Minimum ambient temperature for Fridge??

[Steve W]

Just bought a basic larder fridge from Comet to go in the garage - go to keep the festive drink somewhere! Of course, it comes with the usual helpful reminders, such as:

"This appliance is for refrigerating food"

Much to my surprise, it also states in the instructions that it should not be operated "in a room where the temperature is likely to fall below 16degC, as it is designed to operate in ambient temperatures between +16 and +32 degC. At lower temperatures the refrigerator may not operate....."

Anyone know why this might be so? Is it normal for standard domestic fridges? Certainly, I expect that mine will be in ambient temperature ranging from around +2 to +25 degC. Even if I put it in my kitchen, I would expect that the temperature coudl fall below 16.

Will my fridge last? Am I screwing up my guarantee?

Hoping for advice.... Steve

[tim.....]

Because the compressor struggles to get the coolant cool enough in such an environment

Yep.

I think there's a bit of leeway here, but not down to 2 degrees

None of the above, It simply won't work (as a fridge).

tim

[Toby]

The compressor just compresses the gas back to a liquid, surely the fins on the back do the cooling, and if the external temp was lower, surely it just makes it's life easier, and makes the unit run less, as there is less heat getting into the fridge.

Really?

I thought the problem was with a shared compressor fridge freezer, where the fridge relied on the freezer cycling the compressor for it's cooling, but if the unit was outside, then this would not cycle as much, therefore the fridge would net get as cool as normal.

[John Stumbles]

Some clue-free PR droid has probably copied the warning for shared-compressor fridge-freezers to a type that's not affected by this problem.

[terry]

I agree. The problem as heard over here (North America) is exactly that.

In a cool/cold location (such as an unheated garage etc.) the fridge may not run sufficiently often or long enough to freeze the freezer section. Since many fridges, here anyway, depend on sharing the cold air flowing from the cold compressor coils, between the freezer and fridge sections it is sometimes a problem to get a correct balance between them.

There is a variable shutter inside the cool section of our fridge; the fridge itself is located on an outside wall adjacent to the door to our attached garage, for example, that has be set and occasionally adjusted (although it rarely gets hot here) as the seasons change.

Once or twice something stowed in the fridge has disturbed the shutter setting and the fridge section then gets too cold or not cold enough.

However we had two older fridges used only for the sake of their cooling sections, not freezer sections, that operated fine for several years in an attached but unheated storeroom. We kept thermometers inside them which we monitored. Here the recommended Health Dept. temps. seem to be. Freezer =3D 0 deg. C or slightly lower. Fridge section =3D 4 deg C (approx 40 deg F).

Good luck. BTW. Right now with certain parts of our mid continent at minus 20 C or colder the fridge wouldn't run at all!!!!!! Ice chest anyone? Or just bury the stuff in a snow bank. No bears in your area we hope?

[Rod]

I think you mean "Freezer = 0 deg. F or slightly lower."

[Tim Downie]

The OP doesn't have a fridge/freezer, just a fridge.

I suspect JS is right, the information is wrong.

Tim

[unopened]

There's a recent previous thread on this in uk.d-i-y entitled "Feezers in Garage" (no 'r' in Feezers on purpose) which goes into some detail on this.

If you search in Google Groups for it, it should come up fairly easily. I'm afraid I don't know how to link to it directly.

Cheers,

Sid

[Andy Wade]

Or try this thread from 1999:

general conclusion at the time, IIRC, was that in practice most appliances will operate OK well below the 'official' lower limit set by the climate class rating. If you push your luck too far though, there is a risk of damaging the compressor.

[unopened]

There are fairly good pictures of a thermostatic refrigerator valve and a capillary tube here:

[Ed Sirett]

I strongly suspect that these instructions are a generic set and a fridge/ freezer will NOT work in a cold location. A fridge-only will hardly come on if keep in cool location. It will probably work fine below 16C.

Evenso, the design of the cooling plant is finely balanced, if the ambient temperature fails below a certain amount there may not be enough refrigerant in the machine to work properly.