Whirlpool Refrigerator - The Best and Cool

If you have gone to purchase a refrigerator, dealer would surely show you the Whirlpool refrigerator. These refrigerators are very popular among the millions of consumers all over the world. Whirlpool is globally known home appliances company.

The refrigerators manufactured by Whirlpool are the perfect combination of cutting-edge technology and ergonomic design. The company is reputed for using the latest technology to meet the requirements of the users.

Whirlpool refrigerators offer great features and are available in all kinds of budgets. If you want a refrigerator in affordable range, you can go for Whirlpool refrigerators. You can choose from direct cool, Frost Free and Frost Control range of refrigerators.

The refrigerators from Whirlpool are designed with latest innovations. One of their unique features is 6th sense frost control technology. Due to this technology, refrigerators defrost automatically. You need not spend your precious time over defrosting and cleaning it later. Due extended cooling option provided in these refrigerators, you can get better circulation of cold air in all the corners of the fridge.

To suit the Indian market, Whirlpool has introduced the Fusion series refrigerators. These refrigerators do not have the separate freezer option. That space is utilized for the food storage only. Though this may not suit the requirements of all the consumers but still there was demand of such type of refrigerators for long time.

Another feature in the cap is the unique ice making technology devised from Whirlpool only. This technology helps make the ice 30% faster than normal range. Then Whirlpool freezers retain the ice even in power cuts up to a certain period.

It can keep the ice as it is up to 12 hours in power cuts. Amazing! Due its unique features, Whirlpool is steadily making a place of itself in Indian market. As Whirlpool adapts itself to the market it is catering to, it has not initiated the twin door refrigerators in India because, people have more of food storing needs than freezing.

Using a Whirlpool Refrigerators is not at all expensive. There are many energy saving features in these freezers. You can save up to 30% of electricity usage due to energy saving feature of Whirlpool. This can reduce your ever mounting electricity bills.

Looks and style of Whirlpool Refrigerators are equally appealing. There is Swarovski crystal on the door handles giving them a unique look. There is wide range of colors to choose from. Among many reasons for buying a Whirlpool refrigerator; one is its after sales services. Whirlpool is known for its quick services and excellent customer care.

Robot Refrigerator

Although not a robot, Samsung is working on creating a refrigerator that will be the smartest refrigerator you will ever own. The reason for it being covered here on RobotsRule is because robots and A.I. (artificial intelligence) go hand in hand.

According to this Samsung spokesman Chae Hee-kook, the refrigerator will use RFID technology to track the items in your refrigerator. RFID stands for Radio-frequency identification. Tags are placed in many kinds of consumer goods that have RFID tags embedded in them allowing them to be tracked efficiently.

Using inventory levels set by the user, it will notify you when you are running low a particular item. Notification can happen in one of two intriguing ways:

1. The refrigerator will be able to send a shopping list of required groceries directly to your cell phone. So you may find yourself in the near future getting a call from you refrigerator instead of your significant other, asking you to pick some things up on the way home!
   
2. For participating grocery stores, it will be able to send your order directly to the store.

Given the second method, then theoretically if the store has a delivery service and your approval, you may find everything you need to make dinner tonight already waiting for you when you come home, without you having to do anything else but put the stuff away and cook it. Who knows, by the time the refrigerator is made available your home robot will do that for you! Other planned features include a recipe database that will suggest recipes based on what you have in the refrigerator, or will tell you what you need to buy if you want to make the meal for a recipe you like in the database.

Solar Power Refrigerator - A New Project

Refrigerators consume about 8% of the electric power used in American average homes and environmental temperature conditioning adds 44%. Most of these use electricity to generate the power required to operate refrigeration compressors but some use burning gas to obtain the energy to operate the refrigeration cycle.

There are about one hundred thousand portable refrigerators in use in the world which use kerosene for their power source. They are mainly used for vaccine storage in remote places without reliable electricity.

These flame powered refrigeration systems could be adapted to become solar powered refrigeration systems if the heated elements were exposed to concentrated beams of sunlight. A search of the internet didn’t come up with a permanent installation such as would be appropriate for a residential home or even an industrial setting but here at Greening the machine blog is a great site for saving energy.

