Just had Indesit/Hotpoint engineer to mend a 6-month-old fridge freezer that had stopped working.
He checked that it did work if power connected directly to compressor, and then advised me that it wasn't designed to work if ambient temp
Quite normal and widely known since they started compromising on the design of fridge freezers and fitting single compressors.
Yes a lot of modern fridges and freezers are designed to be used in a room at around 15-25 deg C, and are not suitable for use in an unheated shed/garage. I think it's a different refrigerant that is not a CFC - maybe ammonia. My wife lost a lot of meat when she discovered that the contents of her freezer were thawing out from the freezer in the shed, even though the ambient temp at the time was about 5 deg C. She'd only known me a few weeks and she made a frantic phone call to my mum (her own mum and her sisters and friends were all out when she tried them) to say "help - what do I do?". Mum's advice: throw away the meat, just in case; thaw out all the fruit, boil it for a while to sterilise any bugs and then re-freeze it. This was for fruit that was semi-frozen. If it had been thoroughly thawed it could have been like that for ages, so wouldn't have been worth the risk.
When she bought another freezer, we chose one by Beko which was certified for ambient temps down to about -15. It lives in the house, along with others that are not suitable for low temps, but can be moved into the shed if we need the space in the pantry for something else.
Fridges and freezers have a climate class which specifies the acceptable temperature range. But most only go down to 10 degrees C ambient.
I used to have an old chest freezer in an outbuilding in the 1980s, and that worked fine even in winter, but perhaps things have changed since then.
Having looked around recently, most new ones nowadays only go down to 16C.
It's slight less of an issue for a single fridge or freezer, than it is for a combined fridge/freezer.
I bought one a year ago. In the instructions, it shows you can get different varients of it for different temperature ranges, but in practice, only one of the ranges was imported to the UK.
Maybe widely know in the trade, but I doubt whether many lay people would be aware of it. Given that for years people have kept chest freezers in an outhouse/garage, you tend to think that all freezers are capable of withstanding below freezing temperatures. You'd think that higher than normal temps (eg during a heatwave) might stress the parts more heavily in that the compressor would have to work for longer with fewer breaks once the freezer is cold enough.
I remember for years my parents kept their freezer in an unheated conservatory (ie it only got heat from the adjacent kitchen). Twice a year we'd have the moving-of-the-freezer ceremony, to move it to the garage in summer when the conservatory got very hot and then back to the conservatory in winter - but the winter move was more because that's when it was more of a chore to go out into the cold and rain to walk right round to the garage, rather than because we thought the freezer wouldn't work "outside" in winter. This was in the 1970s and 80s, so the freezer may well have been winter-proof anyway.
When my wife mentioned the problem to her dad who is an electrician and therefore used to electrical appliances, even he didn't know about it. Maybe he'd never checked the specs of new freezers that he'd installed for customers when he'd had to install power to a shed etc.
Now you mention it, I think it's mostly a problem with combined fridge/freezers rather than freezers with no fridge. Quite why a single compressor would be a problem, I don't know, unless the changeover valve to direct coolant to fridge/freezer/fridge-and-freezer and/or the thermostats can't cope with cold temps.
It does seem perverse, until you investigate the root cause, that a device designed to keep the interior down to -18 deg C can't cope when the outside temp is almost as cold as that sort of temp :-)
I did hear someone suggest that if you have such a device, you should take the produce out and put the baskets in the outhouse at ambient temp, and turn the freezer off, when the outside temp gets very cold :-) Sadly there's a band of temp between freezer temp (-18) and the coldest that the device can withstand (maybe -5 deg C), so food may well not be frozen as deeply as if needs to last for several months.
I've just remembered that we had problems at our holiday cottage which is heated in winter only to frost-free temperatures, and the fridge/freezer is in a lean-to building which also houses the boiler, but with no radiator so is only heated by "escaped" heat from the boiler and through the door from the heated kitchen into the lean-to. We'd spent Christmas there, so the house had been heated, and we left some extra things in the freezer, meaning to go back and take them home when we went back later in January, because we couldn't fit everything in the cool-box in the car. When we went back a few weeks after Christmas, when temps had probably been around -5 to 0 deg C, we found that the contents of the freezer were a bit soft, so we had to ditch the meat/fish (including a whole salmon that we'd bought at very cheap pre-Christmas prices) just in case, but other things were OK once we managed to persuade the freezer to start cooling properly - by leaving open the inside door between the kitchen and freezer room :-)
It's now part of our "winterising the cottage" checklist: leave the inside door open if leaving the fridge/freezer on, so the room stays at frost-free temp. Putting the fridge/freezer in the kitchen is not an option because the kitchen is titchy and has no room for a full-height appliance. Hence it is kept in the new brick porch and utility room that is outside what was originally the outside door of the cottage leading into the kitchen.
