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Having only recently hammered and bashed my way through a self-imposed HVAC course to fix the A/C Nightmare in my Attic... I grabbed as much information from on-line sources as possible; bought the proper speciality tools and used proper techniques that ended up with us now enjoying a cool 72 Degrees F after being without air conditioning for almost two months. Along the way, I also solved a very problematic A/C problem in my '93 Camaro, too.
But over the last week... another problem involving refrigeration reared its ugly head in the form of finding out that the interior temperatures of the main box section of my relatively new Kenmore Elite Refrigerator has risen to a level that might have given us all doses of Ptomaine poisoning or a dandy case of Salmonella.... at 57 Degrees F...! It was here that all that "HVAC Book Learning" began to pay off in a very big way.
I started out trying to remedy the problem with a simple check of all the air moving vents inside the freezer cabinet as well as the regular cold box sections and found nothing untoward. Next... I pulled the paper panel off via my 18Volt Screw Gun and a 5/16th " nut driver and then vacuumed and scrubbed all the individual condenser coil segments until they were all perfectly shiny black. But these actions did not serve to lower the interior temperatures that still hovered around 57 Degrees F.
At this point, I took my brand new and expensive "Field Piece" HVAC Multi-Meter and measured the Low and High sides of the refrigerant lines for "Sub-Cooling" and "Superheat" respectively...and still... Nothing was amiss! I stood there ...scratching my noggin' for just a minute and then I remembered the chapter about the "Three Laws of Thermodynamics" as it concerns the idea that when something or some space is ice cold... it will always be the ambient heat that is trying to get inside and normalize the temperature of the entire Universe...and everything that is in it. I thought, "Maybe there is a hole in the insulation somewhere that is allowing the warmer room air a chance to get inside this thing..."
Sure enough...even on a unit that is as new as this one...it is possible to have a serious breach in the integrity of the "ICE BOX" involved. So I cleaned off the shelves and threw everything not sealed in cans away and then went over the inside of the box...inch by inch...until I finally found the culprit. The Kenmore Elite Units come equipped with a cold water dispenser built into the outside of the lower door. To service this unit with cold water... various lengths of clear/or opaque water lines and valves are routed from the inside of the freezer section...down along the inside back right wall...and then out though a tube that allows these small water pipes access to the bottom section of the refrigerator door near the lower hinges...and then the piping is fed upwards to the door cold water service section where ice water is dispensed.
As I looked inside along the back wall adjacent this vertical stretch of tubing... I saw what looked like an Ice Cube stuck to the edges of the two water service lines. So I reached inside to remove it, thinking it must have fallen down while I was cleaning there...and it felt warm to the touch. On closer inspection... I realized that it was a large plug of Silicone Sealer. I stuck my head in farther to get a better look there and saw what was causing all the problems. By using Silicone as the sealer... the folks at Kenmore failed to consider that when these lines are not in use for the actual sending of water out the door spigot...they remain pressurized at normal tap water pressures... which subside whenever anybody is dispensing cold water. Hence, the plastic tubes either swell up under pressure at rest... or relax when the pressure drops when the cold water is flowing...and this constant change in dimensions was enough to loosen the grip of the Silicone sealer on the two plastic/nylon tubes.
Also... it follows on that whenever the refrigerator door is closed, the system is designed to create a partial vacuum inside that served to suck the loosened plug upwards from inside the service hole breaching the lower Ice Box...and finally... it just popped its rubbery self upwards and eventually...worked itself out of the smooth, white plastic hole! Could it be that simple? YES! So next...was the problem of coming up with a the solution in the form of a sealer that could both re-seal this hole and also hold the tubes firmly in place. This came in the form of a pressurized can of DAP-Tex Multi-purpose Foam Sealant. I needed something in there though that would be neither noxious, nor so expandable as to foam up all over the place and flow out of the hole. A few vigorous shakes of the can and a good long spray down that hole did the trick. I was able to use just a little tap water on my index finger to smooth the new foam plug over and make it look professional. I let the plug set for about 15 minutes after slowly closing the door...lest the new plug get vacuumed out of the hole as easily as the former one did.
This story ends happily now that the interior of the Ice Box is maintaining a cold setting that reads out at 41 (Correction...36 Degrees F as measured with a K-Style Thermocouple). So if you are having anything as mysterious as this happening to your own "Ice Box".. .you can make the situation "Chill Out" with ease using this new DAP-Tek sealant!
