am curious how quickly yours cools down during normal operation.
@@alisonandterry they definitely don’t cool/freeze as fast as a standard fridge. Our only has 2 wires red and black. If I remember correctly the owners manual has a chart for wire runs and proper gauge. To be honest we haven’t put a volt meter to it to check the draw. But I can tell you that before we added the fridge we had 2 days of battery storage. After the fridge we still have 2 days of battery storage. +\- a couple few volts. I really wish we could be of more help.
@@BreakingFreeOffGrid The manufacturers only suggestion was to move the battery closer which I am going to test if that makes a difference when I head up to the camp in a week . I guess what I am reading from your comments is that your fridge runs more normally like once an hour for a few minutes at a time rather than for hours at a time like mine. Is that true?
@@alisonandterry yes, ours just runs for a few minutes at a time. Wish we could be more help. Please let us know when you move the battery closer. Interested in what happens.
Hi...after having had a propane fridge for years at our offgrid home in northern Ontario, we decided to move to a Unique 9 cu. ft. DC powered fridge (Model UGP 260L) two weeks ago. I'm frustrated with this fridge and wondering what I'm doing wrong. Fist off, it's been extremely warm the last couple weeks, with he indoor temperature being 29C. Even at a fridge setting of 7, our fridge cannot get colder than +4C. Today, it's cooler out at mid 20s, yet fridge at 5am was still only +4C. Around 8:30am, I added just 5 cans of coke and two small bottles of water, the temperature shot up to +9C. The freezer is maybe 60% full, while the fridge is maybe 30% full. I'm scared to add more food because every time I do, the temperature takes forever to fall, and I fear the food has spoiled. What are we doing wrong? At a setting of 7, the manual says fridge should get to -4C. There is a bit of frost in the fridge, but no ice. So frustrating that I now wish for my old propane fridge.
I prefer DC to propane for my fridge, but people should know that they do make vent kits for propane fridges. I think they are mandatory in Canada. I don't know why U.S. dealers never seem to stock them, but I would definitely never have a propane fridge that wasn't vented. People have died from unvented fridges. I have no idea why manufacturers don't automatically include the vent kits, or why they aren't mandatory.
I agree with you! We did not have ours vented and no detectors, totally our fault. Thank goodness we are still alive and learned our lesson. The DC fridge is awesome!
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
God has a plan and a purpose for all of us. Who knows, you may have already saved some lives by sharing what happened with the propane fridge. And Toni, you should NEVER apologize for showing your emotions! Congrats on the new fridge, you guys deserve it!!
Catherine Manley I’m such a big baby sometimes 🤣 I do hope we can warn as many people as possible.
A new fridge, YEAH!!! Get a freezer to add to when ya can!!! Great idea!! That UNIQUE mfg. plant is just south of Toronto, in Canada. We have our regular ones- 2 fridge in house (1 small, 1 larger) with freezer comp. in each and an upright freezer in the barn, all piped into the solar back-up grid. Great investment!! You won't be sorry!!
We do have to get our batteries though checked, they are 7 yrs old now. They only last so long, so prepare and get backups for future. We have to get an appt. setup with the Solar install group to come out and do this, hopefully this year, then be good till 2028 at least.
The battery's in a insulated protected container helps, going through extreme winter's, or guys said that it get's perhaps a little more years of service. Worth it- we still have to build it for ours, they are just inside the barn building. We still run off the regular grid, but solar kicks in, anytime that the electric from the grid goes down.
Best to have it all just off-grid, baby steps.
We’re really happy the fridge! Need to do a review video on it since we’ve had it for over a year.
What a nice fridge. I just got there stove. Unique is quality stuff. I’ve liked mine. Now you can feel safe. Tears of joy. Have a great day you two..!!
living Off Grid McGarvey style that’s good to hear that we went with a reliable company! I’m really relieved the death machine is not in our cabin anymore, tears of joy! Have a great weekend Ron 😀
This is exciting. We just bought the exact same make/model for our DPMH thats on a shipping truck right now. This is one of the only brands I know of that has exposed fins on the back. I'm hoping I'll be able to use the existing rv chimney system for the heat removal so it's not dumping into the rv.
Congratulations! We love ours! We just posted a review video on it a few weeks ago, if you’re interested.
