How do fridge freezers ever work?

Don't believe any room ever gets to that in that soggy little frigid island.

None of mine have ever done that before I changed to a separate fridge and freezer pigeon pair.

That's a useless way to see what the freezer temperature does as the room temp varys.

The refrigerant and pressure is chosen so the freezer compartment is maintained at the correct temperature, as long as the compressor runs for so long in a day.

The real issue is the room temperature must stay above a certain temperature so the compressor runs for this minimum duration.

Typically if the room gets below 10C, the freezer compartment temperature starts rising. Some fridges have the means of compensating by turning on the light permanently in the fridge part at low ambient temperatures to ensure the compressor runs for this minimum duration.

I do agree that the best solution is separates, or at least one with two compressors.

Why doesn't the compressor run for long enough when the freezer temp gets above -20C even with the room temp at below 10C ?

So why doesn't the thermostat turn the compressor on then ?

That's not a plausible explanation.

Yeah, and you get a lot more fridge and freezer space too.

Still don't see how your description of it works explains why that fixes the problem. And we know that standalone freezers that arent designed properly don't work out in the garage in the coldest weather.

My kitchen never gets below 17C so not a problem.

Many modern fridges now use a twin coil system for better control of each compartment. I have a Samsung that can have three zones individually controlled. A drawer above the freezer can be set for normal refrigerator setting or for freezer.

Because with a single compressor system the thermostat is in the fridge compartment.

It may do, but not run for sufficient time in a day.

Not always, because you now need space for 2 compressors.

My experience is that a dedicated standalone freezer does work in cold places. We must beg to differ.

You said the exact opposite in your first para.

Can't see why it wouldn't given that it your first para has the thermostat operating on the freezer temp.

Doesn't explain why Beko claims that theirs does when others don't and that claim is supported by Which? etc testing.

Nope, its trivial to test that claim.

If you did a typo in your original first para, a much better explanation is that with the thermostat in the fridge part of the freezer is above the ambient, the compressor never turns on because the fridge temp never gets above the set point with the ambient below the set point, so the freezer section then warms up to the ambient temp and that sees the frozen food warm up too much.

But that doesn't explain why stand alone freezers stop working when the ambient temp is too low. The obvious explanation for that is that the refrigerant used gets too gluggy to work properly when the ambient temp is too low.

Our chest freezer has worked fine through about five winters, sitting in the garage, with ambient temperatures sometimes getting into the single digits (Farenheit)

It stayed at the minus five to zero range that we set it for, measured with a remote (radio) thermometer.

So yeah, ours was fine.

Possibly relevant note: ours doesn't have an auto defrost cycle, so yeah, frost builds up a bit needing a yearly cleanout.

I want a for Christmas...... as the song goes.

I thought all Canadians kept their food in a hole in the permafrost?

Brian

Undersized hippopotamus formulated on Sunday :

Very unlikely here, we are too well sealed up and insulated. According to my log for yesterday and last night. Maximum temperature in the kitchen 20.2C, dropping to 17.7C at 7am. Outside fell to -1.9C at 7am. The heating system was shut down at 22:30, we retired early due to the

Hmm, well I only intended to include his screen name animal but Windoze decided differently, but there you are. Brian

never knew it was a problem .......

It is a problem with modern refridgerators that many of them are predicated on being installed inside a modern centrally heated home.

If you put one in the garage and the ambient temperature drops below some critical value usually

The working fluid no longer has sufficient vapour pressure to support the necessary flow of heat to keep the freezer properly frozen. It can be disastrous in an unheated garage. You can bodge a crude fix by boxing in the compressor and causing it to warm the working fluid in winter.

What kills it is that the working fluid does have enough vapour pressure remaining in the system unless you keep its reservoir warmer somehow.

It isn't a case of not designed properly it is a case that they are designed to work over a particular modern domestic kitchen temperature range that excludes putting them in garages. You have to read the ratings plate very carefully to find which ones are OK in a garage.

Older ones with CFCs worked over a much wider range of temperatures.

I think the problem is that many people think that the colder the ambient temperature, the less hard the compressor will have to work - which can only be a good thing. Also, most older people will be used to a chest freezer in the garage, and will expect a modern freezer to be as good as this.

It is difficult to find a freezer or even a fridge which is rated for ambient temperatures below about 15 deg C. Now in a house that is lived in, that is fine, but should you have to heat your house to 15 deg C when you go away on holiday (in the winter) simply so the device that keeps everything cold will work properly? Beko seem to be one of the few that can be used in an unheated garage/shed.

It is reasonable to assume that the freezer you use every day will be in the kitchen or other heated part of the house. But for longer-term storage, eg of frozen veg/fruit from the garden, or large joints of meat, people don't have room in the house for "overflow" freezers. We learned the hard way that freezers don't like to be outside in a shed: my wife discovered that all that summer's fruit and veg in the outdoor freezer was going soft, so she spent the next few hours cooking everything thoroughly (it was slightly soft, rather than totally thawed) so it could be re-frozen.

When we replaced that freezer (the original one was not fit for the purpose it was being used for - our fault!) we knew to study the specs. Until then, neither of us had ever heard of the concept of a fridge or freezer needing to be kept at room temperature. And that is a fault with salesmen, who assume that everyone is going to keep the freezer in a kitchen; a good salesman should always check, and advise the customer to buy a different model if necessary. 9 times out of 10 it will be OK, but some customers will intend to keep the freezer in the garage - just like their parents and grandparents did.

Part of the problem with combined fridge/freezers is that they only have one compressor, with the flow of refrigerant divided in a ratio that gives about

I said "thermostat is in the fridge compartment".

If you can provide a link to their claims that's not behind a paywall it would be so helpful.

I said "thermostat is in the fridge compartment".

I'm not aware of them doing so, apart from protecting the compressor oil from waxing.

The heating here stays on all year with no adjustments to the settings of the programable stats. The buiding has a thermal mass and if you let it cool down it takes days to get comfortable again. Learnt that hard way....

A look for the key words "climate class".

Maybe but provided it's used in an enviroment with temps within it's climate class range works fine.

That is ideal, we had one but the fridge part became unreliable and it's compressor would remain on giving us a dual freezer...

We know have a frost free fridge/freezer. It's not thrown a wobbly, yet.

This is possibly an alternative decent single compressor method of doing it, if the control system is right. The cooling system is a closed loop based on maintaining the freezer temerature, ie stat in the freezer. The fridge is cooled by circulating the cold air from the freezer. This circulation is controlled by a stat in the fridge. This circulation obviously warms the freezer so its stats starts the freezer cooling as required to keep the freezer cold. There is, of course, another the air circulation within the freezer for the "frost free" feature.

Still doesn't side step the external temperature range of the climate class though.

So the one compressor can be diverted with valves like central heating? I though that was impossible due to pressurisation and they'd need two compressors.

Christ that's some insulation.