Mastering Refrigerator Maintenance

[Paul Rhodes] (0:02 - 11:59) Today's episode on the Multifamily Media Network, we're going to be discussing an appliance that I probably spend a little bit too much time with, just because of my clothing size. That's right. We're talking about the refrigerator.

We're going to be looking at most common repairs, how they operate, even some tips and tricks possibly on how we can save some money in our vacant utilities, all today on The Maintenance Mindset. At its heart, the refrigerator is one of those modern conveniences that lets us enjoy food for a longer period of time. Maybe it's just a case of it lets us enjoy food.

Try and think of what an apartment would be like without a refrigerator. We'd just about have to go to a store or to a restaurant every day, and whatever was left over from our meals, we would have to consume in a very, very short period of time. Dairy products and proteins and different things that right now we bring home from the store and we keep in our refrigerator for, in some cases, weeks, wouldn't last anywhere near that long.

So, whenever a refrigerator goes down in the life of one of our residents, it's a pretty important event. It's a good idea to know or be aware of what your emergency status is regarding refrigerators, and, Mr. or Mrs. Maintenance Professional, it's a good idea to know what options are before getting loudly talked to by a resident for when their food goes bad, or when the refrigerator goes bad, hopefully before the food has gone bad. And the reason why I bring that answer up is at your community.

If a resident calls after hours or during hours, what are your options? Are you going to allow taking one operating refrigerator out of maybe a vacant apartment or another apartment and moving it to that one, so that way the food stays good? Or, if you're on a newer community, do you call in the warranty and have the service technician come from the manufacturer to honor the warranty?

Maybe you attempt to fix it, and if that last one is the one, which I hope is the one you choose, let's talk about it. Repairing a refrigerator today is actually fairly simple. Newer refrigerators even have computers in them that, if you read the instruction manuals, they will tell you how to enter troubleshooting mode or diagnostic mode.

I mean, my refrigerator at my house actually has a couple of buttons that you push in a certain sequence, and it will run the defrost cycle through its operation, the compressor through its operation, and test individual components of that refrigerator. Now, I admit my refrigerator is six or seven years old, and it is a little bit nicer than what we generally have on many of our communities. And that's okay.

Even if your refrigerator happens to be older or it doesn't have that onboard computer controls, repairs to a refrigerator are actually pretty easy. The nice thing about refrigerators is they are extremely durable. Generally speaking, a refrigerator, if it's going to fail, it will fail early enough in its life so it's covered under warranty.

If it doesn't fail at that time, they have a tendency to last quite a while. Now, newer refrigerators do have a shorter lifespan than older refrigerators, in some cases for a little bit of sneaky reasons. And that's where we actually begin talking about.

See, at its heart, a refrigerator is just an air conditioner. And by that, I mean a refrigerator does the exact same thing that an air conditioner does. An air conditioner absorbs heat inside the apartment and carries that heat outside the apartment when it's in cooling mode.

A refrigerator does that same thing all the time, meaning a refrigerator, at heart, it absorbs heat from inside the box and carries that heat outside the box. You can know this because in the same way your refrigerator has hot air coming from one side or the other, your air conditioner has hot air coming from outside. By that, if you go to the condensing unit of your air conditioner, you put your hand over the top.

You'll feel hot air coming out of it when that condensing unit is operating. The air comes from around the outside of the unit, outside the apartment. But the temperature, the heat that comes from that condensing unit, that heat originated inside the apartment.

Our refrigerator does the same thing. By the way, this is probably why if your resident has a cat, the cat is sitting next to or around the refrigerator because it likes the hot, sometimes moist air. That your refrigerator gives off through normal operation.

Your refrigerator has two sides to it. It has a fresh food compartment and a freezer compartment. Normal temperatures that you will end up seeing inside of that device or that box will be fairly specific, but it'll always be a range.

And the range is good. In the freezer compartment, generally speaking, you're looking for below zero up to a maximum of 10 degrees Fahrenheit. If you're getting above 10 degrees Fahrenheit when you're checking the temperature inside the freezer, you may have a problem that's just beginning.