@@BreakingFreeOffGrid I'll check it out. By the way thanks for a rear shot of the fridge confirming the fins, that was the exciting part lol.
@@NigelM18 you’re so welcome! Please give us an update on how it’s working for you.
Oh my gosh.. the fridge is cool the co issue is scary! So glad you woke up. I will have to go watch the more in detail video
The CO scare was an eye opener! Thank goodness we’re still alive!
Congrats on the solar fridge!!!! It will be awesome. As an extra safety measure, you can heat up your ring terminal with a blow torch and once heated allow solder to bond the wire to the ring terminal and then use your marine grade heat shrink over it. Gives me additional piece of mind. All the best and look forward to more videos! Cheers!
Chad Ryan thank you for the tip. I’ll mention it to the hubby😀 Glad you enjoyed the video.
Chad Ryan that’s a really good idea. Never would have thought about that. Will do this from here on out. Thank you.
By crimping AND soldering the terminal to the wire you reduce the resistance at the connection to less than the wire itself. It's a much more durable connection with no potential hotspot, nor corrosion. Adding the marine heat shrink backs it all up. In my opinion it's the only proper way to make a wire connection.
When I was an electric vehicle technician for 13 years I found out real fast that if you don't make proper connections, they will fail fairly rapidly. Especially if it was subject to the weather, or near a battery.
Congratulations on the new fridge
Steve Schauweker thank you 😊
Yay! Such good news! Yes, that fridg is huge!! LOL! Good job on the video, too. Thanks for sharing all the sordid details with us! I hope the truck detail goes as smoothly as the fridg installation.
Barbara Blood lol! High class off grid now 😂
thank you for talking about co detectors
You are so welcome! We have been trying to warn everyone since our experience.
@6:42 very interesting. We just got our fridge and they changed some numbers.... ours says 70W on 12V and 6.5A on 12V
This is so cool.
That is a nice frig
Congrates on the new fridge. We will be going that way a little ways down the line. Anyways, good for you using marine grade, as a retired ship captain, I actually have rewired several cabin cruisers so I know how it will hold up. I also use tin coated wire but that is way overkill for residential wiring (unless outdoors. Also, I noticed that you are using 4 trojan batteries, is that powering up the cabin pretty well? I forgot what your wattage on your array is. Anyways,, con grates again and may come up sometime this fall, building my toy hauler/camper now..
Clif Ferguson our array is 380 watts. But we broke one that isn’t producing much. We will be charging more with the new fridge. Getting ready to purchase 4 L16’s. Hopefully during the bad months we will be able to charge every 3 days.
How much was it & what kind of power to run it?
Such nice people you are!!! Have you started the new cabin yet? Can I come help? I just got my 6 cubic foot Unique for my cargo trailer conversion.
Keeb awwwwe shucks! Thank you! We have not started yet. Hopefully, we’ll be starting excavation in the next couple weeks.
We are really happy with the fridge. I’m sure you’ll love yours as well.
For once getting old and having a old bladder worked in someone’s favor! 🤣
I’m
So glad you guys caught that when you did!
I really like this fridge!!!
My question is this.
With the cost being $1500 plus,
Why not go with 110v fridge and get more batteries?
Just wondering the cost vs energy use.
I hope the fix for the truck wasn’t too bad!!
Living the Dream Homestead
Efficiency. A 110 has a larger motor and less insulation. This has a smaller motor and more insulation. We did consider a 110. But that would also need a dedicated 20amp plug. Our cabin isn’t wired that way. Stu
Stuart Rinker, makes sense! I can’t wait to see it!
Living the Dream Homestead next weekend! Hamburgers!
nice we just got us one to
How much solar panel and battery do you need for that?
Vintage 1957 we have 2 190 watts solar panels and 4 t-105 12volt batteries.
Did you know that you can buy 12v/24v DC refrigerator compressors off Ebay? You can convert a regular non-working fridge into a DC fridge.
Yes you can, but... the unique brand has four inches of insulation. Most refrigerators built for mass-market have less than two.
what solar panels did you use to your battery to run this?
Tina Rawlins right now we only have 1 190watt panel. We’re mainly charging the batteries every other day. More panels in the future.
