Tuesday, November 29, 2005

An important lesson in refrigerators

Our ice machine in our refrigerator stopped working the other day.  Simultaneously, the filtered water line stopped working and vegetables started freezing in the vegetable drawer.  Having experienced water lines freezing in the past, I turned down the temperature in the refrigerator, but that had no effect.  Luckily I had purchased the extended warranty through Sears, so the repair guy came out today.

The repair guy told my wife what the problem was:

The temperature control in the freezer controls the temperature for both the refrigerator and freezer portions of the fridge.  The temperature control in the refrigerator portion is simply a baffle control for the amount of cold air coming in from the freezer.  Consequently, if the freezer dial is turned up too high, it doesn’t matter how warm the refrigerator setting is.

Unfortunately, the freezer temperature control is located directly over the automatic ice dispenser — very easy to turn the temperature control when you reach your hand in for ice.  Everything’s working fine now and I will rectify the temperature control problem in the freezer with a piece of tape so that it doesn’t happen again.

As a side note — the original 5 year warranty for the fridge from Sears was $300 and this service call (the repair guy had to replace the ice machine motor because it had run without water for so long) would have cost $224; I highly recommend appliance warranties.

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