And the nice thing about solving problems when they're beginning is it doesn't lead to ruined food. In the fresh food compartment, generally speaking, your temperature is going to be between 35 to roughly 42, 43 degrees. Now, in the fresh food compartment, that temperature range is very important.

And the reason why has to do with the diet. In other words, the type of food that your resident enjoys eating. If you have a resident that is a vegetarian or they have a limited high vegetable diet, then that implies that they have a lot of water containing foods inside the fresh food compartment of their refrigerator.

The reason why that's important is how your refrigerator is made. Think for a moment, if you would, about your refrigerator. Do you have the freezer on top or the freezer on the bottom?

Or is your freezer on one side or the other? In other words, the location of your freezer is critical to know because the freezer is actually the only part of the appliance that gets cold. In essence, that's where heat is absorbed.

Your fresh food, it gets the air put into that compartment after it has lost its heat. What that means is if your freezer is on top of the fresh food, that means that the frozen air, the air that is below zero, will come from the freezer, it enters or is injected into the fresh food compartment on the back wall, goes down that back wall and then comes up across the front. What that implies is the coldest part of your refrigerator is going to be the farther back you get.

In other words, for those residents who like a lot of vegetables, a lot of water involved, the air that comes out of that freezer compartment is below zero. That means that if lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, apples, fruits and vegetables, if they are shoved all the way back in the fresh food compartment, they're freezing. Even though the entire compartment is above freezing, the air that hits them is freezing.

In those cases, you may want to moderate the temperature inside the freezer a little bit higher. What that does is it decreases the amount of run time that your refrigerator has while still maintaining below freezing in the freezer. Because it runs less, there is less of that below zero temperature air hitting your fresh fruits and vegetables so they don't freeze and ruin them.

What I'm getting at here is that we, as maintenance professionals, need to have an understanding of how this device is designed to work. Knowing that, when we go into a resident's apartment, we can begin to diagnose what's going on with their refrigerator, with their appliance. And often, it's just a case of paying attention to those small details.

One of the other small details that we need to begin paying attention to is how full the refrigerator is. Now, the best operating refrigerator, and by best operating, I mean most efficient that the refrigerator will ever be, is 80% full.

[Paul Rhodes] (12:00 - 12:26) Yeah, an empty refrigerator actually costs more to operate. Anything above 80% full doesn't cool properly, and they both are there for similar reasons, or both of those statements are in place for similar reasons.

[Paul Rhodes] (12:27 - 29:12) An empty refrigerator, a refrigerator that has nothing in it, doesn't contain thermal mass. Now, what that means is that anything inside the refrigerator is going to be the temperature of the air that surrounds it inside the refrigerator. And one of the, I think it's the second law of thermodynamics, states that heat will always move from a higher to a lower temperature.

That means when your resident puts food into the refrigerator, that food, we're assuming, is room temperature, and the inside of the fresh food compartment is between 35 and 42 degrees. Therefore, heat will leave the food and go to the air. That air will circulate to the coil in the freezer compartment, where the refrigerant will carry the heat outside.

Exactly what an air conditioner does. In the case of a refrigerator though, that food, once it assumes room temperature in the fresh food compartment, that food is now roughly 38 degrees. That also means that there is less air inside the refrigerator, and that 38 degree solid food holds temperature better than air does.

I mean, all you need to do is go down in the middle of the night for a snack, in mostly barefoot, and then open up the refrigerator. What do you feel on your toes? That's right.

All the air comes out of the refrigerator. Due to another law of physics that says no two objects can be in the same place at the same time. And essentially what that means is, when all of that colder air comes out of the refrigerator and freezes your toes, the warmer air from the room goes into the box and takes up that space.

The more stuff that's inside the box at room temperature, the less air that's there is to swap out, meaning there is more lower temperature in the fresh food when you close the door, which means the refrigerator doesn't have to run as long in order to remove heat from as much stuff. That's thermal mass. The problem is though, is once you get above about 80% inside the refrigerator, you begin to obstruct the airflow.

