Re: New Fridge - setting up monitoring

[ddl@danlan.*com (Dan Lanciani)]

In article <i3i6nf$ene$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, robert_green1963@xxxxxxxxx (Robert Green) writes:

| going
| away without realizing the lack of opening and closing the door would drop
| the refrigerator compartment to below freezing

I noticed this effect (i.e., that I was part of the temperature regulation)
on my previous KitchenAid refrigerator (which replaced an in retrospect far
superior 1959 Tappan).  The temperature controls also required tweaking from
season to season apparently to account for ambient temperature.  This puzzled
me at first.  I knew that only the refrigerator section was thermostatically
controlled (relying on the compressor to run enough to keep the freezer section
frozen) but you would think that this would at least result in, like, you know,
regulating the temperature in the refrigerator section.

I eventually decided that the problem was that the thermostat in the
refrigerator section was in the air path from the freezer section, so
if you set it such that the desired steady-state temperature was maintained
it would take a very long time to get there, perhaps never getting there if
you opened the door from time to time.  On the other hand if you set it to
keep the temperature where you wanted with the door opening occasionally it
would freeze as you noticed when you weren't there to open the door.

I bought a Sub-Zero which uses a completely separate cooling system for
freezer and refrigerator.  This works very well, but I still wonder how
the old Tappan managed to do the same job with only one compressor.  As
far as I remember it did not blow air from the freezer into the refrigerator
and I think there were coils in both sections, so perhaps it diverted
freon according to need.  Systems to run multiple evaporators from one
condenser (not one outdoor unit with multiple condensers) are starting
to show up in mini-splits so this general kind of thing seems possible.

				Dan Lanciani
				ddl@danlan.*com