The Tasman energy guy has some personal experience with various refrigerator systems and preferred the battery operated system powered by solar cells. Here the LPG Refrigeration Indonesia has several refrigerators based on gas which might be adaptable to solar use.

The diagram above is of the Hop-Hallstrom gas refrigerator designed in the 1920s and sold by Electrolux and discussed at greater length at Earth Garden.

To convert this to a solar powered system would only require a solar concentrator, such as a reflector, to concentrate the sun’s radiant energy upon the part labeled Generator-Boiler.

This adaptation could be ideally accomplished by exposing the generator-boiler located on the back of the refrigerator to the outside of the sun exposed side of the house and piping through the wall to a fully insulated compartment opening to the inside of the house.

A larger system of this type could be used for air-conditioning the entire house.

Comparing the Dometic and Norcold Cooling Units

The vertical pipe on the right in the photographs of these two refrigerator systems is the generator-boiler and in this photograph they seem to be discussing the electrical option of heating the working material within it.

As it is possible to use either burning gas or electricity to heat the material it would also be reasonable to use solar heat for that purpose. That would be easy enough to do if the columns were designed in such a way that a solar heatable surface were presented.

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How Refrigerator Works? Another Explanation

The refrigerator in your kitchen uses a cycle that is similar to the one described in the previous section. But in your refrigerator, the cycle is continuous. In the following example, we will assume that the refrigerant being used is pure ammonia, which boils at -27 degrees F. This is what happens to keep the refrigerator cool:

1. The compressor compresses the ammonia gas. The compressed gas heats up as it is pressurized (orange).
2. The coils on the back of the refrigerator let the hot ammonia gas dissipate its heat. The ammonia gas condenses into ammonia liquid (dark blue) at high pressure.
3. The high-pressure ammonia liquid flows through the expansion valve.

   You can think of the expansion valve as a small hole. On one side of the hole is high-pressure ammonia liquid. On the other side of the hole is a low-pressure area (because the compressor is sucking gas out of that side).

4. The liquid ammonia immediately boils and vaporizes (light blue), its temperature dropping to -27 F. This makes the inside of the refrigerator cold.
5. The cold ammonia gas is sucked up by the compressor, and the cycle repeats.

By the way, if you have ever turned your car off on a hot summer day when you have had the air conditioner running, you may have heard a hissing noise under the hood. That noise is the sound of high-pressure liquid refrigerant flowing through the expansion valve.

Pure ammonia gas is highly toxic to people and would pose a threat if the refrigerator were to leak, so all home refrigerators don't use pure ammonia. You may have heard of refrigerants know as CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), originally developed by Du Pont in the 1930s as a non-toxic replacement for ammonia. CFC-12(dichlorodifluoromethane) has about the same boiling point as ammonia. However, CFC-12 is not toxic to humans, so it is safe to use in your kitchen. Many large industrial refrigerators still use ammonia.

In the 1970s, it was discovered that the CFCs then in use are harmful to the ozone layer, so as of the 1990s, all new refrigerators and air conditioners use refrigerants that are less harmful to the ozone layer.

Confused about the Refrigerator Parts-Here is a Clear Explanation

What is a refrigerator made of?
Here are the major components of a refrigerator:

Compressor

Heat-exchanging Pipes

Expansion Valve

Refrigerant

Confusing! What are those parts?

A Compressor is a mechanical device used to compress or compact something. In the case of the refrigerator it is the refrigerant.

The Heat-exchanging pipes are the coiled set of pipes inside and outside the refrigerator. You can usually see this by looking on the back of the fridge.

The expansion valve allows the refrigerant to change its pressure by expanding a small pipe into a big one.

The refrigerant the liquid that evaporates inside the refrigerator to create the cold temperatures. This liquid in the past was ammonia or a chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Ammonia is used because of its extremely low boiling rate. It boils at -27 degrees Fahrenheit or -32 degrees Celsius.

Now days ammonia is no longer used because it stinks, and CFCs are no longer used because of ozone depletion. CFCs have been banned from use by the Kyoto protocol. 134A is now used in most fridges today.

Introduction to Refrigerator

In almost every home in America maybe even the world, there is a refrigerator. This marvelous machine that can keep many things cool and preserve food.