Okay. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen this?

You go to a residence apartment, you open up the freezer and it is stacked back to front, full of food, even in the ice maker. You've got food, bags, cans, frozen pizzas, all of the frozen food, and it is shoved and packed and stacked in there. That freezer is not functioning correctly.

It can't. Air cannot get to every surface in there. The freezer operates best when it's roughly 80% full.

That means there's 20% of airspace around so that that frozen air can circulate all over and under and around your food. That little detail is something that we have to pass along to our residents. And it can be challenging whenever you have one of those warehouse stores nearby that your residents like to go to.

And, you know, instead of buying the one pound bag of frozen peas, they get the 50 pound bag of frozen peas and that takes up the entire freezer as it is. Things like this, we need to be aware of so that when we're beginning to diagnose our refrigerators, we can begin to inform our residents of what there is. And it is a case of those details matter.

After this short break, we're going to talk a little bit about some more details that if forgotten, they can even shorten the life of our refrigerator. Be right back. So we're talking about details and how they matter where refrigerator repairs are concerned.

And one of the little details that I kind of jetted past is measuring the temperature inside our refrigerator. Because how you measure the temperature in your refrigerator, whether it's fresh food or freezer or freezer compartment matters under normal circumstances, we're taking that temperature. Remember below zero to 10 degrees for the freezer and 35 to about 42, 43 degrees for the fresh food.

When we take that temperature, most of us will reach for a device like this. And those of you on video, you know exactly what I'm holding. For those of you who are listening to this, I'm holding a thermometer.

And the thermometer looks like I typically refer to this as a meat probe thermometer, because that's what the end of it looks like. You stick this into your steak to know when it's done. This is what we use to measure air temperature.

Under most circumstances, I would say we need to measure it with this, because when you're working on an air conditioner, you need to measure the air coming off of the coil or the air going into the system. And for that, you use this style thermometer. The only problem is that a refrigerator, in order to get an accurate reading of the air temperature in the refrigerator, the instant we open the door, all that air comes out, that means in order to get an accurate temperature, you would take this and put it in the refrigerator, close the door, wait five or 10 minutes, and then open it back up.

And then you'll be able to see your temperature. The only problem is, is when you read the digital numbers, they don't exactly work down around or below freezing. I know this has got this nice, sharp, pointy end on it in the freezer.

All we need to do is go into our residence food and shove that pointy end into the refrigerator, into the ice cream, right? No, no, that's no. Full disclaimer, that's a horrible, bad idea.

Don't ever do it. And if somebody ever tells you that they can tell the temperature of the freezer by squeezing the ice cream, those are fighting words. You and I, we're about to have what I would like to call a wall to wall discussion.

We may have a come to whatever deity you believe in moment, because you don't mess with my ice cream. That re is the reason behind for a refrigerator service. This type thermometer is not best for use.

Instead, use this thermometer. This, for those of you who are not looking on video is an infrared thermometer, commonly referred to as a cat toy thermometer, because when you pull the little trigger, a red light comes out and, um, I may or may not, um, have, uh, run some cats into the walls over time, but I know nothing about that. This thermometer though, measures surface temperature.

And since we're dealing with an enclosed environment and it can take up to eight hours for a refrigerator to assume it's operating temperature. We want to look at the temperature that the food is that has been in that refrigerator for eight hours. So in other words, that degree of heat, the temperature inside the fresh food or the freezer, do yourself a favor.

Grab an infrared thermometer and shoot, pull the trigger on five or six different items inside the refrigerator and understand that depending on where the food items are in the box can determine that there's a little bit of a temperature difference, items that are on the bottom in the back will tend to be colder than items that are in the door, for instance, as a matter of fact, more and more manufacturers are recommending you don't put milk in the door of your refrigerator.

High protein items like dairy and steaks, they need to be kept colder. So it's actually better to shove those in the bottom, in the back. Items and details like that would be very good to give as information to our residents for the proper operation of the refrigerator.

