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amyf5

How to get garage freezer to work in cold weather

amyf5
11 years ago

I have a 7-year-old GE refrigerator/freezer in my unheated, insulated, attached garage in the Midwest. When it gets very cold, the freezer stops working and my food partially defrosts. I have read that this is a common problem. If I understand correctly, the unit runs based on the temperature sensor inside the refrigerator. So when it's 30 degrees in my garage, it stops running which is fine for the fridge, but not for the freezer.

There is a product called a Chillerator made by Whirlpool which is specifically designed to work in very hot or very cold environments like a garage. But it's pricey.

I was wondering if a halogen or LED puck light inside my fridge might generate enough heat to trick the whole unit into running even when the garage gets very cold. I'm interested in any comments on this idea or any other (easy) solutions to my problem.

Thank you.

Amy

Comments (60)

  • alan_s_thefirst
    11 years ago

    It does seem wasteful, though - heating part of a fridge in order to keep another part cooler?

    I guess if that's what it takes...

  • amyf5
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Thank you for the suggestions. After some more research, I decided to go ahead and order the Chillerator. Some combination of light bulbs, electrical tape, resistors, and heating pads would probably work, but they are beyond what I want to try and not guaranteed. I appreciate the advice and will post back on how the Chillerator works out.

  • MattTheApplianceGuy
    11 years ago

    This is only a problem with new fridges. Old fridges, 60's through the mid-nineties, have no problem in the garage. New appliances are junk (there are a few exceptions), Get a used fridge from a reputable used dealer for the garage.

  • ionized_gw
    11 years ago

    What is the design change that kills them at lower temps?

  • Touchette
    10 years ago

    Refrigerators made after 1996 have the newer type of freon. This created a huge problem for the manufacturers with a 5 year compressor replacement policy because of burned up units. Solution for the manufacturer was to shorten the compressor to a 1 year warranty.
    The temp range for these refrigerators is around 55 degrees to 110 degrees. This creates the problem of the freezers thawing in an unheated garage because the compressor with the newer freon can't handle the cold temp and the temp bulb that tells the compressor to run to cool the freezer has exceeded it's limits.
    The only solution to force the unit to operate is to heat the compressor in cold weather with a heater kit, a stick on heat pad or an incandescent light bulb.
    I live in the Midwest, with an attached unheated garage with two refrigerators. The 1951 GE works like a champ and has never had a problem except replacing the door seals and requirement to defrost twice a year. When my 1987 GE top freezer refrigerator went Tango / Uniform I replaced it with a new dent and scratched Frigidare. Had to install the optional heater kit to make it survive. Hope this helps.

  • MikeSchacter
    10 years ago

    You people seem much smarter than I am with respect to this. Based on what Touchette just said, I have a GE top end side by side fridge with digital monitoring that is 21 or 22 years old. I moved it to the garage this summer and want to know if it will work in my unheated, uninsulated garage. I live in Calgary, where the temp can go from comfortable to very, very cold in a day. Right now the fridge is flashing a De symbol which is a warning message. Any suggestions.

  • dudleydorightdad
    10 years ago

    I'll but in, Freon was a DuPont trademark. Everyone manufactures refrigerants but only DuPont made Freon. Most newer unit run with refrigerant R134. It has different capacity and operating parameters than what was in almost all boxes, R12. How cold are these garages. If that cold, why not just crack open the freezer side? Rube golberg I know, just had to say it. As an addendum even the best compressors in the older refers used reed valves in the recip compressors, and 10-12 years is the tipping point where it is cheaper to replace it based on energy usage, especially if in an area of elevated summer temps, like a closed garage. They are not tanks. The old rotary compressors I cannot comment on their life cycle but may be more or may be less. And the problem with the unheated environment is that the refrigerant in the system WILL under ALL conditions migrate to the coldest area due to the simple physics involving pressure, temperature and volume relationships and the Gas Laws. Compressors are vapor pumps and WILL NOT withstand liquid filled crankcase or cylinders, which is what you will end up with if the garage is colder than inside the box. Compressor would need a crankcase heater, which could be controlled to cycle off above a certain temp to minimize heat gain during an undesired time and energy consumption. I bet if you read your literature it will address environmental limitations. Keep in mind any thermostat works with some sort of volatile fluid in a diaphragm vs spring scenario. If it is too cold that fluid is just going to sleep, nice and unfettered by heat so it will not expand and oppose the spring. One cheap alternative is to put a small temp alarm on the freezer and pay a little more attention to it after all it is an investment is it not. Food isn't cheap. Also a lot of refrigerators use what is called a constant cut in type of thermostat and changing the set point in that cold an environment would have less effect than you think it would. A commercial control is always a possibility.

  • Wizard346
    10 years ago

    How about installing the heater for the compressor, and a thermostat in the freezer for the light bulb in the fridge?