With out a refrigerator much of our food cooked and not cooked would go bad in a short while. On many refrigerators there is also a freezer to keep stuff frozen and preserved even longer then the refrigerator can.

Refrigerators these days are getting larger, more organized chock full of great features like water dispensers and ice machines.

We really can take a refrigerator for granted sometimes. Just take a look back and see what they had to do to keep food good. Meat had to be salted in-order to be kept it edible. Cold drinks on a hot summer day were a luxury for most people.

Freezer is the one who, or that which, cools or freezes, as a refrigerator, or the tub and can used in the process of freezing ice cream.

Air conditioning

Air conditioning is the cooling and dehumidification of indoor air for thermal comfort. In a broader sense, the term can refer to any form of cooling, heating, ventilation, or disinfection that modifies the condition of air.^[1] An air conditioner (often referred to as AC or air con.) is an appliance, system, or mechanism designed to stabilise the air temperature and humidity within an area (used for cooling as well as heating depending on the air properties at a given time), typically using a refrigeration cycle but sometimes using evaporation, commonly for comfort cooling in buildings and motor vehicles.

The concept of air conditioning is known to have been applied in Ancient Rome, where aqueduct water was circulated through the walls of certain houses to cool them. Similar techniques in medieval Persia involved the use of cisterns and wind towers to cool buildings during the hot season. Modern air conditioning emerged from advances in chemistry during the 19th century, and the first large-scale electrical air conditioning was invented and used in 1902 by Willis Haviland Carrier.

Air can be passed over common, solid desiccants (like silica gel or zeolite) to draw moisture from the air to allow an efficient evaporative cooling cycle. The desiccant is then regenerated by using solar thermal energy to dry it out, in a cost-effective, low-energy-consumption, continuously-repeating cycle.^[2] A photovoltaic system can power a low-energy air circulation fan, and a motor to slowly rotate a large disk filled with desiccant.

Energy recovery ventilation systems provide a controlled way of ventilating a home while minimizing energy loss. Air is passed through an "enthalpy wheel" (often using silica gel) to reduce the cost of heating ventilated air in the winter by transferring heat from the warm inside air being exhausted to the fresh (but cold) supply air. In the summer, the inside air cools the warmer incoming supply air to reduce ventilation cooling costs. This low-energy fan-and-motor ventilation system can be cost-effectively powered by photovoltaics, with enhanced natural convection exhaust up a solar chimney - the downward incoming air flow would be forced convection (advection).

A desiccant like calcium chloride can be mixed with water to create an attractive recirculating waterfall, that dehumidifies a room using solar thermal energy to regenerate the liquid, and a PV-powered low-rate water pump. (See Liquid Desiccant Waterfall for attractive building dehumidification

Air Conditioner Basics

Most people think that air conditioners lower the temperature in their homes simply by pumping cool air in.

What's really happening is the warm air from your house is being removed and cycled back in as cooler air. This cycle continues until your thermostat reaches the desired temperature.

An air conditioner is basically a refrigerator without the insulated box. It uses the evaporation of a refrigerant, like Freon, to provide cooling. The mechanics of the Freon evaporation cycle are the same in a refrigerator as in an air conditioner.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, the term Freon is generically "used for any of various nonflammable fluorocarbons used as refrigerants and as propellants for aerosols."

Diagram of a typical air conditioner.

This is how the evaporation cycle in an air conditioner works (See How Refrigerators Work for complete details on this cycle):

1. The compressor compresses cool Freon gas, causing it to become hot, high-pressure Freon gas (red in the diagram above).
2. This hot gas runs through a set of coils so it can dissipate its heat, and it condenses into a liquid.
3. The Freon liquid runs through an expansion valve, and in the process it evaporates to become cold, low-pressure Freon gas (light blue in the diagram above).
4. This cold gas runs through a set of coils that allow the gas to absorb heat and cool down the air inside the building.

Mixed in with the Freon is a small amount of lightweight oil. This oil lubricates the compressor.

Air conditioners help clean your home's air as well. Most indoor units have filters that catch dust, pollen, mold spores and other allergens as well as smoke and everyday dirt found in the air. Most air conditioners also function as dehumidifiers.

