I'm sitting here on a cliff in Cape Ann, MA enjoying the view AND my
Vitrifrigo but I'm curious about the battery life.  The fridge performs well
beyond my expectations but I am lucky to get a day and a half with the frige
and that includes using my 30 watts of solar panels. I have 2 aux batteries
now so I can get a whole weekend.  Where is that "will run for 1 week on one
battery" come from? I've met 2 other Vitrifrigo owners and they both say
they get about a day.  Is it one week on one of those huge batteries that
span the length of under the rear seat?

Thanks,
Bryan

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
miguel pacheco
Sent: Sunday, July 26, 2009 11:13 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Vitrfrigio install report

Thanks for the write-up, Ken. This upgrade is definitely in my future!
Miguel

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 8:04 PM, Ken Wilford<kenwilfy@comcast.net> wrote:
> I had a customer contact me a few months ago about installing a
> Vitrifrigio 12/110 volt fridge in his Vanagon Westy along with a
> secondary battery. �I did the install about two weeks ago. �I want to
> say I was very impressed by this fridge. �It is made in Italy and it
> looks very nice in a Westy. �It runs off of 12 volts or 110 but either
> way it gets super cold, enough to make ice in the freezer section and it
> is super efficient so that you can run it off of a battery for almost a
> week without a charge. �If you have a solar setup it could last even
> longer. �Here is a link to Karl Mulendore's site where he talks about
> the fridge:
> http://www.westyventures.com/parts.html
>
> I was very impressed. �I installed a secondary battery setup as Karl
> describes on this page as well and it seemed to work very well. �We also
> installed a Sure Power smart solenoid for the 2nd Battery so that it
> would not take a charge until the main battery was fully charged. �It
> also has a feature that allows you to jump start the van automatically
> if your main battery is low. �The Solenoid senses this and automatically
> pulls juice from the 2nd Battery for the jump start. �All in all it took
> me about 6 hours to do the install of the fridge and the battery setup
> but it turned out very stealthy. �I hooked the 2nd battery up to the
> cigarette lighter and interior lights so that they will now run off of
> the 2nd Battery and not drain the main battery when camping. �If you are
> thinking about spending some money to get your fridge overhauled I
> recommend looking into the Vitrifrigio instead. �They are not cheap
> (around $600) but they work very well and should last for a long time to
> come (even has a light inside the fridge when you open the door!).
>
> Just thought I would share.
>
> Ken Wilford
> John 3:16
> www.vanagain.com
>

-- 
Miguel