Just be sure to clear the lint off your coils every five years or so. Otherwise you’re making the poor guy suck air through a shag carpet.
suck air through a shag carpet.
Welp, that’s a new euphemism.
Old fridges never die. Modern fridges are more efficient but more break-y, can’t have both.
Actually modern fridges are usually less efficient. But that’s because they use refrigerants that are literally thousands of times less harmful to the environment.
Old appliances frequently used R-12 which is an damn nice refrigerant except it depleted ozone and has a GWP (global warming potential) of 10,900. That means 1lb of R12 released into the air causes the same amount of global warming as releasing 10,900 lbs of CO2.
Newer appliances use refrigerants like R134a which still works pretty well, doesn’t deplete ozone, and only has a GWP of 1,430.
The newest appliances are more frequently using R-600a which is hard on compressors because it has a high head pressure and it doesn’t cool quite as well. But it also doesn’t deplete ozone and it has a GWP of just 3. The bigest downside of that one is that it’s very flamable (it’s isobutane) so the legal limit on how much residential appliances can us is very low.
Old appliances broke, but they were made to be easy to fix so our grandparents could just swap out the broken parts. I helped my dad replace the compressor on an older fridge as a kid and the heating elements on my grandma’s toaster. I remember my dad taking me to some locally owned mom and pop hardware store where we could buy replacement parts for old appliances off the shelf. My parents still have the toaster, but that store closed down and new stuff isn’t made to be fixable anymore (most likely due to planned obsolescence thanks to late-stage-capitalism).
On a tangent, when you think about it, throwing an entire toaster away because one heating coil burned out or throwing awag an entire fridge just because the compressor gave out is not rational. But if you tell people we should have the freedom to buy repairable appliances then they look at you like you are crazy. To me, it is the other way around. Sustainability isn’t political or a luxury, it is an inevitabe, unstoppable force of equilibrium.
When it comes to refrigeration in particular newer appliances tend to break more frequently because they are using more environmentally friendly refrigerants. Old CFCs cooled really well with minimal work from the compressor. Newer fridges and freezers are more frequently using isobutane (R600a) because it doesn’t deplete ozone and it’s GWP (global warming potential) is 3 where the GWP of even non ozone depleting HFCs can frequently be in the thousands. The problem is isobutane requires higher head pressures to work properly and doesn’t cool as well as older refrigerants so the compressors have to work much harder to get the same result.
Also when it comes to household fridges and freezers, they really aren’t worth it to fix anymore. You need an EPA 608 cert to even touch refrigerants (in the US anyways). Plus you need a two stage vacuum pump and a recovery machine (amongst other things) both of which can easily cost as much as a new fridge. Then you need to actually have the skillset to remove the broken component and braze a new one in because everything uses brazed connections now to minimize leaks. Then you need to have the know how to properly recharge the system with refrigerant which when you’re working with a critical charge of maybe 2oz of refrigerant is an absoulte pain. All in all, maybe if you are already an HVAC tech and had the tools and materials on hand you might barely break even fixing your own fridge or freezer.
When it comes to consumer refrigeration they can’t be user repairable due to having to work with refrigerants and economies of scale mean they just generally aren’t worth a trained techs time to fix.
! subscribe to fridge facts
but in all seriousness, very informative… thx
There’s a YouTuber (Technology Connections) who’s really into heat pumps, which is the tech responsible for refrigerators and air conditioners.
Survivorship bias
I’ve read somewhere it is because compressor nozzle has to be made thinner/fragiler for the better efficiency. Other comments say it’s because old refrigerants were better but more “dangerous”. Maybe both.
Old stuff that broke got thrown out and forgotten
Fridges 100% die, they’re made to now. If your fridge is really that old and you can manage it, NEVER get rid of it, tell your parents to leave it to you in their will lmao.
You will lose money this way, old refrigerators were way way more power hungry and you can easily expect to spend more than a new fridge within 5 years.
You can still get new fridges that will last for decades. It just won’t be one with LCD screens, ice machines, in door dispensers, complex internal designs, etc. Every one of those things simply creates a cascade of new points of failure, and component materials of varying ability to deal with the stress of being a fridge. You can buy new, efficient, fridges that are nothing but a box that cools, and a box that freezes, with doors. They will last for decades if you don’t do anything crazy, or your house isn’t destroyed by a natural disaster.
