On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:40:42 -0800 (PST), "William R. Walsh"
wrote:

Hello all...

I bought a secondhand fridge (a Franklin Chef FCD401BL) a few months
ago for use in a house where I am only storing stuff. This fridge uses
R134A refrigerant. The heat in the house is only kept on minimally,
set to about 45-50 degrees.

So the fridge is not going to run much, right?

There has been a lot of cold weather and wind blowing around the old
house, and the temperature at the ends of the house drops to about 36
degrees Fahrenheit. It was around 44 in the room where the fridge is.
I dropped into check on things and that's when I noticed the fridge
(in particular the freezer compartment) was not working. I have
thermometers in both compartments, and both were at around 35 degrees.

I turned the heat up in the house and the fridge began to work
normally. I've also heard from other people who have told me that new
refrigerators they bought stopped working temporarily when used in
cold places.

All fridges have always stopped working when they reach the desired
temperature.

I've never seen an older refrigerator that would behave in this way--
usually they'd just keep right on working even in the bitterest of
cold environments. I'm curious to know might have changed between old
and new--surely it wouldn't be a question of the refrigerant...or
would it?

Did any refrigerator/freezer ever have two thermostats? The normal
design for such a device would cool off one area A no more quickly
than B, so the thermostat would be in A. I think A is always the
freezer, no matter how the controls are labeled.

Fridge/Freezers now and for the last 30 or more years have one
thermostat and one compressor. They have two controls, one that is
the thermostat, and one is just a physical control to determine how
cold the freezer is compared to the freezer. YOu probably need to
adjust this second control to make your freezer colder.

I think if you are not there much and you almost never open the doors,
defrosting is not an issue. It probably defrosts much more than it
needs to.

William