On Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:49:55 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Sep 14, 6:41?pm, mike wrote:
My refrigerator is 36 years old. ?Still going strong, but
if you believe published efficiency numbers, it's costing
me a hundred bux a year more than it would for a ?new one.
Payback calculations depend on your assumptions for the
time value of money and inflation in energy cost. ?Just looking
at the cash flow, the break even point is 7 years or so.
Looks marginal, but let's save the planet. Off
I went to look at refrigerators.

While chatting with the guy at Sears, he "disclosed" that
the smaller compressors run much longer at higher pressure
and they only
last 6 to 7 years. ?If true, that negates all the savings.

Is there any relevant data relating to service life of the
newer, high-efficiency home refrigerators?
mike

my high efficency fridge is 11 years old and going strong.

One unit doesn't make for a good arguement.

I'm a landlord and of the 6 refrigerators that I've purchased over the
last 7 years, three have developed compressor related problems.
One was was a bad compressor start relay PCB - increasingly common,
two others were the actual compressor.

Sinee the start relay assembly was not covered by the 5 year
compressor warranty, the cost for that repair, about $120, came out of
my pocket.

The tenant replaced one bad refrigerator without asking my permission.
The 3rd unit had a new compressor relaced under warranty at about the
4-1/2 year point.

Brands included, GE, Hotpoint (same as GE), Roper (made by Whirlpool)
and Amana (Maytag then, Whirlpool now).

Thus the compressor reliability rate in my admittedly small sample
isn't great.

The above refrigerators replaced old units that were from 20 to 45
years old, including brands like Kelvinator, GE and Amana. None of
them ever had compressor related failures. They were basically
replaced when the rust got too bad on the cabinets or shelving.

The Kevinator units were amazing. They used a hot gas defrost system
versus the typical electric heater in the freezer compartment. The use
of hot gas defrosting had to be more efficient since it didn't depend
on electrical resistance heating but it was noisy!
The timer would call for a defost cycle, the freon gas solenoids would
slam shut, reversing the gas flow and causing the compressor to strain
like hell for about 20 seconds. Yet, those compressor were still
running after 40 years.

Doug