Refrigerator Not As Cold As It Ought To Be
Hello everyone, back again after a while(Believe it or not I've been able to fix some stuff on my own ;) Anyways my Domestic Americana is not cooling as well as it should, particularly the fridge. The...
Forum Discussion
Doug,
I actually had a test going that I started yesterday and that had slipped my mind when I wrote my response above.
Early yesterday I had turned our RV's refrigerator temperature switch to it's max position 5. Outside temperatures have been in the upper 80's for several days here and today and tomorrow will be in the 90's. Our RV is sitting in the back yard in the sun plugged into an external outlet on our house. The refrigerator is on electric - which may make it be a bit less efficient than when on propane.
A couple of hours ago the freezer section read slightly under 0 degrees and the refrigerator section read slightly under 30 degrees. So ... it looks like I was correct in that the 5-postion temperature switch controls the entire unit's ON/OFF duty cycle - thus lowing the temperature in both sections simultaneously as the switch is set higher and higher. This makes sense as to how it should have been designed to operate.
What this means is .... in order to maintain the industry recommended standard for household refrigerators of 0 degrees in the freezer section and 38 degress in the refrigerator section ... I have to increase the temperature difference maintained between the two sections so that with the freezer at around 0 degrees, the refrigerator is raised up to around 38 degrees.
Do I slide the thermocouple UP or DOWN on the cooling fins to increase the refrigerator's temperature in relation to the freezer's temperature?
After I get that delta/difference to be about 38 degrees I can then, based on outside temperatures, tweek things merely by using the 5-position ON/OFF duty cycle switch ... just as I'm guessing that the designers intended. The only thing "wrong" with our propane refrigerator so far was that the factory-set position for the cooling fin thermocouple was not quite correct.
P.S. Of course the reason for the "soft ice cream" propane RV refrigerator complaints is that the freezer sections in them are not being kept at an average of 0 degrees or less. My test has proved that, for at least our Norcold model and the way Winnebago installed it, an RV propane freezer is capable of maintaining 0 degrees in it's freezer section.
I actually had a test going that I started yesterday and that had slipped my mind when I wrote my response above.
Early yesterday I had turned our RV's refrigerator temperature switch to it's max position 5. Outside temperatures have been in the upper 80's for several days here and today and tomorrow will be in the 90's. Our RV is sitting in the back yard in the sun plugged into an external outlet on our house. The refrigerator is on electric - which may make it be a bit less efficient than when on propane.
A couple of hours ago the freezer section read slightly under 0 degrees and the refrigerator section read slightly under 30 degrees. So ... it looks like I was correct in that the 5-postion temperature switch controls the entire unit's ON/OFF duty cycle - thus lowing the temperature in both sections simultaneously as the switch is set higher and higher. This makes sense as to how it should have been designed to operate.
What this means is .... in order to maintain the industry recommended standard for household refrigerators of 0 degrees in the freezer section and 38 degress in the refrigerator section ... I have to increase the temperature difference maintained between the two sections so that with the freezer at around 0 degrees, the refrigerator is raised up to around 38 degrees.
Do I slide the thermocouple UP or DOWN on the cooling fins to increase the refrigerator's temperature in relation to the freezer's temperature?
After I get that delta/difference to be about 38 degrees I can then, based on outside temperatures, tweek things merely by using the 5-position ON/OFF duty cycle switch ... just as I'm guessing that the designers intended. The only thing "wrong" with our propane refrigerator so far was that the factory-set position for the cooling fin thermocouple was not quite correct.
P.S. Of course the reason for the "soft ice cream" propane RV refrigerator complaints is that the freezer sections in them are not being kept at an average of 0 degrees or less. My test has proved that, for at least our Norcold model and the way Winnebago installed it, an RV propane freezer is capable of maintaining 0 degrees in it's freezer section.
