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Short term fridge outage - cause?
We have a 2016 Siesta 24. We camped in the RV for 2 nights last week on the N Rim of Grand Canyon - TERRIFIC, by the way! - no hookups, and, on the second night, we discovered the fridge and freezer were not cold.
Here's the scenario:
We got in to the campground late afternoon on day 1. I tried to level it - first time, my little electronic level says it was 2.7° low in front, which probably would have been ok - but, I added some more pads, but maybe not in the same spot on the parking pad - ended up at 3.3°. My fridge manual says no more than 3° in that direction - but I was tired, said to heck with it, maybe fix it in the morning...
Morning comes, we are off hiking - never got around to leveling it better. So that evening, or maybe the next morning - can't remember exactly - there is melted ice in the freezer, the fridge is just cool - bummer. I assumed it was the bad leveling - did I ruin the fridge? One other possibility occurred to me - some hours before the problem, I had put a big bag of ice in the freezer, on the bottom shelf - that's the part that gets cold in this freezer. I wondered - could that have confused the thermostat?
I moved the ice to the top shelf, turned the thermostat to a colder setting - and we moved, as scheduled, to a parking lot that turned out to be more level than the campground. (We were staying in the North Rim Lodge that night.) And, in a few hours, the fridge was happy - ice cube tray in freezer was frozen, food in fridge was cold.
So - was the problem the bad leveling? The bag of ice in the freezer? Did I do any lasting damage by not leveling better? I read up on these evaporative systems generally, but it's somewhat confusing, and it depends on what the manufacturer builds. It looks like newer ones can have a mechanism to shut off the fridge to prevent damage, if something like bad leveling, or something else, could cause damage. But I still like the idea that the bag of ice threw it off.
What do you think? Would love to hear from more experienced RV'ers on this.
Dan
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