The Case of the "Red Hot" Refrigerator is Solved!
But over the last week... another problem involving refrigeration reared its ugly head in the form of finding out that the interior temperatures of the main box section of my relatively new Kenmore Elite Refrigerator has risen to a level that might have given us all doses of Ptomaine poisoning or a dandy case of Salmonella.... at 57 Degrees F...! It was here that all that "HVAC Book Learning" began to pay off in a very big way.
I started out trying to remedy the problem with a simple check of all the air moving vents inside the freezer cabinet as well as the regular cold box sections and found nothing untoward. Next... I pulled the paper panel off via my 18Volt Screw Gun and a 5/16th " nut driver and then vacuumed and scrubbed all the individual condenser coil segments until they were all perfectly shiny black. But these actions did not serve to lower the interior temperatures that still hovered around 57 Degrees F.
At this point, I took my brand new and expensive "Field Piece" HVAC Multi-Meter and measured the Low and High sides of the refrigerant lines for "Sub-Cooling" and "Superheat" respectively...and still... Nothing was amiss! I stood there ...scratching my noggin' for just a minute and then I remembered the chapter about the "Three Laws of Thermodynamics" as it concerns the idea that when something or some space is ice cold... it will always be the ambient heat that is trying to get inside and normalize the temperature of the entire Universe...and everything that is in it. I thought, "Maybe there is a hole in the insulation somewhere that is allowing the warmer room air a chance to get inside this thing..."
Sure enough...even on a unit that is as new as this one...it is possible to have a serious breach in the integrity of the "ICE BOX" involved. So I cleaned off the shelves and threw everything not sealed in cans away and then went over the inside of the box...inch by inch...until I finally found the culprit. The Kenmore Elite Units come equipped with a cold water dispenser built into the outside of the lower door. To service this unit with cold water... various lengths of clear/or opaque water lines and valves are routed from the inside of the freezer section...down along the inside back right wall...and then out though a tube that allows these small water pipes access to the bottom section of the refrigerator door near the lower hinges...and then the piping is fed upwards to the door cold water service section where ice water is dispensed.
As I looked inside along the back wall adjacent this vertical stretch of tubing... I saw what looked like an Ice Cube stuck to the edges of the two water service lines. So I reached inside to remove it, thinking it must have fallen down while I was cleaning there...and it felt warm to the touch. On closer inspection... I realized that it was a large plug of Silicone Sealer. I stuck my head in farther to get a better look there and saw what was causing all the problems. By using Silicone as the sealer... the folks at Kenmore failed to consider that when these lines are not in use for the actual sending of water out the door spigot...they remain pressurized at normal tap water pressures... which subside whenever anybody is dispensing cold water. Hence, the plastic tubes either swell up under pressure at rest... or relax when the pressure drops when the cold water is flowing...and this constant change in dimensions was enough to loosen the grip of the Silicone sealer on the two plastic/nylon tubes.
Also... it follows on that whenever the refrigerator door is closed, the system is designed to create a partial vacuum inside that served to suck the loosened plug upwards from inside the service hole breaching the lower Ice Box...and finally... it just popped its rubbery self upwards and eventually...worked itself out of the smooth, white plastic hole! Could it be that simple? YES! So next...was the problem of coming up with a the solution in the form of a sealer that could both re-seal this hole and also hold the tubes firmly in place. This came in the form of a pressurized can of DAP-Tex Multi-purpose Foam Sealant. I needed something in there though that would be neither noxious, nor so expandable as to foam up all over the place and flow out of the hole. A few vigorous shakes of the can and a good long spray down that hole did the trick. I was able to use just a little tap water on my index finger to smooth the new foam plug over and make it look professional. I let the plug set for about 15 minutes after slowly closing the door...lest the new plug get vacuumed out of the hole as easily as the former one did.
This story ends happily now that the interior of the Ice Box is maintaining a cold setting that reads out at 41 (Correction...36 Degrees F as measured with a K-Style Thermocouple). So if you are having anything as mysterious as this happening to your own "Ice Box".. .you can make the situation "Chill Out" with ease using this new DAP-Tek sealant!
The Case of the "Red Hot" Refrigerator is Solved!
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