They take excess water from the air and use it to help cool the unit before getting rid of the water through a hose to the outside. Other units use the condensed moisture to improve efficiency by routing the cooled water back into the system to be reused.

So this is the general concept involved in air conditioning. In the next section, we'll take a look at window

Nanotechnology Refrigerator

Researchers in a Finnish- Italian team (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy) have observed that the electron can carry away heat.

They have built a small device where they found that heat is dissipated and therefore the device can act as a tinniest refrigerator.

Researchers from Helsinki University of Finland and Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy have fabricated a tiny transistor similar to a transistor used in an IC.

Here super conducting electrodes although are similar to those used in a conventional transistor, however these electrodes are electrically insulated.

Researchers call this transistor a single electron refrigerator where the super conducting electrodes are connected to a 2mm long and 1/2 mm wide copper slab.

Another team of researchers from Singapore have also observed that heat can also carry information similar as electrons do in computers.

BTU and EER

Most air conditioners have their capacity rated in British thermal units (BTU). Generally speaking, a BTU is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound (0.45 kg) of water 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degrees Celsius). Specifically, 1 BTU equals 1,055 joules. In heating and cooling terms, 1 "ton" equals 12,000 BTU.

A typical window air conditioner might be rated at 10,000 BTU. For comparison, a typical 2,000-square-foot (185.8 m²) house might have a 5-ton (60,000-BTU) air conditioning system, implying that you might need perhaps 30 BTU per square foot. (Keep in mind that these are rough estimates. To size an air conditioner for your specific needs, contact an HVAC contractor.)

The energy efficiency rating (EER) of an air conditioner is its BTU rating over its wattage. For example, if a 10,000-BTU air conditioner consumes 1,200 watts, its EER is 8.3 (10,000 BTU/1,200 watts). Obviously, you would like the EER to be as high as possible, but normally a higher EER is accompanied by a higher price.

Let's say that you have a choice between two 10,000-BTU units. One has an EER of 8.3 and consumes 1,200 watts, and the other has an EER of 10 and consumes 1,000 watts. Let's also say that the price difference is $100. To understand what the payback period is on the more expensive unit, you need to know approximately how many hours per year you will be operating the unit and How much a kilowatt-hour (kWh) costs in your area

Let's say that you plan to use the air conditioner in the summer (four months a year) and it will be operating about six hours a day. Let's also imagine that the cost in your area is $0.10/kWh. The difference in energy consumption between the two units is 200 watts, which means that every five hours the less expensive unit will consume 1 additional kWh (and therefore $0.10 more) than the more expensive unit.

Assuming that there are 30 days in a month, you find that during the summer you're operating the air conditioner:

4 mo. x 30 days/mo. x 6 hr/day = 720 hours

[(720 hrs x 200 watts) / (1000 watts/kW)] x $0.10/kWh = $14.40

The more expensive unit costs $100 more, which means that it will take about seven years for the more expensive unit to break even.

See Climate Magic for a great explanation of seasonal energy efficiency rating (SEER).

In the next section, we'll look at cutting these costs with some new, energy-efficient cooling systems.

No Refrigerator Without Electricity - New Idea

Gas and Propane Refrigerators

If you own an RV or use a refrigerator where electricity is not available, chances are you have a gas- or propane-powered refrigerator.

These refrigerators are interesting because they have no moving parts and use gas or propane as their primary source of energy. Also, they use heat, in the form of burning propane, to produce the cold inside the refrigerator.

A gas refrigerator uses ammonia as the coolant, and it uses water, ammonia and hydrogen gas to create a continuous cycle for the ammonia. The refrigerator has five main parts:

* Generator - generates ammonia gas

* Separator - separates ammonia gas from water

* Condenser - where hot ammonia gas is cooled and condensed to create liquid ammonia

* Evaporator - where liquid ammonia evaporates to create cold temperatures inside the refrigerator

* Absorber - absorbs the ammonia gas in water

The cycle works like this:

1. Heat is applied to the generator. The heat comes from burning something like gas, propane or kerosene.

2. In the generator is a solution of ammonia and water. The heat raises the temperature of the solution to the boiling point of the ammonia.

