GaryMBlythe

Just a quick update. Thanks to all of you who posted who gave me enough insight to proceed. I spent most of my spare time over the weekend on cabinetry for the Samsung install, but I did spend a little time investigating the inverter power. It looks like Newmar made the inverter power retrofit relatively easy for me. All of the coach 120V power comes into a main 50A panel in the bathroom, and a 30A breaker in that panel sends 120V to the inverter through 10-gauge Romex for the pass-through. A 10-gauge Romex brings 30A back from the inverter to a sub-panel which is next to the main panel. All of the inverter circuits are fed out of that sub-panel. Currently, my refer circuit comes out of the main panel (non-inverter) but I think I can just move that Romex over to the subpanel that is fed off of the inverter and swap it for a non-essential (for my purposes) circuit that I will move to the main panel. The only hitch might be swapping the Romex feeds from one side to the other; I either need to make them reach or I need to try to switch them from one hole in the ceiling to the other (one above each panel). If all else fails I can do a splice in each panel with wire nuts and send a short Romex from one panel to the other. Now I just need to resolve the MSW vs. PSW issue. If I go with PSW power my $1000 Samsung residential refrigerator conversion just got a lot more expensive! Thanks again, Gary

Thanks to all that have posted. This has given me good direction for how to proceed. Unfortunately I work full time and our coach is parked at a weekend property 50 miles away, so it will be this weekend before I have an opportunity to follow any of these leads. If I come up with a good solution I will post back to the forum in case there are any other Newmar owners in a similar circumstance. I do have a couple of thoughts, though. One, it would be great if Newmar had wired the icemaker to an inverter feed, but I don't think that is the case. The icemaker and refrigerator were plugged into a single duplex outlet, and there is only one romex feeding that outlet. However, it occurs to me that the Suburban propane heater is installed below the refrigerator, and although we never run the propane (in our mild Texas winters we run the heat pumps on park power) I expect that it has an inverter feed for the fan and igniter. I will check to make sure that is fed from the inverter, and if so, consider splicing into or robbing that circuit to power the Samsung, and possibly running the Suburban on the original refrigerator circuit. However, the posts on MSW versus PSW inverter power have me a bit concerned. About half of the posts say "no problem" while the others say "expect problems". There is a lot of internet traffic that attests to the RF-197 being good on MSW power, but I also read that the RF18HFEN has a different compressor system. I have posed this question on a Home Depot on line product Q&A forum, but I don't have much confidence I will get a meaningful answer. Any more user input on this subject in this forum would be welcome. Thanks, Gary

OK, thanks all. There is a breaker panel for a number of 120V circuits on a bathroom wall, the other side of which forms one side of the refrigerator cabinet, so it sounds like if I have a circuit in that panel that gets a pass-through from the inverter I might be able to feed from that. I'll just need to check wire and breaker sizes to make sure I don't overload anything. Thanks, Gary

I am doing the Norcold 1210 to Samsung residential refrigerator conversion, and so far all is going well, but I need input from others. My existing Norcold did not appear to be wired to the inverter, as we always got an alarm when disconnecting from shore power while running the Norcold on 120VAC. When we convert to the Samsung RF-18HFEN, the replacement for the RF-197, I would like to have the option of running it off of the inverter when not on shore power or running the gen-set. We have a 2000 W Magnum MSW inverter in our 2007 Newmar Kountry Star, and four new 6V house batteries. I am comfortable doing 120V and 240VAC wiring jobs (e.g., I ran a 30-A circuit to partially power my coach in my driveway, and hard-wired a Progressive Industries 50-A EMS on my shore power input), but I am not familiar with doing inverter circuit retrofits in an RV. Can someone advise me what this involves and whether this is a reasonable do-it-yourself project for an experienced amateur electrician? Thanks. Gary