Here is John's description of the hot gas defrost
from when Louie got his 1964 bottom freezer GE in 4/2014. Heres the link to the orig thread if anyone wants to take a look. Unfortunately Louie's pics are no longer shown.
http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?52792
Post# 752472 on 2014-04-24 22:54:57 by combo52
1964 GE Bottom Freezer Frost Guard Refrigerator
Hi Louie, love the new refrigerator hopefully it will work out well with the Coloric range.
Questions and answers
This GE Ref has hot gas defrost, the later 30 1/2 " models without the coils in the top of the refrigerator section had resistance electric defrost. All GE 34" wide bottom freezer refs had HGD with a single evaporator in the back of the freezer, these had two evaporator fans and two thermostats [ one in each section to control temperatures ]
This ref has a timer to initiate a defrost cycle after 12 hours of compressor running time has accumulated. It does not cool a little colder before going into a defrost cycle.
This ref has two evaporators, the Freon travels through the freezers E first then through the E in the top of the fresh food section. On this type refrigerator the frost melts off the FF E every time the compressor shuts off and to keep frost from accumulating on the ends of the FF E there is a little electric heater on both sides of the FF E, these little heaters are ON whenever the compressor is off, this is why when you turn off the cold control the FF E actually gets warm.
The advantage of this type of refrigeration system is no taste or odor transfer from ref to freezer sections. The main disadvantage is there is no separate temperature control for each section.
Even though GE used there own compressor on these HGD refrigerators you can install a normal compressor if it fails. I have a 1960 GE Frost Guard up-right freezer that had a bad compressor when I found it almost 30 years ago, my brother Jeff installed a regular compressor in it and it works perfectly to this day.
These were good performing refs if everything was working correctly, but dual evaporator refs were prone to more temperature issue problems. A ref like this will easily use 3-4 times as much power as a new ref of equal capacity, and other than not transferring ref odors into the ice in the freezer does not keep food any longer than a new refrigerator, Louie I would keep your little chest freezer for foods that you want to keep in the freezer long term.
[this post was last edited: 5/31/2017-16:30]
