Let's Talk About Vintage Refrigerators For Minute

[launderess]

Can we?

Ok, seem to remember growing up most all refrigerators and freezerz, had metal (aluminum) interiors, what caused the change to plastic and why? Which is better?

Heard something here in the group about "natural draft" refrigeration, but cannot find anything about such things on the Internet. Could someone please explain the process and if it was better than systems on offer today why?

Did vintage refrigerators have defrost controls that could be set by the user, rather than the energy wasting systems we mostly have today where the freezer automatically defrosts several times a day, weather it is required or not.

Am sure will think of a few more questions, but answers to the above will suffice for a start.

TIA
L.

 

[jeffg]

I'm no fridge expert, but I think I can answer a few of your questions:

Plastic is lighter, cheaper to produce and it doesn't dent. Whether it's "better" depends on who is asking the question.

No idea about natural draft refrigeration.

As far as I know most vintage refrigerators had *no* defrost cycle. Periodically you'd have to go in with a scraper and bucket to manually defrost the icebox. At least that's what I remember with my parents' old fridges over the years.

 

[laundromat]

Some of the old refrigerators had what was called a defrost cycle (FRIGIDAIRE Cyclamatic Refrigerators)which was either built in to the unit on a timer assembly or done manualy by the push of a button.

 

[rp2813]

I'm no expert either, but the "freezer" section on old school fridges was the actual "evaporator" for the refrigerant. Modern units with plastic lined freezers still have a metal evaporator in the freezing section but you have to pull off a plastic or metal panel to get to it. Most have a fan that blows the cold air across the evaporator and sends it to both the freezer and refrigerating portions of the fridge. A heating coil is activated during the defrost cycle and melts the ice off the evaporator and sends it down to a drain pan at the bottom of the fridge.

I don't know what the "defrost" cycle did on old fridges. I think it was a compromised situation of minimal cooling to the point that the frost melted on its own due to not enough cycling to keep the evaporator at freezing temps. I have an old "Defrost-It" box that I've never been able to figure out, it looks like nothing more than a timer that will prevent the fridge from running for a certain length of time each day and supposedly those were designed to make frosty old fridges frost-free, but I'm sure you had to have something ready to catch the water from the evaporator.

OK, now the experts can chime in and correct my mistakes!

 

[alr2903]

Some of the early FF westy's

...iirc, mechanically counted the number of times the door was opened, to determine when to defrost, would guess that very frequent openings, or door left open for a long period, would of made it less than perfect.

 

[goatfarmer]

Plastic is much cheaper, as stated before. At Frigidaire school in '76, the instructor told us that one of the most expensive parts of manufacturing was the porcelain application, on the inside of refrigerator cabinets, washer tubs, etc.

I've got an old Kelvinator from the 50's that has 2 dials, one to set the temperature, and one that says "defrost", and has markings on it that relate to a clock. I'll have to get a picture of it.

 

[athanasius80]

Just adding my $.02

The evaporator (freezer section) on early refrigerators wasn't aluminum. The earliest monitor tops used porcelain, most after that were steel, and I think 1930s Frigidaires were plated brass. I would think aluminum would be way too easy to puncture by overzealous defrosting. They were already using plastic doors inside fridges by 1940-1941, so I would think the wholesale change to plastic in the 1950s was continuing a trend interrupted by WW2. And think about it, besides being cheaper plastic would look more "modern and glamorous."

I know nothing about "natural draft" refrigeration.

Defrosting... you got it. Before they started putting heaters in the evaporators to dissolve the ice, your "defroster" was an override setting on the theromostat to let the evaporator get above freezing. You'd best make sure that you still have the freezer tray under the evaporator or you'll have soggy food for the next few days!

 

[gansky1]

One of the weaknesses in Frigidaire refrigerators was the aluminum evaporator boxes in the freezer section. Since the coils of the evaporator were part of the freezer box itself, there was a high probability of it getting damaged by defrosting, or even by not defrosting enough to the point that frost and ice would force the top and sides of the box to bend out of shape.

There were some units (early) that used a reverse cycle method to remove frost. Defrost timers in standard frost-free units can be replaced with a programmable timer so it won't run the heat/defrost cycle except as set by the user. For the most part, there isn't a need to defrost as often as some machines do which just wastes energy. The KitchenAid I have now in the kitchen has a computer that determines when defrosting is necessary depending on several factors - run time, load and speed of the compressor, etc.

 

[58limited]

My Cycla-Matic does go through a defrost cycle, but it is imperfect and I still manually defrost periodically, but not as often as I defrost my 1951 GE. I have an electric defroster that is simply a heating coil, similar to a stove heat coil, that you plug in and set inside the freezer compartment. It really makes defrosting a breeze compared to using a hand scraper.

