12 Volt Hanging Microwave

[LeBoutillier]

Can anyone offer assistance on where to locate a SMALL microvave which operates on 12volts? I would like to hang the unit above the sink/stove area in my 13 Scamp. It will need to be light. Worse comes to worse, I can always purchase a 120 volt model but it still needs to be as small as possible. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Gina D.]

Wally World has 120v ones no bigger than your average computer printer.

I am not sure if there is such a thing as a 12v one. That would suck the juice real fast! But I guess boats need something like that, eh?

[Christi V.]

You can do a 'google' search. .just type in 12volt microwave ovens' . I agree with Gina .. it would suck up your battery very fast. why not just get a small one thats 120V?

[Donna D.]

All kinds of 12 volt appliances here: CMACM Technologies But, at $500 bucks I could purchase a dozen 120v at Wal-Mart!

[Dan Quinn]

go to walmart i paid 49.00 for mine and beleave me you wont be happy with a 12v one you will need a whole battery bank instead of a battery...

[Steve L.]

A small microwave would be 500 watts. At 12v it would be 50 amps, not counting losses in the line which are proportional to the current flow. I second the recommendation that you go 120v.

Edit:
My math stinks. 500 watts is closer to 40 watts (500/12=41.7 amps) but the message is the same. Big amps. Big wires.

[Brian B-P]

My wife is pushing for a microwave in our Boler, even for use without an outside AC power supply. Her reasoning is that the massive power draw is so brief that the total consumption should be acceptable. If you accept this logic, the only remaining challenges are to select an appliance and to arrange the power supply.

The alternative to an expensive 12V DC appliance is an inverter supplying an ordinary AC appliance. The DC current draw is the same (actually even worse due to inverter inefficiency), but the wiring should be less of a problem, because the inverter can be right beside the battery: thick and short 12V cables, with a AC power cable (from inverter to appliance) which is not a problem (because it only carries a few amps at the higher voltage). I don't know if the power characteristics of cheap inverters are okay for a typical small microwave (I wouldn't be buying a true sine wave inverter for this), but if cheap units work then enough capacity now costs about a hundred bucks.

I agree with Dan's concern that 50 amps (for instance) is a lot of draw, so the battery needs to be large enough for the current (not just the total stored energy). Deep discharge batteries are better for RV use starting batteries by giving up something, and what they give up is peak current capacity, but 50 amps is only one eighth of what my old four-cylinder Toyota car pulled while starting, so it might not be unreasonable (for a short time) for some of our battery setups.

[Brian B-P]

Thanks, Donna; that's an interesting source of 12V stuff.

A different model of 12V microwave oven is shown at www.microwavecooking.com, where there are more specs, including a 65 amp current draw. That one has only 450 W max output (the same as our first home microwave oven), but consumes 750 W and thus draws 65 amps. With that draw, they say "Use four-gauge power cable - not included, maximum length 9.8 feet (3m)". Imagine what the 650 W (output) unit would draw...

As for the size and weight requirement, this "little" 450 W Samsung is still 35.3 lb of of cabinet-breaking mass, occupying 19.3"W x 7.4"H x 13.6"D. Actually likely more, because the specs give the same value for interior height and outside cabinet height, which can't be right.

Finally, I noticed another site which described that Samsung (the MD4301G) as "no longer available".