Another thing, detail that often gets overlooked about a refrigerator, and that's cleanliness. You see the number one most common issue with refrigerator problems, heating, you know, being too hot or not being cold enough is airflow. We've already talked about obstructed airflow inside the box, but actually there's another issue.

The other issue is too much air coming from outside the box. What is it around the door? That keeps the outside air out and the inside air in.

That's right. It's the door seal. That's a strip of rubber that is flexible, that goes around the outside of the door.

And if you're watching, when you get it close, you'll actually see that that seal, when the two, the door and the frame come close together, the, the seal actually reaches out, grabs a hold of the frame and pulls the door closed all the way. That's because inside that seal is a magnet. It's almost an airtight seal.

By the way, this is why on our properties, we are not supposed to be storing refrigerators out in public or with access that have the doors on them. It is dangerous. If a child gets in there and plays around, gets inside, goes to play hide and see, and they get inside, it's possible they don't have the strength or the knowledge to be able to push that door open.

Even worse would be if they got inside and the whole refrigerator falls over. Don't store refrigerators with the doors on them. If a child's in there, they can suffocate.

It is almost an airtight seal. That seal though, the reason why it's almost airtight is the magnet. And if that magnet fails, then you get outside air in and that outside air brings moisture, it also brings heat.

One of the primary ways of knowing that you have a faulty door seal is you will see condensation inside the refrigerator. Now, some of that condensation is normal. I mean, if you take a bottle of soda out of the refrigerator, that's been in there for a while, set it out on the counter, you're going to begin to see condensation form on the outside of that bottle.

That has to do with the thermodynamic properties of heat moving to cold. And when air temperature changes, its density changes. Hot air will hold more moisture than cold air.

That's why when you have hot, warmer air going up against a cold surface, moisture gets deposited onto the surface because the air temperature is compressing. And in the same way that if you have a sponge full of water and you squeeze it, water comes out, the air is getting squeezed by losing heat. That heat loss causes the moisture to transfer to the outside surface of your colder object.

That means that when you take that bottle of soda that you put out on the counter you used, it got a little bit damp because of the condensation and it gets put back into the refrigerator. You're adding moisture to the inside of that refrigerator. Oh, and now that bottle is warmer than the air surrounding it.

That means that the moisture will end up being absorbed into the air as heat leaves the bottle because the moisture follows the temperature. And that moisture goes to your coil, which will cause it to freeze. It can also show up in other locations.

So if you happen to be in a very wet environment, double check the seals on the door, because if the seal on the outside of the door is broken, if that magnet has failed, then moisture gets inside and you will begin to see that condensation occur on the colder surfaces. Like if the freezer's on top, underside of the freezer in the fresh food compartment. So how do you test the seal on a refrigerator?

Either the fresh food or the freezer compartment. You test them both the same way. All refrigerators, 19 cubic feet or smaller, you use a $1 bill.

Anything above 19 cubic feet, you have to use a 20. Okay, really bad joke. The reality is you use a $1 bill.

That's all it takes. That magnet is actually magnetized to that scale. What you do is you take the $1 bill, close it into the door that you are testing with the $1 bill hanging out.

So it's half on the inside, half on the outside. And then grab the $1 bill and drag it all the way around the door. The seal goes on all four sides.

So you need to test all four sides. And here's the thing. If at any point that $1 bill comes out really, really easy with no resistance, you've lost the magnetism of that portion of the gasket, that door seal.

If at any point in time, the $1 bill gets stuck so much so that the $1 bill rips, then your resident owes you a dollar. No, they don't. Actually, that's an indication that it's time to clean, which is where we started talking about the door seals.

The number one most common cause for door seals to fail is spills.

[Paul Rhodes] (29:13 - 29:21) One substance in particular, colas, sodas, carbonated beverages.

[Paul Rhodes] (29:22 - 31:51) The reason why is threefold. First, as a substance, they are very, very acidic. It will cause the seal itself to become brittle.