  • waltplant1
    9 years ago

    I found this product, Kat's 150 Watt Silicone Pad Heater Model# 24150 on the northern tool site. I was wondering if it would suffice in keeping an upright freezer compressor warm enough to operate in the cold winter months? The freezer is currently in an unheated 2 car garage.

    Here is a link that might be useful: RE: How to get garage freezer to work in cold weather

  • ionized_gw
    9 years ago

    Too many unknowns, Walt. It depends on the temp of your garage and how well the heat is transferred from the pad to the compressor. The other question is, do you know the max and minimum allowable temperature for the compressor?

  • dhd47
    9 years ago

    I placed a little oven light bulb in my fridge and it has solved my issue with the freezer not being cold enough. I can't say if there is an issue with the oil or compressor but this has been working for me since mid last winter.
    Dave

  • J Mc
    9 years ago

    I'm having an issue with the Freezer defrosting because the frig is in my uninsulated garage and it is below zero here.This may be a silly question, but as I'm reading these ideas I'm wondering "where do you put the light bulb"? I have an old Whirlpool (Model ET22RK) top freezer frig. I don't even know where the compressor is!

  • ionized_gw
    9 years ago

    Good2, if it is below zero, how can the stuff in the freezer be thawed? Is that below zero F or below zero C?

    Put a lamp in the lower part of the refrigerator. The thermostat is in there and controls the compressor. Cold air is diverted at a constant volume to the freezer so you must make the unit run based on refrigerator section temperature. If all works well, the lamp will both prevent the refrigerator section from freezing and keep the freezer cold.

  • J Mc
    9 years ago

    Thank you ionized......my friend e-mailed me and said "Refrigerator thermostats usually keep the refrigerator around 40 degrees. When its located in a room that is near or below 40 degrees, the refrigerator thermostat is happy, and shuts off the freezer cooler ... that is why the freezer thaws in that environment."

    I'm going to try either getting a space heater OR put a lamp in the frig. Thanks so much for your idea.

  • J Mc
    9 years ago

    IT WORKED! I took my clip on desk light and clipped it in the refrigerator and it started everything working again. Not sure if I'm supposed to turn the light off after awhile or just let it run. I'm thinking the frig will shut off when it's cooled like it's supposed to be.

    Thank you everyone who had all these great ideas!

  • ionized_gw
    9 years ago

    Use the smallest lamp that works to keep your freezer cold enough to save electricity. Leave it in there as long as it is cold enough in the garage to keep the refrig from running

  • pharkus
    9 years ago

    Anyone care for some over-engineering?

    Find a closed-when-warm thermostat with a setting that matches the desired freezer temp. Put it in the freezer section and parallel it with the fridge thermostat.

  • ionized_gw
    9 years ago

    Pharkus, that might freeze the lettuce!

  • ccecilm
    9 years ago

    I had the same "no freezing" problem with our 40 year old fridge we keep in the unheated garage. I turned the freezer control to the lowest setting and it started freezing again.


  • amyf5
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Instead of a small lamp, do you think a battery-powered flashlight would put out enough heat? I wouldn't mind changing the batteries every month or so, but maybe a flashlight would only last a few days if it's on constantly.

  • ionized_gw
    9 years ago

    An incandescent lamp makes heat proportional to its wattage. In a flashlight the internal resistance of the battery causes some waste heat output there too, but I don't know the magnitude. I am sure that information is available.

  • dhd47
    9 years ago

    I wouldn't think a flashlight would have enough heat to cause the frig to run as needed. I guess you can try it but I wouldn't be surprised it didn't work.

    D

  • amyf5
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Well I might give each a try - the flashlight and the desk lamp with 40W bulb. I'll post back with my results. I actually own the Chillerator now and while it is working better than the unit it replaced, it tends to keep my freezer between 0 and 10 degrees, most often between 5 and 10, which is not cold enough. I had it repaired twice and replaced once. Thanks for the comments.

  • russell1725
    9 years ago

    Last year, I purchased
    a Gladiator "Chillerator Garage Refrigerator," made by Whirlpool,
    specifically for use in my garage, and it does NOT solve this problem. Even in
    my insulated garage, the Freezer temperature has stayed above 20 degrees
    Fahrenheit all winter. I've made several calls to Whirlpool customer service
    about this problem and they've sent a few technicians out to try to fix it.
    Now Whirlpool says that the refrigerator is "working properly" even though nothing they did made any difference. Even last summer, the freezer temperature rarely went below 5 degrees.

  • amyf5
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Russell1725, I think we are having a similar issue. My (second/replacement) Whirlpool Chillerator has been at a steady 10 degrees in the freezer for weeks. My garage is also insulated and rarely drops below 40 degrees.

