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Don't let it stop you from eating your egg salad sandwich, Karen! (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
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This is on the fridge at work today.

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[–] 22 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I'm trying to figure out what kind of defect would cause that. The heating elements of a fridge, the air exchange that has the hotter refrigerant, are all outside the box I believe. If the compressor fails, the refrigerant doesn't move and doesn't move heat. So it'd just be an insulated box, right? I think that'd get hotter an ambient but I'm not sure I'd say it's "heating".

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Some malfunction on the control of defrosting. Or maybe it's powered by Peltier elements.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Thermoelectric was my first thought, since it can heat or cool, to maintain a set point, warm food, or chill beverages, as implemented in some fancy lunch boxes. I didn't know if the same applies at this scale, but I'm assuming this unit uses a compressor.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Something of this size should absolutely use a compressor.

    But there's a difference between "should" and "does", and the fact that failed into heating changes that expectation a lot.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I've seen this happen when the condenser coil is outside and during electrical work to the building the phases were swapped so the unit essentially ran in reverse.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That can only happen on 3 phase though, which a small fridge generally is not

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