Decisions, Decisions. Appliances Edition. 

There are SO many decisions to be made on an expedition rig like the one we built/are building. Energy, water, and space are very limited, so every decision needs to take those parameters into consideration.  

Microwave – We decided to go with a microwave that has convection bake, microwave, air fry and broil settings. So far this has been versatile enough to do everything we need it to. We don’t carry a toaster, and the one we chose is able to toast on the broil setting, but it does take a while and kind of dries out the bread a lot. Overall, we’re pretty happy with it. In Alaska we baked cookies in it - so that was a win! I read a lot of reviews and “best of” sites, and finally just chose one: the Panasonic HomeChef 4-in-1 NN-CD87KS. I am not sure that it is the best choice, but at some point, a decision just needed to be made. 

HVAC – We approached HVAC a couple of ways. For air conditioning, we did a mini split. They are super-efficient, especially when compared to the rooftop DC units that a lot of rigs use. Yes, the  mini split is alternating current rather than direct current, so there are some losses there. Also, we have to run the inverters to have air conditioning, but we still end up far ahead on energy usage. We had no issues with running the air conditioning all night and day.  It was great for the dog when we were gone too, he was really happy to hang out in a nice cool rig!  

The fridge is AC (more on that later), so there is always an inverter on anyway.  The mini split that we chose – after a lot of research and debate - is the Mitsubishi 15K M-Series. This gives us plenty of air conditioning capability, and quite a bit of heat capability as well. When it gets too cold for a mini split to operate effectively, I am quite sure that I don’t want to be there anyway! We also have backup heat in the form of a hydronic heater which runs on gasoline.  This can provide space heating as well as heat our water. Since we have lived in northern Wisconsin for most of our lives, I have had enough cold to last me a long time! There is snow on the ground as I write this, and I really can’t wait to get away from it.

The exterior units for the mini splits are quite ugly, so we really didn’t want to put it on the outside of our kickass rig. Another reason to avoid having it on the back is because we have a giant bike box there. So, we decided to put the exterior unit in one of the underbody storage boxes. The space available in an underbody box is a very limiting factor, and it took a lot of searching to find an efficient one that had enough BTUs to give us plenty of capacity, but small enough that we could put it in a storage box. But we finally did it – actually, Jake did – he spent hours poring over spec sheets with itsy bitsy print. 

Hot Water – After a lot of back and forth, we finally decided on an Isotemp. We chose it because we could heat the water with our gasoline heater or use the electric immersion element.  We thought we would only use the gasoline heater, but we ended up heating our water with electricity a lot because we had plenty of solar. We have the 6.5 gallon one and weren’t sure that it would provide enough water for four people to take showers and wash dishes, but we never ran out of hot water.  We take very quick showers  - water on for rinsing, off for soaping up, but that is as much to save on our freshwater supply as it is to have hot water for everyone.  

Hot water is surprisingly complex and is very driven by your use scenario. Because Isotemp units can use your engine coolant – you get free hot water, and it actually is free because internal combustion engines are 80% heaters. Only 15-20% of an internal combustion engine’s energy transfers to mechanical energy, the rest is heat. The Isotemp also heats the water hotter than you would in your house, so there is a mixing valve to bring that down to a safe temperature. So, even though the unit itself is only 6.5 gallons – there’s more than 6.5 gallons of non-scalding hot water available. If you aren’t driving for a while, you will need to use the electric immersion heater to heat the water. This will take a bite out of your battery, but you might be in a super sunny area and it may be easy to replenish the energy. Some people even use water heaters as a place to dump extra solar energy when they have more than their batteries can store.  Or you can do what we did and just add a gasoline heater and avoid running coolant lines from your engine altogether.  We wanted to have the backup heat anyway, so it made sense for us.  The gasoline heaters don’t really use much fuel and we have been very happy with our decision.

 If you want to use hot water for space heating, things get more complicated and expensive. You could use the Isotemp for space heating, but it is not a good way to use electricity. 

The form that energy takes matters. Electricity is premium energy because you can store it and you can move it (through wires). Heat energy is a byproduct of so many things – you can use low grade heat output from your engine to heat your cab and your hot water. Heating using electricity is convenient because you can run a wire and put a heater wherever you want, but it’s a poor use of electricity. Using electricity to power a heat pump is a much better use because you can put in one unit of energy and move 3-5 units of heat (read our HVAC post for more on this). A resistance unit (like the heating coil in an Isotemp) on the other hand is one to one – one unit of energy in the form of electricity puts out one unit of energy in the form of heat. Burning stuff is really the best way to get heat and if you are going to burn something, you might as well use the fuel that you already have in your vehicle – gasoline in our case. 

We will not be carrying propane. Filling up propane is a pain in the United States. It is an even bigger pain outside the US. The fittings can be different, it can be hard to find, etc. Also, there are sometimes restrictions on ferries and tunnels and there are even different rules internationally about propane cylinders. We are staying with just electricity and a little gasoline (from our truck tank) for our heater.

Refrigerator – This was one decision that we kept revisiting, especially since if we decided to go with an alternating current (AC) one we would have to keep one of our inverters running all of the time. In the end, the data decided us. We went with the Beko BFBF2414SS. If the numbers that Beko has published in their spec sheet are accurate, we should still be ahead, energy wise, even with an inverter running all the time. I think that the highest I have seen the refrigerator pull is 100W.  I am pretty happy with that. 

As far as the AC/DC decision goes - you want high voltage, low current for efficiency – so 12-volt refrigerators are out. When you have high current, you have high heat losses unless you have massive wires. The Beko is an inverter driven fridge, which in this case means that it has a variable speed compressor which makes for a very efficient unit. When we did the calculations, we found that the energy consumption on a Vitrofrigo (8.3 CF total volume) unit running on direct current was the same as the Beko (11.43 CF total volume) running on alternating current – even factoring in standby power consumption by the inverter. So, we get a larger fridge (38% bigger!) for the same power consumption. With a very hungry family of four – I will take that! We have been very happy with our fridge decision. 

Stovetop – A lot of rigs use the TruInduction induction stovetops. I have an induction range in my kitchen and love it, so last year I bought one of the TruInduction cooktops to try it out. I wasn’t super impressed - maybe it was just a bad unit, but I didn’t feel like it worked nearly as well as my GE one at home. I went with the two burner Kenyon instead and I love it.

Washing Machine – Very much a luxury item, I am aware of that. There are four of us in close quarters though, and even washing socks, underwear and a couple of shirts keeps us out in the boonies longer without clothespins on our noses. I looked at a few different options, but in the end went with the Daewoo Mini. It is very compact but is able to wash the stinky stuff which is really all that I ask. I actually was impressed with how much I could fit in!  I even washed sheets a couple of times.  They aren’t super easy to find; I ended up getting one off eBay that said it was for the US only. However, when it arrived the plug was weird, and the controls were in Korean. Um, I don’t read Korean. I contacted the seller and they offered me a partial refund. In the end I took it because I was unable to source one that was both in English and had 60 hertz. Oddly enough, I found quite a few in English that were 50 hertz for Australia, but South Korea uses 60 hertz. Running a 50 hertz motor at 60 hertz is not a good idea. So, I guess I will be learning a bit of Korean.

I hope that helped!  We spent way too much time trying to make appliance decisions, but I have to say that I am happy with them!