    I have a technician coming this week to repair the Chillerator. The part they are going to use is "W10740320 Barrier". The instructions it came with say "Control Box and Air Diffuser Rework". Does anyone know how it is supposed to help? It's a 7" long clear plastic straw with some tape.

  • hayes370
    8 years ago

    We installed a garage kit on our Frigidaire eight years ago and the freezer has quit working. Do they go bad?


  • ionized_gw
    8 years ago

    What does your garage kit do?

  • greg_2015
    8 years ago

    I assume he's talking about this? It just looks like a little heater coil.


    Garage Kit

    Do they go bad? I guess like any kind of electrical component, it can break.

    Did yours go bad? I can't tell from here. It's possible that it stopped working. It's also possible that it's something totally different in your freezer that broke.

  • toxcrusadr
    8 years ago

    Is your Frigidaire a freezer only or a fridge-freezer? If it's a freezer, any number of things could have gone wrong - thermostat, compressor, loss of refrigerant, etc. If it's a fridge-freezer, and the refrigerator is still cold but the freezer is not, from the sound of this thread you may have a problem with the cold air getting to the freezer. Are those vents open as they should be? Or, if your garage kit was a heater to put on the thermostat in the fridge, it may have stopped working. You should be able to tell whether that heater is warm or not...

  • hayes370
    8 years ago

    Thanks - it appears that the garage kit has stopped working it is not warm at all. Our next step is to bring it into the house and see if it will start working.



  • LagerAle
    7 years ago

    digging up and old thread here, but....

    why not just prop the fridge door open enough to turn the bulb on. in mid winter at just below freezing my bulb's heat will kick the compressor on in 10-15 mins. next time I walk by the fridge I close the door. if you are able to this a couple times a day the freezer should get enough cold from the fridge, and the fridge shouldn't run excessively from a overly warm bulb.

  • william_canan
    7 years ago

    I placed a 15-watt light bulb under the thermostat inside my upright refrigerator, then ran the cord through the door seal and connected it to a timer that turned the light on/off every 30 minutes. My garage temperature is in the 45-50 degree range in the winter. This action kept my food solidly frozen while not lowering the normal operating temperature inside the frig. Last year, without this "fix", my freezer food thawed to the point that I had to throw it out.

  • Peter Baluk
    7 years ago

    all I did was move the door switch from its bracket which allows the light to stay on and basically fools the unit

  • ionized_gw
    7 years ago

    God idea to modify the switch, but it does not "fool" anything. The lamp is just a heater.

  • PRO
    Slap my mest of your grill
    6 years ago

    Refrigerant Works off a heat exchange run by a compressor, when it gets cold, the mesh behind the refrigerator doesn't work as efficac. Plus when your frigerator is outside Freon expands in the heat so when it's outside it probably doesn't get as cold because the friends not running as efficient

  • DavidR
    6 years ago

    Sorry, Slap, but that makes no sense to me at all. Maybe you're using a hand held gadget with auto-correction gone berserk.

    I don't see why you resurrected a 5-year-old thread anyway, but whatever.

    And while we're at it, what exactly is your mest of my grill, and why do you want me to slap it?

    For the record, I have a 30+ year old Wards upright freezer in my unheated garage. It's never failed to keep the food frozen, regardless of garage temperature.

    For one winter, I even had it on an open but covered back porch. No problems.

    A household refrigerator-freezer is just that -- it's designed to be used in a normally heated living space. It's the wrong appliance for an unheated area.

    You could get a refrigerator without a freezer (or just don't use the freezer compartment), and a completely separate freezer. Your fridge could still fall below freezing and freeze food that's not supposed to be, however.

    You'd also probably still need to provide some heat for the compressors on newer units. A 4 Watt pet heating pad zip-tied to each compressor might be enough, but you'd have to experiment (start with higher wattage and work your way down).

    That's still a hassle. The easiest and cheapest fix by far is to move your garage refrigerator to the cellar, or some other nominally-heated indoor utility area.

  • HU-511019056
    4 years ago

    I fixed mine. I removed the light switch and let it hang and replaced the frige bulb with a 20 watt standard house bulb. The light stays on and produces enough heat in the lower compartment to make it cycle enough to keep the freezer compartment frozen. Need more heat get a bigger bulb. In summer just replace the light switch.

  • toxcrusadr
    4 years ago

    I was thinking that it would be nice if the compressor could be INSIDE the house, remote from the garage fridge. Not a very practical solution but it would solve the problem of the compressor being too cold. And, in winter at least, it would dump the waste heat into the house. Free heat! Of course in summer you'd have to move it out to the garage again. Only a tinkerer would find any merit in this arrangement.