3. The boiling solution flows to the separator. In the separator, the water separates from the ammonia gas.

4. The ammonia gas flows upward to the condenser. The condenser is composed of metal coils and fins that allow the ammonia gas to dissipate its heat and condense into a liquid.

5. The liquid ammonia makes its way to the evaporator, where it mixes with hydrogen gas and evaporates, producing cold temperatures inside the refrigerator.

6. The ammonia and hydrogen gases flow to the absorber. Here, the water that has collected in the separator is mixed with the ammonia and hydrogen gases.

7. The ammonia forms a solution with the water and releases the hydrogen gas, which flows back to the evaporator.

The ammonia-and-water solution flows toward the generator to repeat the cycle.

Various Definitions Regarding Refrigerators

Absorption		A process in which energy (heat) is taken up by a liquid or solid.
Compressor		This is a pump which compresses refrigerant gas, and consequently heats the gas.
Condensation		A change of state from gas or vapour to liquid.
Evaporation		A change of state from solid or liquid to gas or vapour. It occurs when some molecules of a liquid have enough energy to escape into the gas phase and this has an overall cooling effect on the liquid.
Expansion		The increase of volume of a sample of substance.
Intermediate temperature		A temperature somewhere between hot and cold.
Refrigerant		A chemical substance used as a fluid in a refrigeration system. There are many different types of fluid used, depending on the system design. Most commonly used are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and hydrocarbons (HCs).
Refrigeration		This is the transfer of heat from a substance to be cooled to somewhere else. Heat flows naturally from a warm substance to a colder one eg fish can be cooled by surrounding it with packing ice.
Restrictor		Something that restricts the flow of a gas or liquid.
Sublimation		This is when a solid turns to vapour without going through the liquid phase. For example, you can see solid carbon dioxide (CO2) turning to vapour when it melts without producing a liquid (dry ice).
Thermal Insulation		A means of preventing or reducing the transfer of thermal energy (heat). Good insulators are foam, wool, and vacuums.
Vapour		A substance in a gas state that has reached a temperature at which it could become a liquid just by the application of pressure. It is usually still in contact with the liquid from which it was formed.
Ventilation		The addition of fresh air.

How The Fridge Works? More Explanation

How the fridge works

This is a diagram of how a basic mechanical refrigeration cycle works.

If you hover your mouse pointer over the different parts of the diagram an explanation of what is happening will appear.

You can see the refrigerant moving around the circuit at different temperatures. Think about what happens when it expands or contracts. What effect does this have on the temperature?

This diagram is designed for Internet Explorer 4, Netscape 4 and above. If it does not work on your browser try the older browser version.

How Does a Refrigerator Works?????

Well first the compressor compresses the refrigerant gas. By doing this the gas temperature and pressure are raised, allowing the heat-exchanging pipes on the outside of the fridge to dispel the heat of pressurization.

As the refrigerant is cooled it condenses, turning into a liquid again, and moves into the expansion valve.

As the liquid refrigerant travels through the expansion valve it is allowed to move from a high-pressure are to a low-pressure area. The low-pressure area is the part that the compressor is hooked to.

When it is not pressurized it then expands and evaporates. When the refrigerant evaporates it instantely begins to boil and vaporize, and this is what makes it cold. It drops immediately drops to 27 degrees Fahrenheit.

The second set of heat-exchanging coils inside of the refrigerator allow the refrigerant to transfer the cold and this cools the inside. There is also a fans inside and out of your refrigerator.

The on the inside helps with defrosting and more even cooling, the one on the inside cools the compressor, and blows air on the heat-exchange pipes on the back. After this process is done it continually repeats.

About every 15 minutes you can hear the refrigerator turn on. It is completing this process.

Working Process:

A refrigerator consists of two storage compartments - one for frozen items and the other for items requiring refrigeration but not freezing. These compartments are surrounded by a series of heat-exchanging pipes. Near the bottom of the refrigerator unit is a heavy metal device called a compressor. The compressor is powered by an electric motor. More heat-exchanging pipes are coiled behind the refrigerator. Running through the entire system is pure ammonia, which evaporates at -27 degrees Fahrenheit (-32 Celsius). This system is closed, which means nothing is lost or added while it is operating. Because liquid ammonia is a powerful chemical, a leaking refrigerator should be repaired or replaced immediately.

