French Door Refergerators
Are certainly not new, in addition to the featured Frigidaire that started this thread several other companies had mullion-less french doors on the refrigerators section of several different models over the years. It would have been a much greater challenge to have FDs on the colder freezer section and an even greater waste of electricity.
I think the next company to have FDs was GE around 1965 when they introduced the very unique Americana 41' wide refrigerator with a full width roll out freezer below a counter-top with twin FDs above. This design like most had an electric heater in the gasket edge of one of the two doors on the edge where the two door seals touched when the doors were closed. WP also produced FD bottom refrigerators for both their brand and for Sears and they even made a unique top freezer model for Sears where again the refrigerators were the FD design. Westinghouse also had a FD BF refrigerator in the late 1960s.
Current FD refrigerators are very popular and convenient if the kitchen is tight for space in front of the refrigerator, but are not without their problems. They waste a lot of storage space on the inside of the doors , they have problems with the electrically heated movable mullion and of coerce they consume much more power over their lifetime. The best ones today come from the old Amana plant under the various WP brand names. We see the worst problems with the LG, Samsung, and the GEs which are really LGs.
John your 1988 WP BF FD is a really good refrigerator, WP was clever enough to figure out a way to have double overlapping door seals on these refrigerators to avoid having an electric heater for the gasket. It did cause more gasket failures unfortunately as the gaskets would really drag over each other if you opened only door each time. If your refrigerator was built in 1988 it would not have a rotary compressor, WP quit building these great compressors around 1984-5. You can greatly lessen the power use of this refrigerator by replacing the two fan motors with the new ECM motors and changing the defrost timer so it does not defrost any more often than after 24 hours of running time. You may even to reduce the maximum defrost temperature if you add a copper heat probe in the defrost drain, call me for details if interested, John.