 

[paulg]

Natural draft / potential answer

After perusing my fridge books I couldn't come up with "Natural Draft". Probably it is the convection method of refrigeration..
Refrigerators without interior fans cool the air by means of the freezer evaporator. The cold air condenses and drops to the bottom of the refrigerator. This displaces warmer air which rises to the top which is again cooled by the evaporator. This occurs ad-infinitum can creates its own natural convection currents (breeze) without the need for a fan. My single-door Crosley and Absocold operate on this principle while my forced-air Kitchenaid blows cold air via a fan. My area of expertise is not refrigerators and I may be wrong -but I bet this is the natural draft.

 

[sudsmaster]

My Kenmore chest freezer has a "turbo defrost" knob that you pull out and it does a reverse flow of coolant, heating up the interior walls. The ice just drops off, and is relatively easy to collect and put in the sink. It really does cut defrost time a lot, which is helpful since the frozen food is all sitting in boxes waiting to be put back into the chest ;-).

Never did understand the "defrost" setting on old manual fridges. Never knew that they could be reverse cycle, but since these were all in rental units with the owner's manuals long gone, never did know what the defrost setting might do. Usually I'd just boil water in pans and set them in the freezer compartment to speed things up.

The worst I've seen was a college roommate who used to take an icepick to the freezer. There were plenty of gouges in the aluminum as mute testimony to her skill.

 

[JerseyMike]

My parents had a Hotpoint (circa 1952) that had a "defrost" button. Whey you pushed it, the walls of the freezer section were heated (I'm not sure how) and that made the accumulated frost easier to remove.

Mike

 

[nmaineman36]

If I remember right that Frigidaire back in the 40's and 50's used to tout about Cold Wall cooling. It was said to keep the refrigerator area moist so foods dont dry out and last longer. I saw that being advertised in a few of their vintage ads. The idea was to surround the food storage area with cold. They musta run the evaporator coils in the walls of the fridge section. Thats my take on it.

 

[sudsmaster]

the energy wasting systems we mostly have today

As far as I know, even the more wasteful auto-defrost systems of today cycle the defrost at most once every 24 hours. And the more frugal (and high end) designs have some sort of frost detection ability whereby they run the defrost heater only as needed. Those fridge/freezers generally would have the lowest energy consumption ratings.

 

[turquoisedude]

I have (buried somewhere among boxes and boxes of mixers, blenders, and assorted parts) a timer box that came from an early 1940's Hotpoint fridge that would cycle the appliance 'off' for 15 minutes every hour to permit defrosting. I can't imagine this was very effective though!

I remember my parent's GE fridge (which later became my first fridge) had the aluminum interior, but the aluminum was tinted a copper colour. Boy do I regret getting rid of that one!

The 'newest' manual defrost fridge that I owned was a 1984 Kelvinator and it still had an aluminum freezer box (the rest was plastic of course).

 

[goatfarmer]

Here's the Kelvinator I was talking about earlier. Temperature on the right, defrost on the left. Any idea how this works?

 

[ptcruiser51]

going back 40 years or so

I remember reading the manual for my mom's 1948 Westinghouse Deluxe (the same one the Cunnighams had on "Happy Days"). It had "Coldest" "Normal" "Economy" "Vacation" and "Defrost" on the dial. Coldest was to cool a large amount of food fast, not recommended for over 4 hours. Normal, self explanatory. Economy was for if the box was lightly loaded. (Remember, these were the days when shopping was often a daily chore - the box was seldom full of frozen meats or a lot of produce) Vacation was to keep it running to preserve whatever was "left" when you went away. Defrost was to keep the cooling going long enough for you to do the job and take less time to re-cool the interior to proper temp. The manual recommended letting no more than 1/4" of rime appear on the coils. Ha! They should have seen ours most of the time. My aunt had a 1947 Westy "Two-Temp" that we inherited with our summer cottage. Same controls, but my mom would just unplug and leave the door open when the place was unused (several weeks at a time). Dad always had a "thing" about "leaving things running". My other aunt had a 1941 Kelvinator, the condenser was about the size of a shoe box, no door. I don't remember the controls, but she used to let it "go" until you couldn't fit a box o'frozen peas in there! Years later when I had my own fridge (non-FF), I used to just use my blow-dryer on it - done in no time.

Current models (GE/Hotpoint) have "Frost-Guard" that drops the temp about 7 degrees 20 min or so before the defrost cycle starts, to eliminate excess thawing of stuff in the freezer (like those nasty ice crystals that end up on ice cream). They also monitor door openings to adjust the time of the cycle. Higher end Maytags have the "vacation" mode, which also adjusts the cycling.