DIYbanter - View Single Post - More, please, on refrig not allowed in < 40F environment

(David Combs) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Edwin Pawlowski wrote:

You're saying that a fridge has but *one* thermostat, and (I gather)
which watches the temperature inside the main box, *not* in the freezer.

I suppose that if there were *two* thermostats, one for each part,
then it'd have to cool (heat-remove) by "zones", no?

Can that be correct? Because surely we'd all *like* the two sections
to cool them independently from each other -- so you can get the
freezer down to 0F, and the main box to be at maybe 40F.

Maybe it simply costs too much to make them like that?

(I guess by posing my question I'm going to end up learning
something about how refrigerators are made!)

Shop around. Basic fridges on the North American market have one
thermostat, and one compressor, and are designed to assume that if the
fridge compartment is at X then the freezer must be Y degrees cooler.

(I had a fridge whose freezer was cold but whose main compartment was
warm; turns out there's a fan that diverts cold air from the freezer
into the fridge, and the power connector was loose. So in fact, the
compressor cools the freezer, a fixed fraction of the cold air is
diverted into the fridge, and that's where the thermostat is.)

Some of the higher-end models have separate thermostats and,
presumably, some mechanism for zoning their cooling; these are a bit
more money. This feature is a selling point so they don't make a
secret of it. Just look in the freezer to see if there's a dial there
too.

A few very high-end units actually have separate compressors, so the
freezer works independently of the fridge. The only units I've seen
were euro imports that one retailer had in a corner of the shop. They
were ludicrously expensive, like C$3000, and I presume they were there
just to soften the customer's price sensitivity (is there a name for
that in marketing? kinda the opposite of a loss-leader.) They were an
odd brand, none of the common euro appliance brands - the sales dude
said it was the name found on some construction cranes, but I'd never
heard of it.

I have no idea if either of these designs work any better in cold
rooms.

Chip C