I'm no refrigeration engineer. I'm actually an electrical engineer by training. But the way my (now-broken) refrigerator works makes no sense to me. The cooling coils for both the refrigerator and the freezer are located behind the back wall of the freezer. The cold air comes into the freezer and then is circulated throughout the refrigerator using a simple fan. That makes a lot of sense.
The part that doesn't make sense is that the coils get so cold, they freeze up. There's a heater located inside the freezer to heat up the coils to prevent freezing. I've read that, in some cases, the heating element gets so hot, you can actually see it glowing. In my case, there was no glow, as the heater simply stopped working, thereby not allowing the coils to "unfreeze."
I haven't invested the time to come up with a better system, but there must be a better way to architect a refrigerator without using a heater. That just seems completely counterintuitive to me.
Tell us your experiences with Monkey-designed products. Send stories to Rob Spiegel for Made by Monkeys.
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