Gimme a brand and a model name, internet dude
I have heard good things about the SMEG fridges, FWIW.
Thank you, internet dude
Depends on how old it is. Mine’s a 1995 model. I’ve measured its energy usage and a new fridge would pay for itself at around 9-10 years if I bought a basic model*. That’s around the lifespan I’d expect from a new fridge. So I’ll just keep using the old one until it dies.
(*) Current fridge is a basic, low end model, so assuming I replace with a similar basic, lower end model. Payback would be much longer if I upgraded.
Have you priced in cost of keeping your old one?
And what, have twice the fridge space for slightly less than twice the energy cost?
Back in my day 1995 wasn’t old.
You still can buy modern compressor
deleted by creator
Fridges actually do rest. They cycle on and off as needed to maintain their desired temperature and on average only spend about 30% to 40% of their time “on”.
I only found this out the other night because my fridge went dead silent for a long time. I thought it was borked, so I was peering deep into the freezer when I saw The Gates of Hell through the grate.
(Okay, so full disclosure, I had smoked some pot, but it totally looked like when Dana opened the fridge to Zuul before she was The Gatekeeper.) 😱😱😱
Anyways, turns out it was in defrost mode (which happens twice a day), and that involves some elements going orange or something. I know that’s vague-- I looked it up, but as I mentioned, I was high, so I only kinda remember, lol.
Edit:
The refrigerator activates a heating element located near the evaporator coil. This element warms the coils, causing any ice buildup to melt.
You’ve hear of fever dreams but this here buddy had a freezer dream.
That is assuming they are in good working order with no broken seals anywhere. They will run continuously if they never manage to get near the target temp. Though in that case, your food is probably also not getting refrigerated and you hopefully notice.
Tbf computers also have a sleep mode.
Mine must be narcoleptic. I put it in sleep mode. Come back the next day and it’s shut itself down. (inb4 - I know)
Glances over at my 1954 GE Combination that has NEVER been serviced outside of cleaning and replacing the light bulbs.
Funny thing, when I moved in, my last apartment had a refrigerator that was made in Yugoslavia. It died.
Resurrect it
We couldn’t get new parts from Yugoslavia, for some reason.
Resurrect Yugoslavia so you can get your fridge parts
Tis a noble endeavor indeed.
heh. my 15 year old frigid started making random groans the last couple weeks. far enough apart that i couldnt figure out where it came from. got lucky one day it moaned while i was close enough to yank open the freezer and see where the lever for the icemaker had accidentally got flipped to the on position. since i hadnt hooked up the water line to it, the groan was the pump sucking vacuum
Why not take the ice maker out so you have more freezer room, even filling that space with a bucket with ice will help the freezer stay colder easier if you don’t use the space. Could save energy long term and make it last longer
that’ll probably be my next move with it. got a portable icemaker last xmas so havent bothered with the internal one at all. the portable makes resturaunt style crushed ice anyway which lasts longer than cubes or nuggets imho.
My wife and I are on our third fridge in 35 years. But the furnace in her mom’s house when we sold it 5 years ago had been running since the late 1970s.
Except furnaces functionally shut off when not actively making heat. A fridge potentially is only off for power outages or a cleaning
Don’t fridges do the same thing? Once it gets the interior to the set temperature, the compressor turns off until the sensors say it needs more cold.
You are right, I totally forgot about that haha
30 years is a long life for a furnace. This thing was 45-50 and still running fine. The last maintenance note on the sheet on the inside was in the 80s lol.
A thousand refrigerator psychers must be sacrificed so the frig emperor can live on in perpetual conflict with the gods of chaos: Frigidaire, whirlpool, Samsung and Slaanesh!
she probably just wants you to stop racking up the electric bill
Meanwhile the fridge using two cool lasers for cooling since the end of ww1
I am a simple man I see TTS reference I upvote.
RIP to the Minsk fridge my granny used until 2022. Built end of 70s, that thing was continuously in use for 50 years.
We have a chest freeze from 1943 still running in my parents basement…
Gotta catch em all!
But how did THEY get chest freezer in 1943?
Jokingly.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh…
Except LG and Samsung fridges or the ones that use the linear compressors.
