On 9/10/2010 11:41 PM, Jimmie Mayfield wrote:
> Parents have a 3-year old Whirlpool refrigerator, 21 cuft or thereabouts,
> that runs excessively. Certainly runs more often than my 7 year old Maytag.
First a little personal rant about Whirlpool: I have a Duet washer &
dryer and a KitchenAid fridge they built. Their quality is spotty; the
warranties suck; they now own probably 70% of the "American" appliance
brands but > 90% of their products are imports. My German built washer
is great, the American dryer so-so, the fridge from where-ever is
disappointing, a friend's Mexican washer & dryer totally SUCK. At least
their repair parts are inexpensive. Very doubtful I will ever buy a
Whirpool brand again.
> Today, I lent my parents my Kill-A-Watt meter. In 9 hours, with nobody home,
> the fridge drew 5.3 KWh. That works out to 14 KWh/day or over 5000 KWh/year.
The Kill-a-Watt on my KitchenAid/Whirpool fridge (side by side, ~25
cu-ft, 3 years old, Energy Star) shows the following:
Idle: 2W
Running: 131W, 1.2A
8 Day average: 9.9 KWH in 186 hours
Monthly equiv: 38.9 KWH ($3.11)
My old 1990-ish Kenmore/Whirlpool of the same size ran 90 KWH/month.
> I don't know a whole lot about refrigerators so I'm at a loss to explain
> what's going on. Any ideas what might be going on?
Most modern Whirpools I've seen have the condenser coils on the bottom,
with a fan in the lower rear pulling air in the lower front right, and
exhausting out the left. They usually have a cheap cardboard panel on
the back to cover the air plenum. Check and see if the panel is present
and reasonably sealed, and check behind it to see if the fan is running
when the compressor is.
-Wayne
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