ScottG wrote:
A shop that rebuilds them told me it's the people who turn them off and on that have the most problems with cracked/leaking units. I think they mentioned "weekend warriors". They believe the thermal stress of heating and cooling hurts them.
Since, in normal operation, the cooling unit cycles on and off as needed to maintain temperature, I would think the thermal stresses would be greater with it left on all the time rather than turned on only when traveling. (An exception may be a few really old fridges which had fully manual controls, where the flame size was adjusted with a knob rather than turning on and off under electronic control; on those, the cooling unit would not thermally cycle if it's left on.)
There's nothing inherent in an absorption fridge that wears out; liquids don't succumb to friction the way that mechanical devices eventually do. Failure, I believe, is either due to corrosion or to operation when insufficiently close to level.