The refrigeration process begins with the compressor. Ammonia gas is compressed until it becomes very hot from the increased pressure. This heated gas flows through the coils behind the refrigerator, which allow excess heat to be released into the surrounding air. This is why users sometimes feel warm air circulating around the fridge. Eventually the ammonia cools down to the point where it becomes a liquid. This liquid form of ammonia is then forced through a device called an expansion valve. Essentially, the expansion valve has such a small opening that the liquid ammonia is turned into a very cold, fast-moving mist, evaporating as it travels through the coils in the freezer. Since this evaporation occurs at -27 degrees F (-32 degrees Celsius), the ammonia draws heat from the surrounding area. This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics in effect. Cold material, such as the evaporating ammonia gas, tend to take heat from warmer materials, such as the water in the ice cube tray.

As the evaporating ammonia gas absorbs more heat, its temperature rises. Coils surrounding the lower refrigerator compartment are not as compact. The cool ammonia still draws heat from the warmer objects in the fridge, but not as much as the freezer section. The ammonia gas is drawn back into the compressor, where the entire cycle of pressurization, cooling and evaporation begins anew.

Air Conditioninig - How it Works?

Air-conditioning Basics

An air conditioner is basically a refrigerator without the insulated box. It uses the evaporation of a refrigerant, like Freon, to provide cooling. The mechanics of the Freon evaporation cycle are the same in a refrigerator as in an air conditioner. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, the term Freon is generically "used for any of various nonflammable fluorocarbons used as refrigerants and as propellants for aerosols."

This is how the evaporation cycle in an air conditioner works (See How Refrigerators Work for complete details on this cycle):

1. The compressor compresses cool Freon gas, causing it to become hot, high-pressure Freon gas (red in the diagram above).
2. This hot gas runs through a set of coils so it can dissipate its heat, and it condenses into a liquid.
3. The Freon liquid runs through an expansion valve, and in the process it evaporates to become cold, low-pressure Freon gas (light blue in the diagram above).
4. This cold gas runs through a set of coils that allow the gas to absorb heat and cool down the air inside the building.

Mixed in with the Freon is a small amount of a lightweight oil. This oil lubricates the compressor.

So this is the general concept involved in air conditioning. In the next section, we'll take a look inside a window unit.

Refrigerator FAQ - Repair and Troubleshoot

In this section of Hometips for Home Improvement, we will learn about some of the basic and common problems associated with refrigerators and how to solve and fix these problems.

As explained in my previous articles, a refrigerator is one of the must-have kitchen appliance and also one of the most dependable large appliances.

Like any other appliance, a refrigerator can have problems occasionally and these problems need to be repaired and fixed.

While there are some problems related with the refrigerators that you can fix yourself by checking the power, controls, condenser coils, parts outside the refrigerators sealed, hermetic system, you may need to call a repair person some complex problems.

The best way to increase life of a refrigerator is to clean the condenser coils at least once a year, twice is even better.

My Refrigerator Doesn't Run. What is the problem and how do I fix it?

If you refrigerator doesn’t run, do following:

1) Check the power supply. Make sure the receptacle is plugged in properly and is working. If the receptacle is not working, check if circuit breaker is tripped or the fuse is blown.

2) Check if the cold control is turned on.

3) If the refrigerator is plugged in and the cold control is on but the refrigerator is still not working, leave the door closed so that it can retain the cold air and call an appliance repairperson.

My Refrigerator Freezes the Foods and sometimes the Icemaker Doesn't Shut Off. What do I do?

If your refrigerator freezes the food, do following:

1) Check if the cold control is set to its lowest setting.

2) If the control is at its lowest setting, maybe the cold control is defective. Call a repairperson.

If the icemaker keeps making ice and doesn’t shut off, do following:

1) Lift the bail wire and shut it off.

2) Empty the bin, remove the icemaker, clean it, and reinstall.

3) If the problem still persists, call a repairperson to replace the entire icemaker and the valve.

My Refrigerator Runs But Doesn't Cool. What could be the problem and how do I solve this problem?