Question - how has the refrigerator worked out for you? Still undecided whether to go this route. Thanks
Funny you ask, we’re planning on doing a review on it. It’s a really good fridge, no problems at all.
That’s great to know. We have a unique off grid stove.
That’s exciting!!! Let us know how you like it in time! Glad to see you didn’t take a refrigerator to the throat.
😳🧟♀️
North Country Off Grid 🤣 OMG! Laughing my ass off!
I purchased exact same fridge as you a year ago. Can you tell me your experience 1 year after installing it? I have been having some issues with mine running for an extremely long time(6 hours on then 6 hours off). I am just wondering what your experience has been and is this normal for the fridge?
I actually plan on doing a review video very soon. We haven’t had any issues. Ours runs like it should (more in the summer), but doesn’t have a big drain on our batteries. Is your wire big enough? Or maybe a fuse is going out? Our wire is 8 gauge ran at 35ft.
I have 8/3 AWG wire but its about 50 feet from the batteries, although I combined the red and white wire together and black and bare wire together to make the wire effectively 5 AWG. I have a 300 amp hour lithium battery bank feeding the system where the voltage generally stays at 13.2-13.3 volts at the battery. When the fridge is running, the voltage at the fridge is 12.7-12.8 volts but it draws about 0.8 to 1 amp higher than the spec average of 4.5. When you look up that info on troubleshooting forums it generally indicates that there has been too much refrigerant added to the system when it takes a long time to cool couple with running amps higher. Thats why I was curious about how long yours generally runs for under normal type operation. I actually put a temperature logger in the fridge to record the temps every 15 minutes and found the fridge cools at a rate of 1.1 deg C per hour. That didn't really seem normal to me so I am curious how quickly yours cools down during normal operation.
@@alisonandterry they definitely don’t cool/freeze as fast as a standard fridge. Our only has 2 wires red and black. If I remember correctly the owners manual has a chart for wire runs and proper gauge. To be honest we haven’t put a volt meter to it to check the draw. But I can tell you that before we added the fridge we had 2 days of battery storage. After the fridge we still have 2 days of battery storage. +\- a couple few volts. I really wish we could be of more help.
@@BreakingFreeOffGrid The manufacturers only suggestion was to move the battery closer which I am going to test if that makes a difference when I head up to the camp in a week . I guess what I am reading from your comments is that your fridge runs more normally like once an hour for a few minutes at a time rather than for hours at a time like mine. Is that true?
@@alisonandterry yes, ours just runs for a few minutes at a time. Wish we could be more help. Please let us know when you move the battery closer. Interested in what happens.
Hi...after having had a propane fridge for years at our offgrid home in northern Ontario, we decided to move to a Unique 9 cu. ft. DC powered fridge (Model UGP 260L) two weeks ago. I'm frustrated with this fridge and wondering what I'm doing wrong.
Fist off, it's been extremely warm the last couple weeks, with he indoor temperature being 29C. Even at a fridge setting of 7, our fridge cannot get colder than +4C.
Today, it's cooler out at mid 20s, yet fridge at 5am was still only +4C.
Around 8:30am, I added just 5 cans of coke and two small bottles of water, the temperature shot up to +9C.
The freezer is maybe 60% full, while the fridge is maybe 30% full. I'm scared to add more food because every time I do, the temperature takes forever to fall, and I fear the food has spoiled.
What are we doing wrong? At a setting of 7, the manual says fridge should get to -4C.
There is a bit of frost in the fridge, but no ice.
So frustrating that I now wish for my old propane fridge.
Did your fridge come with a warranty? I would call the manufacturer. We haven’t had that problem with ours. Sorry you’re have issues.
How much is the DC Refrigerator?
It’s about $1300. They’re expensive but well worth it. The link is in the description if you would like to check it out.
I prefer DC to propane for my fridge, but people should know that they do make vent kits for propane fridges. I think they are mandatory in Canada. I don't know why U.S. dealers never seem to stock them, but I would definitely never have a propane fridge that wasn't vented. People have died from unvented fridges. I have no idea why manufacturers don't automatically include the vent kits, or why they aren't mandatory.
I agree with you! We did not have ours vented and no detectors, totally our fault. Thank goodness we are still alive and learned our lesson. The DC fridge is awesome!