I just got a new refrigerator, that and others I have encountered that are ‘newer’ seems to have this feature (or bug) that after the door is closed a device turns on that seems to created negative pressure inside, or perhaps a gremlin does that, not sure how it is done. This is very notable when you try to reopen it right away, it is hard to do, to next to impossible for some models. In mine I can hear it, the gremlin sucking out the air or the device.
So I assume this is a energy saving thing, but how does it work to save energy? The only thing I can think of is to make sure the door is sealed well, that and a strong lobbying effort by the gremlin union.
Really what is the SD on this and does all new full size fridges have this now?
In my experience, they suck in general. In my apartment my fridge went out three years ago, and management installed a brand new one. It lasted three years, and went out a couple months ago. Just stopped working, after three years. Neither of them sucked the door shut, though.
My guess is that as the air inside the fridge cools, its volume decreases. After sufficient cooling time, the pressure difference between inside and outside is enough to be noticeable when you pull on the door. Same mechanism that makes it hard to open tupperware straight out of the fridge, if you put it in the fridge while the contents were still warm.
Why newer fridges? Maybe they are better sealed than old ones, and allow less air infiltration that would keep the pressure equalized.
There’s nothing here but hot air. Well, room temperature air, anyway. You open the door, and you allow room temperature air to circulate in and out of the fridge. When you close the door, now you’ve got warmer room temperature air inside of a much colder box. The air quickly transfers its heat to the walls of the fridge, cooling the air (and heating the fridge slightly). This causes the air to compress, reducing its pressure, creating the “suction” effect that you experience.
The seal around the door isn’t completely air tight, so if you leave the door closed for a bit enough air will eventually leak in to equalize the pressure and the “suction” goes away.
This effect wasn’t as noticeable on older fridges because they didn’t seal the air as well around the outside of the door, especially as they aged.
I’ve noticed this in industrial laboratory fridges for years, and I’m starting to see it in home fridges lately. Your observation may be a little skewed – what I notice is, once you’ve opened and then closed the fridge, some sort of evacuation occurs at the seal, and it prevents you from opening the door easily. This makes you wait, and presumable saves heat loss, or something. Darn annoying, but you can defeat it, just work your fingers past the seal and break the vacuum, then you can open the door easily.
If your new fridge is the current ergonomic design, even-size twin doors for the refrigerator on top with a slide out freezer chest on the bottom, then you’re probably feeling / hearing / seeing the dual-sided seal mechanism which opens & closes with either top refrigerator door… It actually moves on a hinge depending on which side door you open. Because it’s a hinged seal it’s a little more ‘sticky’ then a regular fridge.
Just MHO but these are the best designed fridges ever. Side by side were always stupid, fridge is too small, freezer is too big. But splitting the large fridge door in two is an efficient idea, and so is the slide out freezer chest which lessens its cold loss when opened and is on the bottom where it belongs (cold sinks plus the freezer is opened much less than the fridge). Only down side to them is they never have automatic ice dispensers…
My side-by-side GE fridge does this. But… it only happens when you try to open the fridge door immediately after opening and closing the freezer door. Some sort of “time-lock” happens that makes the fridge door impossible to open for 10 to 15 seconds. Feature, not bug. But I’m not exactly clear why it only time-locks in that sequence.
I don’t think new fridgedeezers have the 30-year lifespan of those we all had at one time, but they are many times more power and energy efficient and most of them do a better job, without hassles, than most of the prior generations. I think CR has as much as said there are no bad ones - just ones better suited to your needs and budget.
The OP’s problem has already been nailed: If you open the door long enough to let warmer air in, and then close the new, tightly-sealing door, and let the high-efficiency cooling whip the heat out of that air, you’re going to get a noticeable to strong vacuum effect for as long as a minute. You can avoid it by not leaving the door open long enough for most of the air inside to circulate out into the room, and vice versa.
Your old fridge didn’t cool as efficiently/quickly, but more importantly, it wasn’t nearly as well sealed. That’s why you could get away with a five minute what-looks-good session followed by a quick putback of something.
Yeah, but that’s always, nearly without exception, the first thing to break, and it’s a pain in the ass to fix or get fixed, and in the meantime, getting ice out of the bin can be an even bigger pain in the ass, depending on how it’s designed (some are completely contained within the door, and getting ice out of it sans dispenser is nearly impossible). I’ll gladly open up the drawer and scoop out my ice rather than have to deal with that shit.
ISTM refrigerators have always done this, for about as long as I can remember – as long as the seal around the door is good. No doubt the newer fridges do this moreso.
Last year I replaced a fridge made in the late 1980s with a new model. The old one exhibited pronounced door-sucking behavior, but the new one doesn’t. (It has however found some other ways to suck.)
There are lots of french door fridges on the market now that have dual ice makers, one in the fridge compartment for the dispenser, one in the freezer. They’re great.
I’ve noticed that the atmosphere (outside the fridge) pushing the door closed, but I’ve never noticed that the air (or lack of it ) inside exhibit a significant attractive force - For a liquid or gas to suck, it would have to be making a force like gravity , electricity or magnetism or something… not happening to a such significant level.
Earth’s air does not suck… it very often pushes.
Uhhh … we won’t know that for 30 years. This sounds like the “They don’t make 'em like they used to” argument, which is heavily rooted in survivor bias.
I’m confident in its truth, as an experienced DIYer in many fields, including heavy home remodeling and construction, appliance repair, and general electrical/electronic/mechanical design and fabrication experience. I’ve spend almost 40 years fixing, repairing and resuscitating appliances of all types. For every old-school washer or fridge that needed some part replaced, I’ve had to fix or replace “lifetime” parts on more than one modern equivalent. They just aren’t as durable, either physically or electric/onically. There is no way in hell my Samsung french-door is going to last as long as the Frigidaire beast it replaced - still working, by the way - and I shopped carefully for the best-built, best-rated fridge I could find. I’m very satisfied with it but have no illusion it’s a 30-year investment. Like mattresses, no one builds them the way they used to - except that there are custom mattress builders who do.
Appliances of the last 10-15 years are simply not built as heavily as older models - exterior shells are lighter, interior moldings are thinner and lighter, hinges and sliders are plastic instead of steel, power systems are much more highly stressed to reduce power usage, weight and cost.
For every genuine improvement - say, miracle plastics or reduction of moving parts in timers, etc. - there is a plethora of building to lesser standards. The old “metal monster you’ll hand down to your kids” school of design is long, long gone.