Refrigerators that stop working when it's cold?

Probably not the refrigerant, but it might possibly be the compressor oil.

PlainBill

Could it maybe be that the fridge in question was working, just not frequently enough to keep the freezer compartment cold enough? Many fridges, probably all the cheaper/simpler models, only have one thermostat and one cooling system shared by both the freezer and the fridge compartments. The fridge I had to monkey with the most, a couple of units ago, had as far as I could tell the thermostat in the fridge section and the evaporator basically in the freezer compartment. The so-called freezer control seemed to merely operate a damper that controlled how quickly the freezer air could move into the fridge compartment.

If your fridge was set up something like this, there might not be sufficient heat gain in the fridge section to cause the compressor to run very much in order to maintain the proper fridge temperature.

One other unrelated thing to check is that the defrost mechanism is working properly. The reason I got familiar with the fridge described above was because the defroster died (probably the timer), and the evaporator would periodically get choked up with ice, blocking the airflow through it and making the fridge--especially noticeable in the freezer--ineffective. The temporary solution was to disassemble the freezer compartment floor to get access to the evaporator and thaw it out with heat lamps, fans, etc. The permanent solution was to complain to my landlords, who replaced the fridge (which was getting rather old) with a new one that worked properly.

--
Andrew Erickson

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot
lose."  -- Jim Elliot

This is normal operation for many refrigerators. The freezer temperature doesn't operate a separate thermostat, so the 35 degree setting of the refrigerator thermostat determines the temperature of the refrigerator compartment accurately, and the freezer compartment loosely.

Only if the refrigerator has TWO thermostats and a complex controller with valves to separate the cooler coils, will the freezer work under cold-ambient conditions.

Please clarify: The compressor was running continuously but the food compartments weren't getting cold and the condensor coils weren't getting hot.

Or.

The compressor wasn't running.

It sounds like the former but not entirely clear (or I missed it).

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e

I vote with Mr Erickson

I never turn on the heat in my condo -- there are better things to do with my money -- and the temperature is currently hovering a bit above 50 degrees.

The user manual for my GE says the refrigerator's behavior might be erratic in cold rooms, and it might not maintain the desired temperature.

Bingo, someone knows the right answer. This is a common problem where the freezer doesn't get enough cooling because that would over cool the rest of the box!

Hi!

The compressor was not running.

At first I thought this problem might have something to do with the way the refrigerant would behave--if it got cold enough outside, maybe the refrigerant couldn't do what it needed to.

However, it seems that Andrew Erickson has come up with a very good suggestion. In this particular refrigerator, there is only one thermostat and it is in the refrigeration area. I hadn't thought about the possibility of the refrigeration section being kept cold enough (by virtue of the low room temperature) that the unit would not have to run and therefore could not keep the freezer compartment cold enough.

William

Hi!

I think that's a very good suggestion, and it certainly could make sense. This refrigerator is a "grown up" version of something like a dorm fridge, and the only thermostat it has is in the refrigerator portion. Cooling is accomplished by a "pad" mounted in the bottom of the freezer with refrigerant running through it. A similar method is employed in the refrigeration compartment, where the pad is located in the rear of the unit.

I'm still wondering about why it is that old refrigerators will work where new ones do not. I've seen a lot of old fridges in unheated garages that work perfectly no matter the temperature--units made in the late 40s all the way to the early 80s. There's not a lot of obvious difference in the later ones compared to brand new units--both usually have a fan and the majority of cooling functionality centered in the freezer where a damper directs some air off to the fridge. The actual working thermostat is in the refrigerator portion.

There isn't any defroster in this particular unit. It has to be done manually for the freezer. In the refrigeration section, the coil can drain into a pan on top of the compressor.

I am thinking about obtaining a very low current "thermostat warmer" device and mounting it in the fridge near the thermostat. When it's very cold, I could energize it every so often on a timer to force the refrigeration system to run.

William

So the fridge is not going to run much, right?

All fridges have always stopped working when they reach the desired temperature.

Did any refrigerator/freezer ever have two thermostats? The normal design for such a device would cool off one area A no more quickly than B, so the thermostat would be in A. I think A is always the freezer, no matter how the controls are labeled.

Fridge/Freezers now and for the last 30 or more years have one thermostat and one compressor. They have two controls, one that is the thermostat, and one is just a physical control to determine how cold the freezer is compared to the freezer. YOu probably need to adjust this second control to make your freezer colder.

I think if you are not there much and you almost never open the doors, defrosting is not an issue. It probably defrosts much more than it needs to.