Quote:
Originally Posted by Piwoslaw
Put a small fan under the rear coils, blowing upward whenever the compressor is on. This improves the heat exchange efficiency of the radiator, and helps the warm air leave the rear wall faster.
|
This ^
Got our first fridge in 1980 and while the compressor was running the power consumption was 240 watts. An hours running meter showed long term average it ran 60% of the time. By 2002 I got the urge to do something about it. Put a pair of 90mm computer fans at the bottom of the coils, aiming upward and came on with the compressor. Also inside, a single 90mm fan aimed at the centre of the flat plate evaporator about 15mm away and running continuously. Like a fan forced oven but cold. Temp was set at 4 deg C. With these mods the compressor duty cycle dropped from 60% to 31%. Only snag was the freezer was now not cold enough to keep ice cream hard. Very soft and soggy. Didn't measure the temp in the freezer. Kept it like this till late 2019 when we finally put it out because there was a number of water leaks because of cracks in the plastic interior. One interesting point - the interior fan was a ball bearing type and had run continuously for something like 150,000 hours and was still perfectly good. Low temps definitely makes for long bearing life.