  • HU-511019056
    4 years ago

    SIMPLE NO COST FIX: 1- In the winter remove the door switch that turns the refrigerator light out when the door is closed--(leave it hanging). Replace the refrigerator light bulb with whatever size bulb it takes to provide enough heat to cycle the refrigerator to keep the freezer compartment frozen. A 20 watt bulb works for me. Might also have to adjust the control between the freezer and the refrigerator.

    2: In the summer replace the door switch.

  • DavidR
    4 years ago

    Say, Hu, how about posting your solution 2 or 3 more times? I don't think I understand it yet. :)

  • toxcrusadr
    4 years ago

    At least he's consistent. :-D

  • Stax
    4 years ago

    And helpful... seems that's novel of late. lol

  • Douglas Gourlay
    3 years ago

    the comments about Freon expanding in a cold environment.... of course that is nonsense. the coils that may or may not be visible on the back of the unit is the condenser. The purpose is to condense the refrigerant vapor from the Evaporator - a cold environment makes this more efficient. It is the purpose of the condenser to exchange heat removed from the evaporator.


    If you look on line, there are actually flex PCB modules to insert into the thermostatic control to trick it to continue to run the compressor, regardless what the outside temp is. Honestly, it's difficult to imagine how the compressor in a cold environment would fair worse than in a warm location.

  • HU-801900507
    3 years ago

    I have a perfectly good fridge/freezer in an unheated garage and put some rope lights, i.e., led Xmas lights, under the darn thing and got the temperature in the freezer DOWN TEN DEGREES before I had to leave for work this morning. I am looking forward to seeing if the temperature in the freezer came down any more when I get home!! A heated floor mat might work as well. Pray for me!!

  • Tracey Noullett
    3 years ago

    I have this problem at my cabin. I turn the heat down to 10 Celsius and then my freezer fails to run effectively. Will try the switch trick

  • Jeannie B
    3 years ago
    last modified: 3 years ago

    Is there a reason why you cant just leave the freezer door open when temps are so low, the freezer wont freeze by itself? Will it hurt the fridge? It's only 19 degrees in our garage right now. Just curious...and thanks!

  • LagerAle
    3 years ago

    If you are only using your fridge as a freezer And temps are this cold consistently it wouldn’t hurt. I suspect most are concerned with a fridge and freezer combo‘s functionality in temps that aren’t this cold. At your temps, the fridge becomes a freezer over time.

  • HU-690762979
    3 years ago

    Same with us

    we have a lakehouse. And in winter we turn heat down while we are gone

    weeks later when we come back. The freezer has thawed!

    it’s a new refrigerator


  • HU-847132076
    2 years ago

    I purchased one of those stick on heating elements for my 2 year old fridgeair at the same time i purchased a 6foot pipe heater to wrap the compressor with. anyone found which works best? maybe both, leat heat tape on the compressor 134 in a liquid state i belive may be im wrong?


  • chevywaldo
    2 years ago

    I just went through all of this. Here are my findings.........


    nobody at the HUGE appliance business i purchased my combo fridge/freezer knows anything about this issue except: "putting a combo fridge/freezer in a garage won't work - unless the garage is heated, because they're not designed to be in a cold garage" is all they could offer.


    they don't know "why" only that they won't work properly.


    So I'm a degreed Control System Engineer for 35 years and very anal with getting things to work - so I wanted to get to the bottom of this.


    The problem with my combo fridge freezer is that the thermostat is located only in the refrigerator. No thermostat in the freezer. So when i put the combo fridge freezer in my cold garage (garage temp got down into the 30's at times) the thermostat in the fridge was satisfied and never turned on the compressor. Consequently the freezer wasn't cold enough.


    Solution ? I put a thermostat in the freezer and wired it in parallel to the refrigerator thermostat so that if either thermostat called for cooling - the compressor would run.


    fridge thermostat setpoint = 35 deg

    freezer thermostat setpoint = 0 deg.


    it's been about a week now and all is working well. everything in freezer is frozen and nothing in fridge is frozen.


    I am fortunate to be handy and know electrical systems and wiring - so i was able to do this myself. If you can't do this yourself or can't find someone who can, try looking for a fridge/freezer combo that has independent thermostats (one in fridge and one in freezer) and try that.


    I found it interesting that when I called this HUGE appliance store that i bought my unit from, and talked to people in customer service, sales and service - that nobody knew why my unit did not work properly in a cold garage..........all they could say is "they are not designed for that" (idiots...)


    One more thing - if you see the "heating element" accessory offered as a "quick fix" for this situation, know this...............all that does is heat up the thermostat in the refrigerator to make the compressor run more to keep the freezer frozen. Yes this works but your electric bill may be higher because it may be causing your compressor to run when it doesn't need to. It's basically a band aid fix. If you have no choice - maybe try that accessory. Better than nothing i suppose.


    reach me at lwallace@pcsoc.com if you need more help.



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