Oliver Boondocking Record ?

[mountainborn]

As we near the end of our time here at Trujillo Meadows, we think we may have set a couple of records. We will have been boondocking and off of the grid and above ten thousand feet of elevation for one hundred ten consecutive days.

We have learned much during our outing. One example: Even though Our NORCOLD refrigerator works well at lower elevations, it has to be manually lit twice a day at 10 K ! The NORCOLD web site doesn't make any bones about it and seem to wash their hands of the subject, stating on their site that they don't recommend using their refrigerator above five thousand five hundred feet, and offer no help or suggestions.

Now, we realize that is a minor inconvenience, and out of necessity have learned to cope with it. However if someone should forget to manually light their Norcold refrigerator, they could loose the contents of their refrigerator to spoilage.

If someone has suggestions to resolve the "fail to relight in automatic mode" problem, we would be all ears because we will be doing it again next year.

[bugeyedriver]

Mountainborn & others,

 

FYI . . . while Oscar was chasing chipmunks with Dillon, Leo, & Poco at your campsite for ten days, our Dometic purred right on along without a hickup.

[technomadia]

We've done quite a bit of boondocking in the past couple of months across the country at higher elevations. Definitely had problems with our Norcold needing resetting at the higher elevations. Just yesterday at a mere 6600 feet we had a 'F' light of doom (quite unusual.. we usually only see it at 10000+).

 

Haven't found a work around besides paying attention.. and agree, it is quite annoying.

 

But do love the extra space the Norcold provides over the Dometic.

 

- Cherie

[MAX Burner]

FYI....  We recently stayed several days at Hopewell Lake in northern New Mexico near Tres Piedras at about 9,500'MSL - the Dometic fridge operated well on both gas and DC modes.

[Mike and Carol]

“14 years later…” 😳

Mountainborn and Technomadia no longer have their Olies, although Bugeyedriver Pete still does!

We have also boondocked at 9,000+ feet in State Forest State Park, CO.  Dometic fridge, Suburban furnace, hot water tank and cook top all worked fine on propane.  Weber Q and Outland firepit also did fine.  Mike

[SeaDawg]

Thanks for the time travel, and trip down memory lane, @MAX Burner.

The early first gen trailers had different fridges. Even today, today some 3ways  work better at altitude than others, and no one really knows why. Theory is it can be a problem with the propane mix in the tank. Anyway...

Glad yours functions well. Very happy for you. 

I have had a dc danfoss/secop compressor fridge for 6+ years now, and it doesn't care what altitude,  nor (out of )  level I'm on. It just works, flawlessly. 

 

[ScubaRx]

We’ve had the exact same model Dometic 3-way fridge in both of our Oliver’s since 2008. We have never experienced an altitude issue in either of them. Ninety percent of the time thy have run on propane. 
 

I suppose the longest boon-docking run for us was in 2019 on a 15000 mile trip to Alaska.