Hair Dryers and Fridges

I don’t know what you did with your Sunday afternoon but I spent a fair bit of time lying on the kitchen floor wielding a hairdryer yesterday.

Our 17 year old fridge has been having issues as old fridges sometimes do. The freezer’s been doing it’s job but the fridge compartment could have been aptly described as a cupboard. A well insulated cupboard but a cupboard none the less. We had been putting iceblocks from the freezer compartment into the fridge to try to keep food fresh.

We took action yesterday by packing everything into eskies and sinks, covered in ice from the local servo.

I then got down on the floor and removed a panel to see a fair bit of ice. I used the hairdryer to do a complete defrost before putting everything back together and hoping for the best.

I’m pleased to say that it seemed to work. The fact that the frost free feature is no longer working suggests that it might be in it’s final days but I was more than happy to be able to buy us some time.

It’s nice to have a win every now and then but I don’t think I’ll be going into the fridge fixing business any time soon.

You might think that a hair dryer is an unusual tool for fridge fixing, and you’d be right, but I’m wondering what unusual but effective tools you’ve used for a particular job. Please let me know in the comments section of this post.



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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He previously worked in radio for about 25 years but these days he spends his time at Compassion Australia, working towards releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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1 Comment

  • I sometimes wish I had an older fridge. We have a fridge that is only 5 years old and it started freezing up. I figured I could defrost the thing manually and maybe tap on the defroster to get it going; like in the old days. Well my search lead me to the fact that my fridge uses a motherboard to control the defrost. What? A motherboard? Are you kidding me? It doesn’t do anything special. Why does it need a motherboard? Sometimes old is better.

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