Re: Refrigerator monitor ideas?

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Bill Kearney" <wkearney-99@hot-mail-com> wrote in message
news:SeudnWXgAvd_J17YnZ2dnUVZ_qOpnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > We've got a 30 year old White-Westinghouse refrigerator/freezer in the
> > basement
>
> Dude, with the time you've wasted already you could've just bought a
> replacement fridge or at least had an AC professional come out and fix it.

Geez, dude.  I *did* have a professional come out to look at it when we
first moved in.  He absolutely assured me the compressor was shot and I
needed either a new compressor or a new refrigerator.  I was going to scrap
it at that point, but I took it apart, noticed the coil freezeup, cleaned
the stuck drain tube and let it sit.  When I started it up again a day later
it was fine.  So much for the advice of "professionals."

I'm also not quite sure how you assume I've *wasted* $600-$800 doing an
occasional cleanout but I can assure you it's not a valid estimate.  It's a
hour long project and I've had to do it perhaps four times in ten years.  If
I had checked the drain tube more frequently, I would never have had to do
it at all. Hence, I am looking for a way to build a *simple* sensor that
would alert me to a drain tube failure.  I wouldn't be surprised if other
pet owners had similar problems with refrigerators of ANY vintage.  It's
endemic to narrow tubing, gravity feed water systems and airborne dust and
hair.

I may sound harsh, but I think you've missed the entire gist of my message.
I *know* what causes the problem.  I also believe that a new $6-800 box
would be just as susceptible to the clogging problem as the old one and end
up as an *entire* waste of my money.  I would also be adding a perfectly
serviceable machine to the growing junkpile of the world, and that's an
insult to the environment.  Would the energy saving offset the cost to the
environment of making another refrigerator?  All of those "savings analyses"
seem to conveniently ignore that it takes an *awful* lot of industrial plant
electricity to make that second, high EER refrigerator you want me to buy.

I'm always astounded at how many purely technical questions get responses
that either end up as lifestyle critiques or miss the point of the original
post completely.  This is how *I* choose to spend my time.  It really
shouldn't become a subject in a purely technical request for input and
ideas.

Let's exit this excursion from the original specifications by restating my
requirements.  I am looking for a way to detect an "out of normal"
coil-freeze condition that indicates a problem is occurring.  The same coil
"freeze-up" problem, BTW, can be induced in even modern refrigerators by
simply leaving the freezer door open long enough.  While it may seem that
throwing money at this problem will fix it, I'm pretty sure it won't have
any effect other than to make me poorer and the world's junkpile a little
bigger.

My choices appear to be:

1) to eliminate the dog hair that eventually clogs the drain tube,

2) detect a dirt or ice dam forming in the condensate pathway or

3) take the increased airborne hair load into account and revise my
maintenance cycle.

> Seriously, I have to wonder how inefficient that thing is as well.  The
> money wasted just running it is probably more than it'd cost to get a new
> one.

You buy, you bring it and YOU install it and I'd be happy to keep my dog
food and frozen dinners in it.  (-: In the meantime, I hope other
respondents stick to the requirements document, i.e. my original post.  I
posted with the hope of entertaining possible *simple* technical solutions
to a simple, well-known problem before it occurs, not a analysis of my
choice to wring as much life out of something as I can before I deadline it.
I guess that's old school, but that's my choice.

My wattmeter tells me it draws 112 watts when running.  That's far less that
the total of all my automation gear.  I've always been suspicious of how
much money a new, more energy efficient *anything* will save me.  Why?
Because I've seen the "funny math" that CF bulb makers use to show how much
money CF's save.  I *know* those claims have proved wildly inaccurate in my
house.  More importantly I have absolutely *no* faith that any new
refrigerator I bought today would *last* 30 years.  My personal experience
with newer vintage major appliances is that they fail far more frequently
and catastrophically than older ones.  So I'm assuming in 5 to 10 years I'll
be either buying a replacement unit or spending hundreds for a new
compressor.  All that money and effort to cure a problem that likely effects
every refrigerator/freezer unit ever made.  No thanks!

New reefers as large as the one in the basement are from $600 to $800+.  I'd
also have to remove a door and the basement handrails to exchange it and
drag it up the stairs and a new one down the stairs.  No thanks!  It would
also be naive to think that a new box will run trouble-free.

One reason I am happy to keep this old basement unit running is that stuff
made 30 years ago was made with lots of metal in the mechanicals and not
with cheap plastic that becomes brittle over time.  Older appliances were
over-engineered and built to last. The fact that my White-Westinghouse is
running and still able to generate subzero temps is a testament to that
fact.

The dogs don't seem to mind that the plastic interior is cracked.  I don't,
either.  It keeps the dog food cold and the long term frozen stuff
well-frozen and that's all I ask of it.  I'm going to attach the Kill-o-Watt
to it and run it for a week.  That will give me some idea of where the
breakpoint in KwH's v. new box cost lies.

But all that's pretty much irrelevant to the question I was asking:  I want
a simple way to be warned when the drain tube connector clogs with dog hair
and dust.  That's a pretty simple *technical* request.  It might even
produce a useful idea for others who've had drain tube clogs even in the
high efficiency, $1000 boxes.  My furnace filter whistles when it gets
clogged.  I want my refrigerator condensate "filter" to chirp or close a set
of contacts when *it* is clogged.

--
Bobby G.