I'd say that if a freezer can't be used outside or in an unheated house, it needs a VERY prominent warning both on the appliance and in the sales literature, and all salesmen need to be trained to check suitability with the customer. Such appliances are *almost* into chocolate teapot territory of unsuitability for purpose :-)
16 C really is well into chocolate teapot territory, since you may well let the temperature get lower than that if you go away on holiday in the winter. It seems daft to have to heat an uninhabited house to 16 deg, when anything above about 5 deg is fine to prevent pipes freezing, simply for the sake of keeping the freezer happy.
As an aside, I was surprised when we went away on holiday for three weeks over Christmas, and the outside temp got down to around freezing some of the time, that the inside temp never got down as low as the 14 deg that we'd set the thermostat at, so the heating never came on. That was just due to heat of the sun and heat from houses either side in the terrace. We have a weather station which uploads inside and outside temps to the web, so it was weird to be able to keep an eye on things back home when we were on a cruise liner in temps that never went below about 30 deg C outside.
Mind does not cope with low temperatures (indoors) in the winter. There is a special switch though that leaves the internal light on all the time, which warms up the fridge and forces the compressor into action. This seemed very odd at first, but it works okay.
What? Blimey bet they don't sell many in hotter climes than ours, is this perhaps the Antarctic Survey model? Brian
Confuses the hell out of Schrödinger's cat.
The Indesit/Hotpoint engineer did not have a stat on his van??!!
Interesting! Perhaps as a last resort I could somehow prevent the fridge light going out when door closed.
Otherwise perhaps install a low-wattage background heater? (Where would the best place be?) And/or wrap the unit (apart from rear) in a duvet to keep it warm?
I find the whole situation ludicrous. What is the point of the high-set temperature? Economy? Perhaps OK for just a fridge, but surely not for a freezer temp of
-18oC...
If the Indesit engineer can't replace the thermostat with a more useful one it may be time to ask ao.com (who delivered the unit into the garage) to replace it with one that will work there.
That makes no sense whatsoever. They must still have dual thermostats to keep the two sections at the right temperature. It's **easier** for the compressor to cool the fridge or freezer if the ambient is closer to its target! There is no way that a cooler outside would stop it working. The stat inside wouldn't even know it was cooler outside, and the compressor would find life easier.
[googles]
It seems to be the refrigerant used that's a problem. Can't expand and contract properly with low ambient temperature? I'd say "unfit for purpose" - people often put a freezer in a garage. I'd take it straight back to the shop and kick up a fuss.
This has been a problem for many years. BTW Mr Hucker, it's a fridge freezer - not a freezer. There is a difference. When I left the trade 18 years ago I remember there was a thing called a duel differential thermostat. This somehow sensed the temperature in the freezer. The old days of twin compressors and a stat in the freezer compartment I think are long gone. The big old Electrolux used to have them and still do, if yer wanna pay ?2k.
From what I googled it can happen to a freezer aswell.
I find it absurd that they rely on only one thermostat and hope the free= zer part will be approximately right.
-- =
Archimedes principle: When a body is fully immersed in water, the telep= hone rings.
*See below.
If you want cheap refrigeration, that is just what you get.
*We have a cheap ten year old freezer in the garage. It's only used at Christmas, this as the other fridge freezer can't accommodate the extra food. It achieves and holds -22C with no problem. Temp in the garage in a bad winter was -18C. A fridge/freezer could have been different.
The trouble is, most people won't know to check the specs of the machine= before they buy it. I wonder how many have to get returned as unfit fo= r purpose?
-- =
Crazy Laws in towns of the state of Illinois: The English language is not to be spoken. You must contact the police before entering the city in an automobile. You may be convicted of a Class 4 felony offense, punishable by up to th= ree years in state prison, for the crime of "eavesdropping" on your own = conversation. -720 ILCS 5/14-2. Law forbids eating in a place that is on fire. It is forbidden to fish while sitting on a giraffe's neck. It is legal to protest naked in front of city hall as long as you are un= der seventeen years of age and have legal permits. One may not pee in his neighbor's mouth. Humming on public streets is prohibited on Sundays. Wheelbarrows with For-Sale signs may not be chained to trees. A man with a moustache may not kiss a woman. It is illegal to go trick-or-treating on Halloween. It is unlawful to change clothes in an automobile with the curtains draw= n, except in case of fire. It is illegal to expectorate from any second-story window. It is against the law to use a slingshot unless your are a law enforceme= nt officer. A rooster must step back three hundred feet from any residence if he wis= hes to crow. Hens that wish to cackle must step two hundred feet back fr= om any residence. Bees are not allowed to fly over the village or through any of Kriland's= streets. Ice skating at the Riverside pond during the months of June and August i= s prohibited. There is a ban on unnecessary repetitive driving on 23rd Avenue. It is against the law to make faces at dogs.
My Liebherr fridge/freezer has a conventional electro-mechanical thermostat and it has a 'cool weather' button which simply keeps the internal light on at reduced brightness. The purpose of this is to trick the thermostat into thinking the fridge is warmer than it is. This keeps the freezer from getting too warm.
I put my freezer in the cellar - temp range 6C to 14C. The only easily available brand that would work in those temperatures was a Beko.
Something to do with the refrigerant used I think - can';t remember the details now.
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