Does humidity affect refrig. cooling?

babock wrote:

ajriding wrote:
Relative humidity will have very little effect on cooling of the fridge.
Unlike a person, who perspires through skin water evaporation, the fridge only conducts heat away. The fridge will cool almost the same in dry and in humid air.
The differences will be less than 2%; un-perceivable if just measuring your temperature in the fridge.
Your problems lie elsewhere.

Incorrect. The heat content of humid air is much higher than dry air. The cooling fins not only cool the air but have to condense the water contained in the air. Many more BTUs are required to lower the temp of moist air vs dry air.

Has nothing to do with the way the skin feels during low or high humidity.

Humid air also conducts heat better so that humid air of a given temperature will transfer MORE heat through the outer shell of the refrigerator to inside the box than dry air.

Dry air (inside a sauna for example) helps cool the skin through evaporation of sweat better than a steam bath at the same elevated temperature.

Generally, there isn't a lot of evaporation taking place on the exterior surfaces of the refrigerator because it is only slightly cooler than the environment and there are no sweat glands. That's why some refrigerators (residential mostly) have the "reduce exterior moisture" heating coil function for humid climates.

Chum lee