Humidity and Mechanics

When we got here, we noticed that our fridge wasn't working very well. The butter was always a little squishy, and the water wasn't particularly cold. The freezer seemed fine though, as it made ice without a problem. We knew we had a real problem, though, when the milk didn't just spoil but curdled in four days. No bueno.

So we told our landlord, who insisted that we test it out. He asked me what the temperature inside the fridge was, and I said I didn't know exactly, but that I could tell it wasn't working right. He gave me a quizzical look, and said "What type of scientist were you again?" (for the record, I was a biology major in college, but never practiced "science" professionally) I stammered a bit while he ran out to his garage for an outdoor thermometer. Popping it in the fridge, he ducked back out and told me to call in an hour with the temperature.

It was hovering between 55 and 65 degrees farenheit, which definitely isn't right. Googling "fridge temperatures" revealed that it should be between 36 and 42 ideally. Our landlord said he would have his engineer friend come in yesterday morning, and if he couldn't fix it they would replace it in the afternoon. In the meantime, though, he had called his friend to see if he could diagnose the fridge over the phone. The symptoms were:

- Fridge not reaching optimal temperature

- Freezer working fine

The diagnosis was that the humidity of the summer had clogged up the vents between the two, and the cold air wasn't getting through to the fridge. The remedy was to unplug it for a day and let it defrost. After moving all our food into coolers and our landlords fridge, we let it sit and think about what it had done.

The next morning we plugged it back in, and after a few hours of cooling back down, it worked great! It's getting down to mid-30s on the top shelf (closest to the vent), and low-40s on the bottom. We were very pleased with this quick fix, and I thought I should share it with you. If your fridge is acting up, and you're able to let it defrost for a while, I recommend giving it a try before calling a mechanic. Might save you at least a little bit of money.

- Cait