The second reason why they fail is because of the sugar that's involved. It makes it very, very sticky. So in other words, if you ever go to a refrigerator that your resident wants you to look at and you open the door and you hear that sound, that's the door seal sticking to the frame that needs to be repaired.

The third reason why sodas are bad, and this one, I don't know why, but I have verified it through several sources that somehow the carbonation can remove the magnetic field from the magnet. So in essence, cleaning in the refrigerator is a very important thing. It also matters the compartments that are inside.

I mean, we talked a little bit ago about vegetables freezing because the cold air gets across them. By the way, that's why there's a crisper drawer. The drawer gets the temperature of the fresh food without having the air directly from the freezer pass across it.

Now, refrigerators, you know, cleaning, that is a very important thing. And if we were to take cleaning and we put that with the statement earlier that the most efficient a refrigerator is, is when it's 80% full, it would be a very, very short leap to the logical conclusion that an empty refrigerator costs more to operate, and that is very true. This is also why a lot of property managers throughout my entire career have wanted me to turn off the refrigerator in all vacant apartments.

On the surface, this is a great idea. The number one biggest user of energy annually in a vacant apartment is the refrigerator.

[Paul Rhodes] (31:56 - 32:06) The problem is what happens when you remove power from a refrigerator? It's a fascinating thing.

[Paul Rhodes] (32:08 - 37:37) Walking vacants, you know, you go in to walk a vacant apartment and it's quite fast, an interesting way to separate those of us who have been doing the job of maintenance for a while from those of us that are new to this as a career option. And one of the lessons that distinguishes age or adds to the wisdom is whenever you go into a vacant apartment and you notice there is no power, what do you never do? That's right.

You never, ever open the refrigerator. As a matter of fact, I used to carry a roll of duct tape in my truck so that when we go to a vacant apartment, whether it was a skip or for whatever reason, and if the power was turned off, I real quick run out to my truck and duct tape the door shut because opening that door, you're about to unleash all manners of horror, I would think, I could even think that Pandora's box was actually a rotten refrigerator and that's the same reason why it's a bad idea to turn off the refrigerator in a vacant apartment. Although I guess there's a little bit of a difference in scale.

I mean, a refrigerator that a resident has left food in or the power got cut off and you have rotten food in it. Yeah, that's generally going to smell worse than an apartment that was or that has already been cleaned so that the refrigerator has been cleaned. Yes, that will smell better, but basically it's just going from worse to bad.

Neither one is good, especially if we've got a resident that's about to move in. Look, the reason why even your refrigerator that has been cleaned smells bad is because it was used. Residents will bring food home or they will take leftover food from the table and they'll put it into their refrigerator and that food, for whatever reason, like it or not, will contain...

Okay, a warning for those of you who are maybe eating, you might want to pause this message for a little while and then come back to it later because yes, there's a warning this does get a little bit gross. Okay, still with me? All right.

So then food, when it gets put into the refrigerator, it's got food juice on it. Whatever food juice, whatever food it is, that food juice is there and until that food juice gets solid, if it's in the freezer, or that food juice gets wiped up, if it's in the refrigerator, that food juice is liquid and that liquid is going to go in the little crooks and crannies and crevices and cracks that just exist inside that appliance. As long as the appliance is plugged in, everything's fine and hunky-dory.

The minute power is removed, the food does what it does. It rots when it absorbs, when it assumes room temperature. The whole reason why we had the convenience of the refrigerator is to prolong the freshness of food.

All of that food juice in the freezer is frozen while it's powered. The minute it becomes unpowered and the freezer assumes room temperature, all that food juice is no longer frozen and now it rots and no cleaner is going to be able to get every bit out of it unless you take the refrigerator to like your car wash or submerge it in your swimming pool, which neither one of those are good things to do. I guess the carwash thing is usable, but even then it requires a lot of work.

I got your solution. On one hand, yes, turning the refrigerator off in vacant apartments is a great way to save money on your utility bills in vacant apartments. On the other hand, it can require some time in order to bring it back up, which actually that turns into an even more gross and disgusting conversation.

