Refrigerator not working again

[Steve B]

You're not supposed to count work done for wives, relatives, or concubines. Were they dorm fridge compressors, or 15 ton three phase?

Steve

[Robert Green]

I was of the same mind until I clocked both old and new with a KillaWatt power meter. The old one (admittedly low on freon so working extra hard) ran 4X the kWh as the new one. That's hard to ignore. I was of the same mind as you - IIABDFI! But when the old one couldn't cool well on the hottest days anymore, I had to make a choice and I chose the simplest model in the hopes that reliability is truly inversely proportional to complexity.

Fridges are like classic cars. After 30 years, the plastic and rubber parts are heading off to Jesus, replacements aren't readily available and the patches accumulate to the point of embarrassment. One thing I like about the new one is the absence of a dimpled egg shelf. Never used it, the space was wasted and it collected all sorts of crap that had to be scooped out one $#$%% egg hole at a time.

The new fridge is much easier to clean overall and has enormous shelves built into each door. Good some ways, bad others. Grabbing creamer, condiments and the ice tea pitcher doesn't require a full door opening, which is a very large energy consumer, especially with teenagers doing a IG-level food inventory before deciding what to eat.

We did make one super-size mistake in selecting the capacity of the units. They allege to be the same cubic capacity, but the new one had it laid out in very much less friendly space. It's our fault (well, mine) because we (I) didn't think to measure the cubic space of each compartment. The new box has much less freezer space and turned out to be a biggish sort of mistake.

But now that the government says the recession is over we'll be leaving it behind when we buy our new, fairly priced, equitably taxed house in a stable neighborhood not riddled with foreclosed and empty houses. Phew!

The fridge compartment is conspicuously empty and the freezer, the reverse. It's laid out so where once we could have containers and frozen food cartons

2 deep, now it's 1.75 deep which basically means one deep. The walls are much thicker as well, but that's part of the reason it's using 1/4 the juice. We had a lot of limitations, though, in terms of getting it IN the house. We have very small doors that limited the overall size of the replacement. The two guys who did the install had to put a ratty look sling under the bottom and literally "dance" it into the house.

Will it last as long as the old box? Probably not. What does? Will I save enough money to offset the cost of buying a new one? No, but if I had replaced it when it first started getting quirky, the savings picture would be different. One thing it inspired me to do was take baseline kWh readings on the new one. Armed with that information, it might be possible to spot a problem as insidious as water-logged insulation. I'll at least have some idea what the current draw was when the machine was well to help gauge the severity of future problem. I'll bet waterlogged insulation can really jack up the kWh consumption per day. Where did the water come from?

-- Bobby G.

[Grumpy]

Apx. 4 hours of labor and material how much it will cost depend on you area $500.00 labor compr.,filter drier, and refrigerant another $500.00 plus tax you figure it out! Is it better to purchase new one definitely. However don't expect for some one to come and trouble shoot it for you for nothing, in most cases flat fee will apply.

[Michael A. Terrell]

Later, I worked at a military TV station, before leaving the service. Years later I was an engineer at a UHF TV station with a 5 MW EIRP signal on a 1749 foot tower near the east coast of Central Florida.

[Michael A. Terrell]

Reflow soldering is a lot more common these days. With so much surface mount, wave solder has lost a lot of market share.

[HVAC]

"We" ?

Is that you + the voices in your head?

[HVAC]

That was the "Close cover before striking" college, right?

[pyotr filipivich]

The Daring Dufas on Thu, 23 Sep 2010

22:19:20 -0500 typed >> >>>> >>>>>> The Daring Dufas fired this volley in

Had a co-worker who would respond to request for "a butt load" of anything with "That a standard or metric butt load?"

[Michael A. Terrell]

Appparently, you are the only one with voices in your head.

[Michael A. Terrell]

Well, some people DO confuse 'a ton' with 'a butt load'. ;-)

[Randy]

Oh no, not the butt load again...I remember it being a bulk load. Someone got Trolled :( Randy

(Do not do today, what you shouldn't do tomorrow)

[Paul Hovnanian P.E.]

Why did the power go out?

Before tossing the whole thing, check out the starting cap.

[Lloyd E. Sponenburgh]

"Grumpy" fired this volley in news:i7j3uc$muc$1 @news.eternal-september.org:

Grump... are you telling me you'd charge $500.00 for ten ounces of refrigerant? Oh, you ARE an HVAC repairman!

LLoyd

[The Daring Dufas]

If you could get close enough to the antenna, you could cook hot dogs, in about a tenth of a second. I've tried to explain to a lot of folks that an AM station tower IS the antenna and it sits on insulators. I remember a couple of idiots climbing the TV towers around here. RF is so much fun to play with. 8-)

TDD

[The Daring Dufas]

I don't see that much surface mount on the majority of HVAC control boards. I haven't seen the latest supercalafragilistic uber-efficient HVAC system control boards but the simple ones are mostly single or dual layer with components having leads soldered through holes. I don't have customers who can afford that really high end stuff for their homes.

TDD

[Michael A. Terrell]

One of the tower crew found the hairline crack in our waveguide the hard way. He leaned back against it and had a 12 inch long RF burn across his ass and lower back. There was about 190 KW of UHF RF (Ch 55) flowing inside that brass duct. It only took a few seconds before he felt it.

[Martin H. Eastburn]

There is likely a reset button on the unit. See if you can find one.

I had something like that with ours. Red was the color.

I think it knocks out the starting winding - the high current ones -

One should have the icebox plugged in to heat the oil for hours before kicking it off. Mostly that is when the oil is not down in the motor. (moving it...).

Mart> Well, here's a little update.

[Steve]

even the 13SEER condensers and heat pumps that I install have mother boards in them, as do the gas furnaces I install. Lots of surface mount stuff, double layer boards, optical latching relay instead of a contactor, serial controlled, etc.

[Steve]

I guess you couldn't figure it out.... here, try again....

Don't forget the charging access ports, gages, micron gage, clamp on thermister and digital meter, torch, nitrogen, silfos, start kit, vacuum pump, and hazwaste disposal of the old refrigerant. Then there is the truck to get it all there with its associated costs and expenses, and of course the advertising that got you to call in the first place. Oh, and the paperwork.... no job is done till the paperwork is done. when its all said and done, the tech will have around $50 - $75 in his pocket for 4 - 5 hours of on site work, an hour or so of windshield time to and from the job site, an hour or so to the supply house to pick up the compressor, and parts, and another 45 minutes or so for paperwork.

That $1,000 just doesn't go very far, does it....

[Michael A. Terrell]

I was testing and repairing 16 layer reflowed boards that cost over $8,000 for the components. If the board house was careless handling the blanks you could have over 1000 bad solder joints. I spent a lot of time looking through a stereo microscope, with a hot soldering iron in one hand.