Can anyone advise on the best make of fridgefreezer to use in an unheated garage? I have a fairly new Lec fridge freezer in there at the moment but the freezer keeps warming up whenever we get frost or near freezing temperatures - useless. Perhaps I should settle for a chest freezer? I hear they are less susceptible to outside temperatures. Any advice appreciated. Cheers Roadrunner
I have just the opposite need... 120°F in the garage.
...Jim Thompson
Chest Freezers are much more economical to operate if that helps at all......
Jim a friend of mine took and glued 1 in thick foil backed foam to his outside full west sun in Glendale AZ and said that it cut the run time and I will attest to the beer being colder even in August
This is Turtle.
I see this all the time on Camps and refrigerators being used outdoor where it gets cold or hot.
Here is the rules of the game.
1) keep the refrigerators in ambiant of 60ºF to 105ºF for it to work properly. When in cold weather like 30ºf or less the refrigerator compartment has the only thermostat and when the refrigerator section gets to 34ºF to 36ºF. the freezer section will be cut off and only keep the refrigerator section at 34ºf to 36ºf . If the refrigerator section is at 34ºF to 36ºF . You can build a fire in the freezer section and the refrigerator will not come on. There is only one thermostat and it is in the refrigerator side of the box and if the refrigerator section is cooled down to the right temperature. the thermostat does not care what the freezer section temperature is or cares about what temperature the freezer section is.I would give you the cure for this but it is kind of long explaining the set up. Let me know if you want it.
2) Chest type and up right freezers only with no refrigerator section will work in freezing weather but it is not nice to abuse such equipment. Keep them above 40ºF to 105ºF if you like them and don't want to abuse them. The second worst thing you can do to a freezer is to run it in freezing weather. The first one it to throw it out of the back of a truck at 60 M.P.H. and expect it to still run.TURTLE
I'm at least ... curious.
I have an old junker fridge out on my back porch. There is nothing in the fridge, but the freezer part if full, because my kitchen fridge does not have enough freezer space. I left a few cans of soda in the fridge compartment when it got real cold outdoors. The next day they were slushy. The freezer works just fine, and the comptessor hardly ever runs when the temp is below freezing. It saves energy out there, and there is no room in the kitchen for two of them anyhow. I dont see the problem ??????????
It depends on the design of the refrigerator and how it was made.
- A "manual defrost" (a usually single door model with a small freezer box) fridge's thermostat senses the temperature of the freezer box. As long as it gets warmer than set, the compressor will run and keep the freezer cold.
- A "cycle defrost" fridge model (with a small 'chill plate' at the rear of the fridge section, probably has 2 separate doors) senses the temperature of that chill plate to cycle the compressor on and off. Only if that chill plate warms up will the compressor run to keep the freezer cold.
- On most "frost free" fridge models (the most common style sold these days - at least in North America) the thermostat senses the *fridge* section's temperature and if it never warms up enough, the compressor won't run to keep the freezer cold.
So if you have an old manual defrost refrigerator, it may work Ok to a certain point if the temperature doesn't get really cold.
JFYI
Dan O.
- Appliance411.com
this is Turtle.
Well let me give you the simple cure to be done manually with no electricical work.
Get you 4 jugs of water in plastic jugs and during freezing weather put 2 jugs of water stored in side you house in the cooler part of the refrigerator. then every 24 hours take those 2 jugs of cold water out and take two jugs from inside your house and put them in the refrigerator side of the box. Change out the jugs every 24 hour during weather outsideof less than 40ºF. Temperature above this don't worry about it.
Now electrically you can jump out the lite door switch with a walk-in cooler thermostat and have the light come on at temperature outside of less than
40ºF and it will give the refrigerator enough run time to keep the freezer at zero or so. Now you will have to change the lite bulb to a 15 watt to not over power the box with too much heat. A 60 watt light bulb turned on in a refrigerator will out run the refrigerators ability to cool. A 60 watt light bulb is a 60 watt heat in a sence. There is 3 different way to wire it up but if you want i will send you the wiring diagrams of each.TURTLE
This is Turtle.
When it is say 20ºf or less or more than 40ºf outside. The freezer will work fine. Now where you can run into trouble is when the temperature is about
36ºF to 38ºF which is the temperature setting for the freezer. You can at these temperature open the refrigerator door and the refrigerator will cut off and let the freezer area defrost totally. If it stays at about 36ºF outside for say 3 days. The stuff in your freezer will begin to defrost or get to a none freezing level. If the refrigerator areais 36ºf the freezer will go where it wants to and even thaw out. There is some bateria that can grow at 20ºf to 30ºF even in a freezer. This is why the state health department requires the walk-in freezer to be from +5ºF to -5ºF to prevent this bacteria from growing in the food. If you don't care we don't care.TURTLE
What you say or at least your post seems to fit my case exactly. We have an upright freeze in our unheated garage. It worked flawlessly for 7 or so years. Recently this past winter I am not sure now but just what you say may have happened. It is an old unit but a good un. I opened the door one day and the thing was filled with frost. It was as if someone had filled it with icy snow. We had to throw out everything. I did save one Sara Lee pound cake that was sealed. Now I am wondering if the freezer is ok, if I put it inside and let it run for about 2 weeks to see if it is working properly. I would put a bottle of water on its side. Freeze it and then turn it vertically. monitor it for a while and as long as the ice was still vertical then ok I guess. Also thermometer. The reason for doing all this is that after the fact of loosing all that good spaghetti sauce and other great stuff, I plugged the freezer in and it worked to freeze as usual. ????????????/ Worth a try? joevan
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