Is freezer burn a real concern? It's not certain. The temperature changes in the interior of the freezer are very small, only a few degrees. The evaporator coils may be heated up from 0 degrees to 32 degrees during the auto defrost process, but that doesn't mean the freezer storage area is being heated that much.
As long as your food is wrapped properly and used up in a timely manner, you should be fine. The energy usage issue is more of a concern with chest or upright freezers than with refrigerators.
If you don't mind the once-a-year chore, they can be a great choice. For added convenience, look for a model with a front drain so it's easier to connect a hose to drain water during defrosting. Every time you open your freezer, you're adding moisture from the outside into the freezer compartment that can turn into frost. If you open your freezer often, a frost free model would be a better choice to manage this frost buildup.
If you want to deep freeze food for long term storage, a manual defrost deep freezer could work well for your needs. We hope you enjoyed this brief discussion of frost free freezers vs manual defrost. This should help you decide if a frost free refrigerator is right for you.
Please leave a comment below. We'd love to hear from you! Editor's Note: This blog was originally written in November of and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy as of the publication date noted above. Topics: Refrigerators , Upright Freezers. We make every effort to keep our pricing as accurate as possible. Pricing changes over time and other factors like sales and rebates change as well. Prices reflected on this blog are for reference only and are as of the date of the publication of the individual post.
Please contact our store or visit our website for current pricing. The resistance is not really that important, what is important is that it is not open circuit. This heater is normally wrapped around the evaporator a typical frost free freezer evaporator shown in diagram above in the freezer and can be a very awkward spare part to replace that is, if it can be replaced as a spare part.
It is also not designed to be easily serviceable. These are the temperature sensors that send back the current temperature inside the fridge and freezer to the electronics. Thermistors are simple things. All they do is change resistance based on the temperature into which they are installed, this resistance is reported to the electronic controller and the controller then decides using it's internal logic what to do with that information.
In this self help section there is an article on thermistors and how to check for faults on them. This is the logic centre of the whole appliance that will read the temperatures given by the thermistors and control when the compressor switches on and off to cool, when the defrost cycle is run and when to cut in and out fans, often including any cooling fans.
It is easy for many people to simple "assume" that the electronic controller is at fault but, with some notable exceptions such as Whirlpool American style fridge freezers made in Italy and many Diplomat models , it is usually the last component that an engineer will replace for two fundamental reasons.
The first is that, on the whole, the electronic cards used in fridge freezers are not under a great deal of stress and therefore do not tend to fail too often and that they are usually the most expensive option. It is unwise at best to replace the most expensive component on the strength of guesswork.
Our advice is to thoroughly check all the other components are operational BEFORE even assuming that there is a problem with the electronic control unit unless you've had a look through our forums and identified it as a particular problem on your model. Also do bear in mind that if you put a board in and find that's not the problem you won't be able to return it as it is then considered to be used. On older and lower cost machines you may well find a defrost timer instead of an electronic control unit.
These are small electrical timers that operate the defrost cycle on, usually, four, six, eight, twelve or twenty four hour cycles. What they do is essentially run and cut in the defrost heater as required depending on the fridge freezer's requirement for defrosting.
Although these are pretty standard in some machines with timers from Ranco mainly, it is important that you get one with the correct defrost time or the fridge freezer could over freeze, causing the ice build up failure or defrost too often causing food not to be stored under the correct conditions. You may, on some fridge freezer models, have what is known as a defrost termination or a defrost initiation thermostat and, in some cases these functions will be combined.
If fitted it is possible for these to fail and if they do not operate correctly then you can get no defrost cycle being initiated or, the machine in an almost permanent defrost cycle. Whilst on a defrost cycle the compressor will not run and, therefore, the fridge freezer will not cool. Now that you have a grasp of the basic components and what they do please don't consider that you are an expert but, basic fault diagnosis should be possible for most people with some elementary electrical and mechanical skills.
If you don't think you have these basic skills, call an engineer as it is easy to do more harm than good!
The former indicates water freezing up where it shouldn't be usually and the latter would indicate air ingress, so check the door seal. The compressor is an electric motor encased in a metal housing that compresses the gas used normally Ra these days and previously Ra which, under pressure, is pumped around the pipework of the fridge freezer.
This gas system is a sealed one using a very small amount of refrigerant gas and, as it is sealed, it does not need topped up with gas. The compressor is sent a signal to start, based on the internal temperature either by the electronics or by a thermostat. It is possible that, if the compressor does not run, that the start relay is faulty which is attached to the side of the unit.
Usually there's a wiring diagram on that so that you can check it with a multimeter but, again, this assumes that you have a basic electrical knowledge. If the fridge freezer is an electronically controlled unit it will, normally, display some sort of error code if it encounters a problem. However, like most fault codes, it will generally give an indication of where to look for the problem or failure, it won't normally pin point the exact failure for you.
I know that sounds odd but what happens is that, should the machine not defrost correctly the evaporator will over freeze leading to an ice build up which jams the fan.
This means that air is not forced into the cabinet and it will then appear as if the unit is not cooling. We'll look at the fridge freezer that the exploded diagram shows on the first page of this article to walk you through the general principles of a frost free fridge freezer.
Blowout diagram showing the main view of the fridge freezer. The first diagram, shown above again just to save you jumping back a page, shows the main blowout of the fridge freezer. We'll go over all the main bits and use a separate diagram to show the freezer. Blowout diagram showing the freezer evaporator, fan motor and thermostat.
What you see here is the internals of the freezer section in this integrated fridge freezer blown out for spare part identification. It is a good example as it has most of that parts that you would ever be likely to see for most fridge freezers. Now, on the parts diagram you would think that part D was the defrost element as it points to the two wires but, like many these days, it isn't actually available as a spare part.
Instead, you have to buy the complete freezer evaporator to replace a simple heater. D and D are the thermistors or sensors that detect the temperature inside the freezer, in this case also initiating the defrost cycle as the defrost initiation thermostat, shown in this diagram as D, isn't actually fitted on this model. D is a baffle to keep the cooled air in the evaporator area so you don't get a cold spot in the freezer and also to reduce noise. The cold air is drawn up and forced out into the freezer by the fan motor, shown as D through the two baffle plates to the right of that.
A frost-free model costs more to operate because it uses a heater to melt ice crystals, a fan to circulate cold air and sensors to monitor for frost buildup. Freezer burn occurs when ice crystals form on the surface of stored food. The affected food tastes nasty and frequently develops an unpleasant texture.
Because frost-free models prevent ice crystals from developing on any surface inside of the storage area, frost can't form on your stored food. Wrapping up items in polyethylene baggies, plastic-coated freezer paper or heavy-duty aluminum foil further protects your food from cold damage. The lack of frost buildup on food packages also means that the labels should remain legible and the packages themselves won't stick together. Because frost won't build up in the food storage area of the freezer, you should never lose your total volume of storage space.
However, frost-free models use a fan to blow cold air into the food storage compartment. Many people overfill their freezers, which means the air can't circulate between the food contents properly.
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