So I think I'm actually going to record that separately. That way you can listen to it as needed because you can still save that refrigerator. In other words, a refrigerator that just smells bad does not necessarily need to be condemned.

I'll record that separately. You can find you'll be able to find that as a separate maintenance mindset minute specifically for saving a rotten refrigerator.

[Paul Rhodes] (37:39 - 37:42) So how do we solve it then?

[Paul Rhodes] (37:42 - 40:33) On one hand, it's cheaper to turn a refrigerator off that's empty. On the other hand, it requires some work in order to save it for the smell. The answer is thermal mass.

In all vacant apartments, I think it's a great idea to put a gallon of drinking water, just one gallon, that's it. Water is great thermal mass. It holds temperature really, really well.

You will notice a decrease in the amount of energy that is consumed in that refrigerator. If you're on a really, really tight budget, you can just move that gallon jug or maybe a couple of gallon jugs from vacant apartment to vacant apartment, or leave it behind for your new residents. Turn it into marketing.

Let them know that you understand that they are just moving into their brand new apartment. Maybe they would like a drink. It's that idea or concept of a great service that we can provide to our brand new residents.

By the way, I do think it's a great idea to have some training for your brand new resident at Move-In. For instance, the details. Keep your refrigerator clean.

Don't clean it with ammonia or bleach. Hot water, warm water is best. If you need any detergent at all, use dish soap.

Ammonia and chlorine don't get along well with the materials that a refrigerator is made out of. Ammonia can actually make plastic brittle. Chlorine can react to the aluminum in the coils and produce a gas that will change the flavor of whatever you have in your freezer.

In both cases, it's just best to stay away from them. Okay, so you've made it this far. We've talked about most common issues and what we need to know about refrigerators.

The last thing, if you go in to respond to a maintenance request for a refrigerator, there's three things that are very, very fast that you can check without even a minimum of tools. One, we've talked about, use the infrared gun. You can get an instantaneous temperature of what your refrigerator is operating at just by shooting three or four things in each compartment.

You know what those temperatures are, right? Yeah, freezer compartment below zero, up to 10 degrees to fresh food, between 35 and 42 degrees.

[Paul Rhodes] (40:34 - 40:36) That's the first section.

[Paul Rhodes] (40:38 - 43:51) The second thing to know, pay attention to the way your refrigerators sound when they're operating normally. A refrigerator that's nearing the end of its life will start to make some really funky noises. Pay attention to the difference.

Often you go to a resident's apartment, you can tell instantly whether or not that unit, that refrigerator is working correctly just by listening. The third thing, if both of those are okay, take a look at the ice. Now, this is a very, very rough rule of thumb, but I found that it works.

You see, when ice freezes below 10 degrees, that means this doesn't work with residents who've went out and bought a bag of ice, or they've made ice somewhere else than that freezer. And then put it in there. The ice has to form in there.

When ice forms below 32 degrees, it forms, it's ice. But the thing is, if it forms below roughly 10, 15 degrees, you will see ice cubes that are very, very frosty. In other words, if you see ice cubes that look like my glasses, you can see through them, clear as glass, that indicates that the ice has frozen slow enough that the natural gases and calcium and other minerals that are in the water have had a chance to bubble to the surface and escape.

Because just like air, when water freezes, it compresses tighter together. And that compression can remove the small bubbles of air, which turns into frost. In other words, if you go and open the freezer, if you see ice at all, you know, it's below 32 degrees.

If that ice is crystal clear, like glass, that means that even though it's below 32 degrees, that ice froze warmer than roughly 10, 15 degrees. And that can be an indicator that your freezer is operating above the desired temperature that we're looking for. Today, we've covered a lot of ground where refrigerators are concerned.

Common operating, things to look for, and even some ways of maybe saving money in vacant apartments. If you're interested in more topics like this, of specific repair information that our maintenance technicians can go by, let me know. Head over to Multifamily Media Network's webpage and put in a comment.

Like and subscribe wherever you're listening to this. And I look forward to spending more time with you some other time, some the next time. Thanks again.

And I'll see you somewhere.