Fridges

[Seeker]

I'm unsure whether I've proved a little knowledge is dangerous or confirmed I'm an idiot. I suspect the latter.

I have a power meter that lets me know how much electricity I'm using, it pre-dates the smart meter and I have it set to kW. Over the last few years I've noticed that the fridge is occasionally drawing power but the compressor isn't running and, I assumed, that the compressor had stalled since the fridge is old. I would switch the fridge off, leave it for a minute or two and switch it back on. Eventually the compressor would kick in.
I recently had one of those middle-of-the-night thoughts: "What if the fridge is doing some kind of defrost cycle?". So, I looked it up and an auto-defrost fridge (which mine is) uses a heating element which would explain the power utilisation without the compressor running and it does it several times in 24 hours. Oops!

[Othen]

Good story (I’m not sure I’d have admitted it to the world)

:-)


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[NTECUK]

Argos has a video of auto defrost so a lot of people must also ask that question.
https://youtu.be/qIFuWc0dAIw

[Othen]

Argos has a video of auto defrost so a lot of people must also ask that question.
https://youtu.be/qIFuWc0dAIw



Amazing, I thought everyone would have known that: how was the ice going to melt otherwise?

You learn something new about people every day :-)


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[Seeker]

Amazing, I thought everyone would have known that: how was the ice going to melt otherwise?


Maybe you keep your kitchen far cooler than mine but the cooling/heating of an object depends on its mass compared to the mass around it and the temperature difference between the objects: it would melt naturally albeit much slower than using a heater.


...but now I know. Next will be understanding why the First Law of Thermodynamics is stopping my perpetual motion machine from working. :(

[Othen]

Maybe you keep your kitchen far cooler than mine but the cooling/heating of an object depends on its mass compared to the mass around it and the temperature difference between the objects: it would melt naturally albeit much slower than using a heater.


...but now I know. Next will be understanding why the First Law of Thermodynamics is stopping my perpetual motion machine from working. :(



I didn’t mean any offence. Ice would melt eventually without heating, but the long latent heat cycle would mean the temperature in the ‘fridge would rise quite a bit (depending on how many times one opened the door) during the compressor’s downtime... it might not be acceptable to have the milk at 15c.

All you need to make your perpetual motion machine work properly is a negative entropy maker, that way the thermodynamics equations work perfectly well backwards. I looked on eBay but I couldn’t find one that looked like it might work :-)


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[SV650rules]

Amazing, I thought everyone would have known that: how was the ice going to melt otherwise?

You learn something new about people every day :-)



Apparently all the ice on the planet will be melting soon.....

[daktulos]

Apparently all the ice on the planet will be melting soon.....

Can we unplug the Earth when the defrost cycle starts?

[Othen]

Apparently all the ice on the planet will be melting soon.....



... only until the next ice age (less than 10,000 years to go now).


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