De-Icing

It’s 23 degrees in our freezer.

(That's 17 degrees warmer than yesterday.)

And, it's about 40 or so in the fridge.

Now, please remain calm. No need to panic!!

It’s time for a lesson in de-icing.

(Or, at least, we’re hoping so.)

It has been precisely 52 hours since we plugged in our new, improved Norcold. And, as you will soon see, that’s a very important number.

In our effort to consume as much information as possible about our silly refrigerator, we learned about something these things do every 48 hours or so.

They go into “de-ice” mode.

This is something our fridge has done every couple of days for the last couple of years. And, until a month or so ago, it did it without us ever noticing. That was about the time we became uber-obsessed with the temperature in our fridge and we noticed every temperature shift to the tenth of a degree. By then, our faulty control board made it so the fridge went into this cycle and didn’t always come out. (Of course, that's a problem!)

Now, it’s important to know that “de-ice” is not the same as “defrost”. As much as we’d love for these cold boxes on wheels to defrost themselves, they just can’t. That’s up to us. But, they can de-ice. That’s a process where the fridge basically turns itself off for awhile to allow the frosty fins in the back of the fridge compartment to thaw.

We think the process is time-based and not temperature-activated. As much as we’ve monitored this process we’re pretty sure about that. The de-icing process starts, like clockwork, every 48 hours. For about four hours the fridge just sits there doing nothing as it gives a goodly amount of time for the fins to thaw.

48 + 4 = 52, for those of you who are paying attention.

After about four hours the fridge fires up and gets back to the business of cooling. Within hours, give or take a few, everything is back to normal.

Of course, if it’s 97 degrees outside while your fridge goes into this every-two-day cycle, things could heat up pretty fast. Or, if you time your stocking up trip from Walmart about the time the thing starts de-icing you could load your fridge full of lukewarm groceries and be looking at fridge and freezer temps that look pretty darn scary for awhile.

Get the idea?

Some folks say that you can “reset” this cycle by turning the fridge off and then on. But, we gotta tell ya, we’re not exactly sure about that.

What we do know is that it’s been a bit over 52 hours since we plugged in our new, improved fridge. Right now, the temperature in our freezer is down to 19 degrees. We think we’ve just passed through our first de-ice cycle and everything is returning to normal.

Like I said. At least we hope so!