How cold should a refrigerator/freezer be?

[Vlad]

AC, I really love the word you used "hypnotized". Public is really hypnotized especially by TV. Hey people make the best energy and life saving move- recycle this stupid TV.....

You will guarantee get:

1. save energy (plasmas are energy hogs)
2. free a lot of time for better projects
3 free you head from junk
4 stop being hypnotized

I don't watch TV for many years and don't miss it at all....

When it comes to fridges I have 2 separate units one is freezer and one is cooler. Cooler still have defrost feature (one day I will get there GRR )

Here is link:

FRIGIDAIRE INTRODUCES ALL-REFRIGERATOR AND ALL-FREEZER PAIR TO ITS PROFESSIONAL COLLECTION OF KITCHEN APPLIANCES - Frigidaire

They look like side by side fridge but actually 2 separate units. My wife loves this set up. The only problem is it is 64" wide.... you need to have a space. And this 2 units cost about 900$ each. So if you have space you get huge 64 fridge/freezer for 1800... Not bad.

If you look at high end subzero they all have 2 separate systems with 2 compressors. But price tag......

The main problem is people laziness. People want free time for TV instead of defrosting fridge.

In commercial refrigeration when you have well designed cooler you only need sometimes off cycle defrost which is compressor off but fan is running. Because temperature is above freezing your coil ice starts melting.

When it comes to freezer you have to have real defrost cycle. The best and the most efficient and quickest one is...... you bet hot gas bypass (you use compressor to melt ice) . Your discharge line have extra branch with solenoid valve and after solenoid this bypass bypasses metering device and enter directly to evaporator coil. When defrost starts fan stops, solenoid opens, hot gas goes to coil, ice melts, defrost terminating device stops cycle(usually timer or bimetallic disk).

All this makes freezer more expensive but people want extra cash to buy what?.... Yes TV to waste more time and money....

For this reason domestic fridges have stupid horrible defrost system which is resistive heating elements built in evaporator coil.... Once I even invented the special word for this things:

cheap + stupidity = cheapidity.... Everybody loved it

The best freezer is chest freezer because they don't have and don't need defrost. Also they lose the least amount of cold air when you open it.

You can make fridge from chest freezer. This is going to be super easy. You just need cooler thermostat instead of freezer one.

The problem is it is not easy to use it and you will have to wipe condensation from bottom or set up drain.

My wife would kill me if I ever offered to replace her fridge with this type of fridge.

[ecomodded]

Originally Posted by MN Renovator

The defrost timer that mine came with defrosts every 10 hours, no matter how much the compressor runs. I used to think it was based off of runtime but found out it isn't. A quick search on ebay for "defrost timer" yields results that are almost all 8 and 10 hour timers. I've taken the defrost timer and timed how long the defrost cycle lasts, 23 minutes, then I pulled the pin that controls the timer and I manually cycle the defrost once a week. Nice thing now is that when I defrost, it's actually defrosting something off the coils instead of just warming them up and then running the compressor for 30 minutes to cool things off again and in the process wasting loads of energy. ...that was the thread I was going to make but then later forgot about. I'll still post it because I've got pictures, but it will be once I've got a month of usage out of it since I now have my Kill-a-watt back to do an 'after'.

I found out threw a spec sheet under the kick panel that my model has a electronic timer (called a ADC) it counts run time and how many times the door gets opened and adjusts the defrost cycles accordingly, every 4 to 72 hrs with a defrost time of up to 24 min.
It reads the door openings threw the light bulb circuit, i am thinking of taping over the light switch so the fridge does not factor the door into its defrost cycle. Only thing holding me back is my fondness of a lighted fridge which i want to keep.

[MN Renovator]

If your refrigerator uses door openings and run time for defrost cycle determination, you've got an efficient fridge. My refrigerator was replaced right before I bought the house as a way to make the house look less dated. Mine specifically is a timer that runs constantly and is not wired into compressor run cycles at all, which does suck but is simple enough to work around by disconnecting the power to the motor that spins the timer and now I can manually defrost whenever I feel like turning the timer dial. Defrost time is 23 mins every 10 hours. I found one of the original MLS listings, that oddly enough fell under the fridge and it showed a picture of the kitchen with a mid-80s design refrigerator.

I figure this refrigerator is efficient enough to not warrant the cost of replacing it with an energy star model as the current government energy standards aren't that bad for energy usage. With the defrost timer not operating as it normally was designed to, I'm not seeing very much frost at all on the coil prior to when I manually trigger the defrost every 7 days or so. As winter comes and my house has a lower dew point and has less refrigerator run time due to my house being cooler, I'll probably extend the defrost interval to every 10 days or possibly twice a month. I don't open the fridge unless I know what I want out of it first, which takes a bit of self-control and memorization of what is in the fridge rather than opening it every time I'm hungry to peruse what's inside. I probably open the fridge three or four times a day, whenever grabbing the milk or pulling all of the ingredients I need at one time to cook and then returning them quickly(minimal door open time) once I am done with them. So far based on my testing it seems that with cleaning the coils on the bottom of the fridge, defrosting when I think it needs it, and opening the refrigerator only when needed, I was down to 40kwh/month before the house became consistently below 70 degrees now that the weather is cooler. I can't wait to see what I get during the winter when the house is even cooler. I am comfortable with a much cooler house than most in the winter and don't have a wife/children to complain about temperature. It seems that now the weather is cooler I'm probably down to 1kwh/day by now. This is without adding any additional insulation. I'm montoring results with my Kill-a-watt. Once my next mid-month bill comes by, I'll reset it to monitor the usage specifically for mid-October to mid-November and report back the results. As of last Wednesday I was at 35kwh for the trailing month period. I still haven't created my own thread for this but I think I'll post the results so far and what I did, with pictures at about the mid-October time when I reset the Kill-a-watt meter and then report the results.

For reference, refrigerator temperature cycles between about 34-37 degrees, freezer has usually been between about 4-8 degrees. In the winter I close the refrigerator shutter as much as it does to get the freezer as cold as it can be and last winter needed to cool the refrigerator to nearly icing the contents to keep the freezer below 10 degrees where I consider it to be safe for long term freezer storage. I might need to disassemble the refrigerator a bit to further shutter the refrigerator to allow the freezer to get where it needs to be without overcooling the refrigerator.