If your refrigerator doesn't cool at all, there could be some problem with the electrical controls. Do following:

1) Check the temperature control. Make sure it is set to "cold." Normal temperature inside the refrigerator should be around 37 degrees Fahrenheit.

2) Check if the freezer fan is running. When the freezer fan is running, it means the defrost timer and the cold control in the refrigerator are both set to cool.

3) Check out the compressor fan behind the refrigerator and see if it is working. When the freezer fan is running, the compressor fan should also run.

4) If any one of the fans is not working or when the compressor is off, the refrigerator will not cool properly. You need to call an expert to fix this problem.

Icemaker of my Refrigerator Doesn't Make Ice. What is the problem?

If your refrigerator icemaker doesn’t make ice, do following:

1) Make sure the bail wire above the ice tray is in the down position.

2) There may not be enough water supply to the water valve. Check if the water supply line isn't kinked behind or beneath the refrigerator. Use 1/4-inch copper tubing rather than plastic fill line.

3) Check if there is some problem with the fill tube.

4) See if the water line entering the freezer is blocked. You may also have to repair the water shut-off valve.

5) Also check the tap valve. It may have gone bad. Call a repairperson or plumber to fix this.

I want to Thaw the Icemaker. How do I do this?

1) Unplug the refrigerator.

2) Remove the ice bin and any loose ice from the icemaker.

3) Find the fill tube which is a white rubber-like hose that delivers water into the icemaker.

4) Warm the hose and surrounding areas. You can use a hair dryer, but be very careful when using the hair dryer near water and also be careful not to melt the plastic parts. You can also do this by soaking the supply tubing with hot water.

My Refrigerator Doesn’t Defrosts properly. What could be the problem and how to fix it?

Most new refrigerators have automatic defrost with a defrost timer, defrost heater, and a defrost terminator. When a frost-free refrigerator is running, it builds up frost on the tubing in the back of the freezer wall.

The defrost timer automatically cycles the refrigerator to defrost for about 15 to 20 minutes every 6 to 8 hours. If defrost isn't working properly, most probably the ice remains on the tubing and restricts airflow through the refrigerator.

On some of the refrigerators, you can manually advance the defrost timer. Advance it until it clicks into the defrost mode.

If the problem still persists, the defrost timer is defective and needs to be replaced. There could also be some problem with the heater or the terminator. Call customer care or some expert appliance repairperson.

Window and Split-system AC Units

A window air conditioner unit implements a complete air conditioner in a small space. The units are made small enough to fit into a standard window frame. You close the window down on the unit, plug it in and turn it on to get cool air. If you take the cover off of an unplugged window unit, you'll find that it contains:

• A compressor
• An expansion valve
• A hot coil (on the outside)
• A chilled coil (on the inside)
• Two fans
• A control unit

The fans blow air over the coils to improve their ability to dissipate heat (to the outside air) and cold (to the room being cooled).

When you get into larger air-conditioning applications, its time to start looking at split-system units. A split-system air conditioner splits the hot side from the cold side of the system, like this:

The cold side, consisting of the expansion valve and the cold coil, is generally placed into a furnace or some other air handler. The air handler blows air through the coil and routes the air throughout the building using a series of ducts. The hot side, known as the condensing unit, lives outside the building.

The unit consists of a long, spiral coil shaped like a cylinder. Inside the coil is a fan, to blow air through the coil, along with a weather-resistant compressor and some control logic. This approach has evolved over the years because it's low-cost, and also because it normally results in reduced noise inside the house (at the expense of increased noise outside the house). Other than the fact that the hot and cold sides are split apart and the capacity is higher (making the coils and compressor larger), there's no difference between a split-system and a window air conditioner.

In warehouses, large business offices, malls, big department stores and other sizeable buildings, the condensing unit normally lives on the roof and can be quite massive. Alternatively, there may be many smaller units on the roof, each attached inside to a small air handler that cools a specific zone in the building.

In larger buildings and particularly in multi-story buildings, the split-system approach begins to run into problems. Either running the pipe between the condenser and the air handler exceeds distance limitations (runs that are too long start to cause lubrication difficulties in the compressor), or the amount of duct work and the length of ducts becomes unmanageable. At this point, it's time to think about a chilled-water system.